Jacob Williams https://jacobwilliams.com

The tone of Thursday’s meeting of full council was set quite early on in the piece. Even before the chairman had completed his announcements, his mobile phone went off in his pocket. Twice.

In many ways it was like an episode of Judge Judy. I’ve never known such liberal use of the gavel, or for the chairman to rise to his feet as many times. Still, it was Cllr. Arwyn Williams’ first full council meeting, and mastering the council’s constitution and every single one of its procedural rules is enough to perturb any man’s composure.

Cllr. Bob Kilmister’s request for the chairman to exercise his discretionary consent to allow a debate on a proposal supported by all opposition members to refer the already infamous poor bookkeeping debacle to the authority’s Standards Committee, was struck down. Cllr. Arwyn Williams, from the chair, denied the request, and said “I don’t wish to discuss that,” to which Cllr. Kilmister asked “So are you refusing?” “Yes,” came the reply.

Cllr. Kilmister also told the meeting that he had shared his request with Cllr. Williams before the meeting had got underway, so I will await to see whether the decision made by the chairman will be included in the minutes to be approved at the next meeting. If you’ve read ‘To hell with the expenses’ you’ll know what happened next, but, in a nutshell: Cllr. Kilmister, seconded by Labour leader Cllr. Paul Miller, forced all members to make the final determination, via a recorded vote, on whether the referral should be allowed to be discussed contrary to the Chairman’s ruling. The voting record shows that the leader’s party colleagues came to his rescue, using the infamous block-vote.

The chairman certainly liked to assert his new-found authority, because he also has the discretion in his role to allow supplementary questions from any member on any question that is posed on the agenda. Cllr. Williams must have been eager to keep the meeting short so that he could return both of the telephone calls he’d missed, because he stated that he would not be allowing additional supplementary questions (other than the one follow-up provided by the rules to the named member who had submitted the question.)

Which leads to my ‘emergency’ item on Bluestone. It was allowed by the chairman, and some days before the meeting I was asked to sign a copy of it so that it could be circulated to councillors as an addition to the agenda on their desks before the meeting – not that they hadn’t all read about it on this website beforehand.

The leader gave his lengthy pre-written spiel (which you’ll realise referred more to Bluestone’s operations, rather than its management and administration) is paraphrased below:

The council invested £1m into Bluestone’s ‘Waterworld’ now called ‘The Blue Lagoon’ on the condition that Bluestone would make this attraction open to the general public. It was a facility that PCC “could not have been able to fund or run itself” and it benefits all residents and visitors to the county.

The economic benefit to the county through tourism spending and job creation was something the leader was ‘proud’ of. Bluestone currently provides around 500 jobs, and there was an ‘extensive local supply chain’ with £4.5m being spent within a 30 mile radius supporting considerably more local employment. Wages into the county are £6.05m on annual basis, with £1.5m spent on advertising.

350,000 visitors have been to Bluestone, 44% of which had never visited Pembrokeshire previously.

“Bluestone is hitting a lot of its targets.” It has helped to extend the tourist season and sustain smaller businesses. There is a further phase of 70 letting units planned which will create a further 150 permanent jobs as well as additional employment in construction.

It was also stressed that the council had a ‘relatively small’ share. But this is really not the point. Suppose the council invested three million pounds and owned 9% of it. The percentage of the whole would still be small, and really isn’t relevant to the issue that is: the risk that has been taken with public money, with no clear sign of a return, forget about any appreciation.

Before I asked a supplementary question, I queried with the chairman whether, given the status of this item, and the fact that it was rightly allowed as an ’emergency’ item, he would allow other members to ask questions of the leader on this matter. I knew there were councillors who had raised questions over the council’s big gamble into this private venture following the cabinet’s decision to make the hefty loan at its October 2002 meeting, and also back in 2009 when the delinquent loan was swapped for company shares.

The leader, IPG member Cllr. Jamie Adams, shook his head throughout my query, followed by the chairman, IPG member Cllr. Arwyn Williams, asserting: “the supplementary must come from you,” and a simple “no I’m not,” in response to my attempt to clear up whether he would allow other members to raise their own queries.

So, with only a solitary supplementary, I asked whether the council had looked at selling off its shares, or received any interest in them. The leader referred me to his earlier written answer and said he would “repeat the last paragraph,” and reinforced his earlier hints that as PCC’s share was so small, the council had no say or influence over this deal, and did not need to be consulted.

Not being one to give up easily, or to be fooled by obfuscation, I thought I’d then try and ask the leader if he knew the current value of the council’s stake in Bluestone. The Chairman decreed that: “All the questions have been answered,” but Cllr. Adams, whose lexicon is added-to daily, said that “to humourise Cllr. Williams,” it was difficult to put a financial figure on the investment or, at least I think that is what’s meant by “it’s clearly difficult to undertake that figure,” and the recent purchase price was unknown.

The Western Mail reports that it was a figure ‘rumoured’ to be ‘more than £10m,’ though for what exact percentage we are unsure, and the same report states the newspaper’s understanding that “holiday resort operator Center Parcs expressed an interest.” You might have thought that the same senior officers who oversaw a million pounds of public money being sunk into the Blue Lagoon, would take at least a cursory interest now in the investment they recommended be rubber-stamped by the cabinet ten years ago, and to keep track of any subsequent developments that might pose potential opportunities or threats to these interests and report them to the leader, especially in preparation for this ’emergency’ public airing.

And not a mention was given to the additional £750,000 which the council is said to have outlaid on a new road layout and roundabout, which would bring the total amount ploughed into Bluestone of Pembrokeshire’s taxpayers’ money, to the £1.75m mark. All this, whilst we’re currently closing public loos to save in the region of £135,000 per year, which we’re told are not services that the council has a duty to provide. So posh pools are then?

Though there were more than enough unsuccessful protestations at the time the loan was agreed back in 2002, times and circumstances have changed. Officers will know whether it was a good decision, and how fruitful this bright idea was to be approved by the cabinet, but the stifling of discussion over the matter was a political decision, that cannot be directly attributed to officers, but to the chairman. As long as the matter is stifled, the Pembrokeshire public cannot be reassured either way over the soundness of the ‘investment.’

The final word came from the leader: “The banks have clearly sought to ensure that the business is able to continue and that is far more important than the stake of this council.”

I’m not sure how the reference to the banks is meant to convince me or the public that the council’s ‘investment’ was sound, but the message that can be taken from this meeting by Pembrokeshire residents, is that even if your councillor cared enough to have asked a probing question last Thursday, and the chances are slim, there was certainly no hope of it being allowed by the chairman, or any appetite for it, from the leader.

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❏As the chairman shuffled his papers during the progression to the next item on the agenda, I asked the leader if he would forward by email a copy of his pre-written response to all members, which he agreed to do. Though I have not yet received my copy, I did send out a reminder to the leader by email on Monday, copying in all councillors. The text of the speech was pre-prepared, so perhaps the ‘forward’ button is difficult to find on the council’s email system.