Jacob Williams https://jacobwilliams.com

He’s been in a changeable mood of late has the council leader, Cllr. Jamie Adams. Who could forget the way he dumped his trenchant support for chief executive Bryn Parry-Jones at the door of the council chamber a few weeks back at the extraordinary council meeting?

Last week it was his decision to make some changes to his cabinet, but his latest U-turn is in a different league.

At Monday morning’s meeting of the council’s corporate governance committee, members were due to discuss a proposal put forward in the names of Cllrs. David Lloyd, Bob Kilmister, Rob Lewis and David Howlett.

Their sickly-sweet scheme aimed to: “stop political in-fighting on Pembrokeshire County Council” through awareness of challenges facing the authority and “to establish positive internal working relationships.”

The four councillors formally laid down their bid at the July full council meeting, to: “ensure the highest standards of probity” and hoped that it would enable members and staff to: “observe the highest standards of respectful behaviour in all personal and public meetings” and so on. You get the idea.

The biggest hoot is that Cllr. Kilmister pulled this ‘working together’ proposal at the last minute because of a “lack of trust” between councillors, especially Cllr. Adams and his leadership of the authority, suggesting that Cllr. Adams ought to resign as leader!

This was supposed to be the first debate on the agenda and, as a member of the committee, I must own up to being five minutes late. I walked in just as Cllr. Kilmister applied the brakes to the motion he had signed, however before it was shelved, I was there to hear Cllr. Adams give a brief response.

He expressed his disappointment but told Cllr. Kilmister that there was “some information” that he intended to release later in the day which related in some respect to the proposal.

It was his decision to actively pursue discussions with Ceredigion County Council with regards to a voluntary merger with Pembrokeshire County Council. Up until this point the leader’s been vehemently opposed to any merger.

In an email to councillors and staff, he said: “I can see no purpose in burying our heads in the sand and hoping reorganisation doesn’t happen” – which was precisely the tack he had been pursuing in the preceding months, even going as far as responding to a question submitted by Cllr. Michael Williams to the 17th July full council meeting that the prospect of reorganisation and the proposals of the Williams Commission might be dead and buried depending on the outcome of the 2016 Welsh Assembly elections.

Whilst still expressing disapproval of merging authorities, and doubt over the projected cost savings suspecting it will in fact cost more, the leader’s missive says: “However it is now clear that the new Minister for Public Services, Mr Leighton Andrews, intends to drive through legislation that will force reorganisation upon us.”

Some might wonder why the leader’s had such a change of view, and why, even though he admittedly does not agree that Pembrokeshire should merge with any other authority, he now wishes to engage in discussions with Ceredigion over a voluntarily arrangement.

Some have been asking: where’s his fighting spirit? If he feels as strongly against mergers and reorganisation as he claims – wouldn’t it be a better political move for him to go down fighting to the last, than to agree to something he disagrees with, especially as he believes the outcome is inevitable anyway?

An explanation for all of these queries – and for the U-turn – might be found in the Welsh Government’s reorganisation white paper.

Entitled ‘Reforming Local Government,’ it’s based upon the Williams Commission report, and is “the Welsh Government’s statement of intent about the future of Local Government” which sets out the preferred route for future governance. It also “seeks views on whether our vision is the right one, and suggestions on how it could be further developed.”

The document sets out the case strongly for reorganisation, saying that “current arrangements are not fit for purpose” and that “reform must be significant and sustainable.”

The preference is for a reduction to twelve local authorities from the present twenty-two. The white paper’s preferred way of achieving this would see only three councils remain unchanged (Carmarthenshire, Powys and Swansea) with all of the rest being merged in some form or other, for instance, Cardiff, Wales’ largest council, would merge with the Vale of Glamorgan.

Closer to home, if the Welsh Government gets its way, Pembrokeshire will be merged with Ceredigion.

The white paper, which is a lengthy document, then goes on to discuss the way forward and the schedule of changes.

The next Wales-wide council elections are scheduled for May 2017. Local authority elections held on this date will return councillors to exactly the same councils as currently exist, regardless of whether they are going to merge with another, however the term lengths for their councillors will differ depending on the council’s future.

For instance, councillors elected to a council that won’t be merging with any other will serve for an extended five year term, right through to May 2022. However, councillors elected to an authority that is to be forcefully merged by the Welsh Government – say, for instance, Pembrokeshire or Ceredigion – would serve a reduced term of three years on their respective councils.

It is then proposed that, two years into the terms of merging councils, in May 2019, new elections will be held to the brand new single (merged) authorities, for instance, Pembrokedigion, on which councillors will serve a three year term. Following the election to the new merged authorities, the constituent councils would be relegated to ‘shadow authority’ status, until they are abolished entirely a year later, in 2020, when their councillors’ terms come to a natural end.

The merged and unchanged authorities will all be at exactly the same stage in May 2022, at which point elections will be held across Wales to all of the country’s local authorities, on which councillors will serve the usual four year terms thereafter.

However, it’s not as simple as that. In its genius, the Welsh Government has dangled a carrot in front of councillors currently serving on authorities that it wishes to merge.

It says councils which choose to merge voluntarily “must submit detailed expressions of interest by November 2014 and fully developed cases for merger by June 2015 to the Welsh Ministers for consideration.”

It goes on to propose that for councillors sitting on authorities opting to merge voluntarily, new legislation will be brought in to extend the length of their reign by an extra year! For county folk already finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact they elected their current cohort of councillors in 2012 to a five year term, to learn that they could be saddled with them for a six year term with nothing they can do about it, must come as a crushing blow.

This would mean Pembrokeshire residents being forced to wait until May 2018 for their next county council poll, where elections will be held to return councillors to the new merged authorities, who will serve four years until the Wales-wide council elections in 2022.

The leader signed off his email about pursuing a voluntary merger with Ceredigion with the sort of ‘working together effectively’ malarkey that was due to be discussed at the corporate governance committee earlier in the day. With a parting plea to those who “may be unsettled by the prospect of reorganisation,” he said:

“What I would say to you is that by taking the initiative, by planning for a merger effectively, rather than just reacting to an imposed solution, we will be able to safeguard as many jobs and as many Pembrokeshire services as possible.”

The cynic in me says by coming around to the idea of seeking a voluntary merger, the main job he wishes to safeguard is his own – but it’ll only be for a year, Jamie.