Jacob Williams https://jacobwilliams.com

The December county council meeting is traditionally followed by the chairman’s Christmas reception.

Councillors usually tuck into a turkey dinner with all the trimmings followed by Xmas pud from the County Hall canteen.

Not this year, though. In the name of austerity Cllr. Wynne Evans has put an end to this less than lavish do.

He’s emailed councillors to say we’ll have to make do with just a mince pie instead.

And it’s probably just as well because tomorrow’s council meeting looks set to be a bumper affair.

Among the items up for debate are:

❏My notice of motion calling for an annual leadership election.

When the matter was discussed at corporate governance committee last week, the current leader, Cllr. Jamie Adams, kept schtum. Turkeys voting for Christmas and all that.

It was left to his deputy, Cllr. Keith Lewis, to suggest it would be perhaps best if councillors voted for the leader every two years.

When I tabled the same proposal exactly a year ago it was voted down by a single vote. On that occasion Cllr. Adams and Co. advanced tenuous arguments against changing the current rules where a leadership term lasts the whole council.

They now give the impression that they support a biennial election, so that’s some progress – but I’m getting word from my spies that the leader gave the impression he would rather the leadership term was left as it is, when he led the ruling IPPG’s secret pre-council meeting on Tuesday.

❏Another one put forward by me is that archived webcasts of council meetings should be retained indefinitely.

Currently webcasts older than a year are deleted automatically. There was some resistance to spending more money when this came up at corporate governance committee – until I pointed out that the council could simply do what I did and upload the clips to YouTube for free!

At which point the potential for copyright issues was raised. Wonders never cease.

The report to corporate governance contained a tally of viewing figures for all past webcasts. It was so obviously inaccurate you really have to wonder how it ever made it into a formal committee agenda.

For nine of the webcasts the live viewing figures were given as “0”.

Now I know meetings don’t appeal to everybody but among those meetings we were expected to believe had zero live views were those held in the dying days of the Bryn Parry-Jones era – including the meeting where the IPPG supported his £330k golden handshake!

I soon realised the reason so many live viewing figures were zero was because they had ‘accidentally’ been deleted after only six months, only to be restored last year after I raised the topic by a question to full council.

It was agreed at last week’s corporate governance committee that officers would go off and look into the copyright and viewing figures issue.

I note the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting includes nothing on copyright but does contain revised viewing figures, but no explanation why they were wrong in the first place.

❏I’m on a bit of a roll because the next item was also put forward by me. It’s that cabinet meetings should be webcasted as well as full council.

Cabinet’s monthly meetings are held in the committee rooms, not the council chamber. The officers’ report on my proposal focuses in large part on fitting out the committee rooms with webcasting equipment, costing twelve grand in the first year and roughly £2k a year thereafter.

However my proposal simply asks for cabinet meetings to be webcasted – and the obvious solution, only given a fleeting mention in the report, is that the cabinet could meet in the webcasting-enabled council chamber.

Perhaps the best argument I’ve ever heard in my time at County Hall came from the leader, Cllr. Jamie Adams, when he pooh-poohed this suggestion at corporate governance committee.

And by best I mean worst.

He said that there would be a poor ‘dynamic’ if cabinet meetings had to be held in the council chamber. That they would be rattling round in such a cavernous space.

We’ll have to see if he comes up with a more convincing argument tomorrow – but from what I’m hearing about Tuesday’s secret IPPG meeting, he hasn’t come up with anything yet.

However I’m told that one IPPG member present at the secret meeting suggested that the cabinet could hit the road and meet around the county.

We’ll have to wait and see if this ‘Mystique Roadshow’ will be advanced tomorrow as an attempt to fudge my own proposal for webcasting.

As I said in my supporting statement, cabinet meetings are arguably more important than full council meetings as so many of the authority’s key decisions are made by this august body, and the public deserves the best opportunity possible to see its members’ deliberations – and what better way than the brilliant webcasting facility?

❏Another proposal of mine dating back to 2013, which I resubmitted again this year, is that members of the public should be allowed to table questions at full council meetings.

This is one of those rare occasions where, what is to PCC a radical proposal, hasn’t been shot down. It was even slated for introduction back in 2013 until the leader suggested it should instead be incorporated into the council’s new constitution as he didn’t want a ‘piecemeal’ approach.

So it was kicked into the council’s famous ‘long grass,’ but a public questions provision is now included in the proposed new constitution and, save for a couple of issues – for example I would prefer the public to be able to read out their question themselves – I’m quite happy to lend my support as drafted.

❏A radical overhaul of the overview and scrutiny committee structure is on the agenda, which may or may not see some of the council’s well-paid committee chairs lose out.

Details are a bit sketchy at the moment which is probably reflective of the officers’ recommendation that it be referred back to the corporate governance committee.

It originated with the council’s democratic services committee and has already come before council on 22nd October – where it was sent back to corporate governance – who sent it back to council, who may send it back again tomorrow…

❏Cllr. Myles Pepper’s promotion to the cabinet left his former planning committee chairmanship vacant.

The position – which is one of the only paid posts not appointed by the leader but by full council – will be filled tomorrow. As nominations are made from the floor, the agenda gives no indication who’s standing.

The current (unpaid) vice-chair of planning – Cllr. David Pugh of the ruling IPPG – has been busy canvassing support and I understand Cllr. Peter Stock of the Pembrokeshire Alliance is also putting himself forward.

However the IPPG’s pre-2012 planning chair and former council chairman Cllr. Tom Richards is also rumoured to be putting his name in the hat.

I’m told that at the ruling party’s exclusive pre-council meeting the leader, Cllr. Adams, told the assembled throng that if Cllr. Stock was appointed within six months there would be a no confidence motion and the planning department would be in special measures. What faith!

But it’s not as simple for the leader as merely dismissing Cllr. Stock, because his big problem is that two of his own are also clambering over each other for the £22k role.

Accordingly the leader, at Tuesday’s meeting, was desperate – practically pleading – for Cllrs. Pugh and Richards to come to a gentlemen’s agreement, for one of them to drop out so the IPPG could unite behind one man. I’m told that the pair was having none of it.

Added to the mix is that the leader wants the vote to be taken by a show of hands, while I’m told general support is for a secret ballot.

Cllr. Brian Hall is also not amused that Cllr. Myles Pepper has been promoted to cabinet, given his streak of rebellions and disloyalty to the IPPG and its leadership.

As for the candidacy of disgraced cabinet member Cllr. Pugh, readers may be interested to read Old Grumpy’s latest.

❏A report and recommendation from the chief executive – if approved – would see the creation of a new director post out of two current roles.

The current statutory finance officer is not a director but would become so.

Along with the redesignation (promotion) of another officer, the salary increases would amount to over £32k, offset by the savings of the deputy chief executive post (£114k) which was axed when the incumbent left the council a few months back.

❏The council’s long-awaited constitution is finally before councillors for adoption.

There are concerns that the meeting may not even be quorate by the time this point of the agenda is reached.

Before the meeting starts, councillors will be given a presentation by the Dyfed-Powys chief constable. Followed by all of the above topics to be debated – and more – it’s likely to be well into the afternoon before the new constitution is up for debate.

The new monitoring officer, to her credit, has pulled out all the stops and this piece of work, which has been ongoing in some form or other since before the 2012 election – particularly so since 2013 – looks to be coming to a conclusion.

As one would expect, it’s a very long document and I don’t propose to pick through it, but having sat in on the cross-party working group which considered each and every page, practically line-by-line, I was impressed with the progress made.

The only immediately obvious contentious elements within the proposed constitution are the leadership election (as above, i.e. should it be annually or biennially,) whether councillors who wish to make amendments to the budget affecting council tax levels should have to submit these ten days before the budget meeting, whether the call-in period for cabinet decisions should be longer, and if full council should be given a veto over cabinet appointments, which I wrote about previously.

Other issues may well be present within the proposed constitution, or appear at a later date, but none seems to ring alarm bells at this stage.

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TOMORROW’S MEETING WILL BE STREAMED LIVE AT THE FOLLOWING LINK:

http://www.pembrokeshire.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/200650