As part of the council's efficiency savings a non-negotiable £1m is to be sliced off funding to the third sector, ie voluntary groups, charities and the like. This process started roughly a year ago and the current status of the 'Review' is on the policy and resources scrutiny agenda for today (Friday).
What has transpired through this review is that, with roughly £20m per annum going to the third sector, the whole system is in a muddle. No one seems to know who's getting what, there's no centralised control and declared departmental spending is not equating with the cash received by organisations. Good grief.
Numerous organisations are using 'aliases', or to put it another way, applications or contracts are under different names, duplicate funding is suspected and contracts are just being rolled over with no checks or balances. What is apparent from this unusually frank report as that this unseemly muddle has been going on for years.
The change of culture which is supposed to be on the horizon shouldn't just extend to openness and transparency; a similar lack of control and unknown spending was unearthed when this committee requested details of external consultants commissioned by various departments, including legal advice, and it took over a year to cobble together the figures.
Carmarthenshire's Planning Services are another area which has been crying out for a 'review' for many years.
With the current Head of Planning, Mr Eifion Bowen retiring in September, the council's advert for a replacement states that .'Above everything, we will be looking for the right person to strengthen the department’s new culture..' Let's hope this refers to a new culture of consistency and fairness across the board and is not just more meaningless waffle from our 'vibrant and forward thinking local authority'. (Dear me, I think the ad breaches the trades description act).
To illustrate this point some of you may have read about the long running Breckman case, covered here and more recently over on Cneifiwr's blog here and here, and I'll leave you with an extract from a 2008 email from a council solicitor (now retired) to the head of planning following a subject access request by Mrs Breckman which, in one sentence, still sums up the current culture, across the council, very well;
'..the danger with full disclosure is that there are several potentially embarrassing internal emails which could be used by Mrs Breckman and the media if they were to be disclosed'
In the Breckman case, the council, in the words of the planning inspector, 'turned a blind eye' to developments next door, for ten years, and at last week's planning meeting, in a separate case, the council retrospectively approved two large steel sheds in another part of the county. Against this, I am aware of another couple who have been taken to court twice for failing to remove a small portable field shelter for a couple of horses.
Even more recently is the matter of the Grillo site in Burry Port which, (again, please see Cneifiwr's post) was the subject of call-in requests. Last week's planning committee resembled something of a lynch mob as the identities of those who had put the decision on hold through the call-in requests seemed of greater interest than the real reasons why this massive development might have needed a much closer look.
Aside from the serious environmental concerns, it was not apparent at the meeting, nor presumably to the relevant Town Council, that with the agreement of the county council, the developers had reduced the S106 community contributions substantially....
What has transpired through this review is that, with roughly £20m per annum going to the third sector, the whole system is in a muddle. No one seems to know who's getting what, there's no centralised control and declared departmental spending is not equating with the cash received by organisations. Good grief.
Numerous organisations are using 'aliases', or to put it another way, applications or contracts are under different names, duplicate funding is suspected and contracts are just being rolled over with no checks or balances. What is apparent from this unusually frank report as that this unseemly muddle has been going on for years.
The change of culture which is supposed to be on the horizon shouldn't just extend to openness and transparency; a similar lack of control and unknown spending was unearthed when this committee requested details of external consultants commissioned by various departments, including legal advice, and it took over a year to cobble together the figures.
Carmarthenshire's Planning Services are another area which has been crying out for a 'review' for many years.
With the current Head of Planning, Mr Eifion Bowen retiring in September, the council's advert for a replacement states that .'Above everything, we will be looking for the right person to strengthen the department’s new culture..' Let's hope this refers to a new culture of consistency and fairness across the board and is not just more meaningless waffle from our 'vibrant and forward thinking local authority'. (Dear me, I think the ad breaches the trades description act).
To illustrate this point some of you may have read about the long running Breckman case, covered here and more recently over on Cneifiwr's blog here and here, and I'll leave you with an extract from a 2008 email from a council solicitor (now retired) to the head of planning following a subject access request by Mrs Breckman which, in one sentence, still sums up the current culture, across the council, very well;
'..the danger with full disclosure is that there are several potentially embarrassing internal emails which could be used by Mrs Breckman and the media if they were to be disclosed'
In the Breckman case, the council, in the words of the planning inspector, 'turned a blind eye' to developments next door, for ten years, and at last week's planning meeting, in a separate case, the council retrospectively approved two large steel sheds in another part of the county. Against this, I am aware of another couple who have been taken to court twice for failing to remove a small portable field shelter for a couple of horses.
Even more recently is the matter of the Grillo site in Burry Port which, (again, please see Cneifiwr's post) was the subject of call-in requests. Last week's planning committee resembled something of a lynch mob as the identities of those who had put the decision on hold through the call-in requests seemed of greater interest than the real reasons why this massive development might have needed a much closer look.
Aside from the serious environmental concerns, it was not apparent at the meeting, nor presumably to the relevant Town Council, that with the agreement of the county council, the developers had reduced the S106 community contributions substantially....