Way back in February 2014, Pembrokeshire County Council handed Dyfed-Powys Police (DPP) a thick dossier of evidence detailing various apparently fraudulent transactions in the Pembroke Dock Commercial Property Grants Scheme (CPGS) where large amounts of grant money had been paid out for work that wasn’t eligible for grant aid, or, in many cases, simply hadn’t been done.
Five years later the council received a letter from Det Chief Supt Steve Cockwell of Dyfed-Powys Police dated 12 July 2019 informing it that the Crown Prosecution service had decided to drop the case because it didn’t meet the evidentiary test.
“The Crown Prosecution Service have determined that there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction against any of the suspects.
The Prosecutor Code states that a case which does not pass the evidential stage must not proceed, no matter how serious or sensitive it is.
The Crown Prosecution Service have stipulated that they have no issue with the investigation conducted by the police or the reasonable enquiries undertaken during the investigation. They also found no evidence of collusion on the part of any Pembrokeshire County Council employees; although state it is clear that there were failings in process and procedure in the authority around the handling of the scheme.”
And later in the same letter:
“Overall, it was considered that the evidence from representatives of Pembrokeshire County Council was conflicting and was not consistently credible and reliable.”
The council was taken aback by this decision, which flew in the face of the evidence, and decided to explore the possibility of using its powers under the local government legislation to mount a private prosecution.
An eminent QC/KC was engaged, but his attempts to persuade DPP to hand over the evidence were met with stubborn resistance.
Eventually, the KC convinced DPP that the council had a legal right to access the evidence and some 8,000 pages were handed over. By this time KC had taken on other work which meant he was unable to devote the required time to examining the mountain of paperwork. The authority then engaged a barrister named Lee Reynolds, and in December 2023 he provided an opinion that on the basis of the evidence:
“The fraud
2. The fraud was extremely unsophisticated and simplistic. It seems clear to me that there was a fraud. It seems to me that there is a case against xxxxx and xxxxx in this regard. It may be the case that on further work there is a case against all xxxxx and potentially others. I do not intend to set out the full details of the relevant schemes and applications herein – they have been summarised at length in various CPS documents.”
[xxxxx = redacted names]
However, with regard to PCC taking out a private prosecution Mr Reynolds was quite clear:
“25. The allegation that the offence was caused, facilitated or enabled by complicity (at worst) or gross incompetence (at best) of persons working for Pembrokeshire County Council causes very significant issues in this authority taking a prosecution in my view.
I advise in the strongest terms that it would not be appropriate for Pembrokeshire County Council to prosecute with such allegations inevitably going to be raised by the defence.”
Full council met on 7 March 2024 to consider Mr Reynolds’ advice and agreed to abandon the prosecution process.
That left the way clear for the council’s governance and audit committee to resume its own examination of the grant fraud. This had been suspended in early 2014 in order to avoid a clash with the police investigation and, at its meeting on 18 April 2024, Cllr Jacob Williams and myself persuaded the committee to use its legal powers to require certain council officers and members to appear before it to explain their part in both the administration of the grants and any cover-up when the matter was first brought to light in 2013/2014.
That meeting took place on 10 September 2024.
I will deal with the main proceedings of this committee, and the attempt (largely successful) by its new lay chair Dr Norma Barry to supress any discussion of the original cover-up, in a separate post.
All that needs to be said for the moment is that Mr Gwyn Evans, PCC’s European Officer who was in overall control of the department charged with administering these grants, was one of those required to appear.
Helpfully, ahead of the meeting on 10 Sept 2024, Mr Evans submitted a long report giving his side of the story, the most dramatic part of which was a statement attacking barrister Lee Reynolds’ conclusions.
Using quotes from Mr Reynolds’ opinion, shown here in bold, Mr Evans’ letter to committee members included the following:
I am aware that the Council has received an Opinion from Lee Reynolds KC [sic] published as Appendix 2 to the report for Agenda Item 22 for the meeting of Council on 7 March 2024. It also formed part of the papers of the Governance and Audit Committee on 18 April 2024. Paragraph 23 of that Opinion begins as follows:
“It seems cheque book stubs were used to prove the payments and even these were wrong or inconsistent at times. There is a suggestion that despite concern ‘it was deemed within the rules set by WEFO and approved’ and on that basis the payment was processed.”
This is false in every regard, specifically:
It is not true that cheque book stubs were used to prove the payments.
It is not true that the stubs we held were wrong or inconsistent.
It is not true that it was deemed within WEFO rules to make payments solely based on the evidence of cheque stubs.On the basis of this false information, Mr Reynolds proceeds to vilify the officers involved in managing the CPGS. He writes:
“Who deemed it to be within the rules? The evidence is staggering and shows utter incompetence bordering on complicity in my view – which perhaps supports the interviewing of several members of the authority.”
He then doubles down on these unfounded allegations in paragraph 25, referring to officers working on CPGS as being guilty of “gross incompetence (at best)”.
These are ill-informed, unwarranted, unjust, and potentially defamatory attacks on honest and hard-working Council officers. I expect the Committee Members individually and collectively to acknowledge that this paragraph 23 of the Opinion is wholly untrue and to recognise that an apology to officers, past and present, whose reputations have been unfairly tarnished by its publication would be appropriate.”
There are several things to say about this:
1. While this scathing criticism of the barrister’s opinion by a senior council officer was played out in a public meeting, not a word has appeared in the county’s premier newspaper the Western Telegraph. This, despite the fact that the WT enjoys the services of a Local Democracy Reporter funded by the BBC to enable local papers to carry out their duty to hold local government to account. The BBC should be looking for a refund.
2. Mr Evans’ criticism is concentrated on the issue of the use of cheque book stubs rather than bank statements as proof that the developer had paid the builder the required amounts. There seems to be a bit of wiggle room between the council’s procedure manual which set down the rules for these grant schemes, including the requirement for the production of bank statements as evidence of defrayment, and the guidance issued by Wales European Funding Office (WEFO) though it should be noted that, when the balloon went up in early 2014, WEFO were quick to insist that bank statements should be produced. Indeed, as has been recorded on this website, rather than produce bank statements McCosker offered to pay back all the grants he had received to date (£189,000) and to forgo the grant due on another project then nearing completion (£120,000). This amounted to some £309,000 compared to £60,000 involved in the police investigation. Which raises the question: what was lurking in those bank statements the concealment of which was worth a cool quarter of a million quid.
In any case, the bank statement/cheque book stub issue is a red herring, because it doesn’t go to the actual fraud – merely to the maladministration that helped to cover it up.
The real issue concerns all those grants signed off by the “honest and hard-working” officers in the European Department for work that was ineligible for grants or simply not done.
3. During one of her frequent interruptions Chairman Dr Norma Barry was heard to say at 2hrs 4 mins:
Can I just intervene for a minute Cllr Stoddart? We have to be very careful about making critical remarks relating to the performance of officers.
And at 3 hrs 6 mins 42 secs:
I’m sorry Cllr Stoddart, we can’t be criticising officers in a public forum, it’s not appropriate. If we can just move on.
So a council officer can call into question the professionalism of the council’s barrister for “ill-informed, unwarranted, unjust, and potentially defamatory attacks on honest and hard-working Council officers” but are themselves above criticism.
The webcast of the meeting can be found here from 10 mins on.