I read in the Mercury that Cllr Brian Hall claims he was only
joking when he told a senior BBC executive and a Welsh Assembly
member of his intention to get his friends from the Manchester
ganglands to deal with a BBC journalist who had made a programme
investigating his relationship with economic consultant Dr Michael
Ryan.
Sadly, for the fun-loving Cabinet member with responsibility for
the environment, he had come across two people in need of a sense
of humour transplant.
Worse was to follow because, when the matter was reported to the
Ombudsman, he couldn't see the funny side, either.
The result is that the matter has now been referred to the county
council's standards committee for adjudication.
Of course, those of us who keep a close watch on these things
remember that this is not Cllr Hall's first excursion into stand-up
comedy.
Back in 1997, he was hauled before the council on a charge of
threatening violence to the Labour leader David Edwards and Plaid
Cymru leader Aled ap Gwynneth after they had the temerity to disagree
with his point of view during a council debate.
Whilst most people would have been quick to apologise for losing
their rag in such a situation, an unabashed Cllr Hall turned up
to the meeting, where the motion of censure was to be debated,
armed with a whip, a pair of pistols, a pantomime axe and various
other props, and challenged Cllr Edwards to "come outside"
if he "was man enough".
As Edwards' mass is about half that of the burly Hall, he wisely
declined this less than generous offer.
The, then, leader of the council Eric Harries told the meeting
that he had tried to persuade Cllr Hall to apologise "but
as you can see I have not been successful".
In the end the council passed a resolution, proposed by Cllr John
Allen-Mirehouse, that Cllr Hall's conduct was unacceptable.
You might think that this should have signalled the end of Hall's
political career, but somebody evidently decided that such a man;
free of any sense of democratic decency or scruple, would be a
useful asset to the project.
So it is that his rise and rise through the county council's hierarchy
has come about.
I remember, perfectly, the words of council chief Bryn Parry-Jones
when he introduced the members of Pembrokeshire County Council
to the delights of the Local Government Act 2000 which ushered
in the unloved, and unlovely, Cabinet system of local government.
The new arrangements, he told them, had been designed "to
streamline decision-making".
For anyone with experience of the slowly grinding wheels of bureaucracy,
streamlined decision-making may seem like a boon, but, to those
who really understand the meaning of democracy, it is an extremely
dangerous notion.
That is because democracy requires that the views of all sides
of the argument are considered before decisions are reached; not
easily reconciled with streamlined decision-making.
Also, as the philosopher Karl Popper has pointed out, democracy
proceeds on the basis that two (or more) heads are better than
one and streamlined decision-making almost invariably involves
the imposition of the views of a single person, or, at best, a
small clique.
As George Grey; a former member of the Independent Political (sic(k))
Group, once remarked in a letter to the Western Telegraph, the
county council is an autocracy, although it should be pointed
out that once the issue that was bothering him (Arnolds Yard,
Johnston) was out of the way he quickly resorted to lending his
support to the same autocratic project.
However, the reason democracies outstrip their totalitarian rivals
is that their populations, while not always happy with the decisions
taken in their names, most of the time, at least, believe that
their point of view has had a fair crack of the whip.
That in turn leads to a satisfied population and the conditions
necessary for economic prosperity and, above all, freedom.
It is also worth noting in this context that, according to Michael
Burleigh in his book The Third Reich, one of Hitler's great
motivations was to prove that the centrally organised state, with
its streamlined decision-making (See Wannsee conference) was more
efficient than the free-market Anglo Saxon economies favoured
by the English-speaking world.
Fortunately for all of us, he was proved to be wrong about that.
Nowhere has streamlined decision making been taken to greater
lengths that in the sale of council [taxpayer owned] property.
Pre-Cabinet, before property could be disposed of it had to be
declared surplus to requirements by the Property sub-committee,
the decisions of which had to be endorsed by the Policy and Resources
(P and R) committee and full Council.
The Property sub-committee also had to agree the method of sale:
tender, auction or private treaty etc.
And, before the sale could be concluded, the price and the purchasor
had to be approved by the Property sub-committee, P and R and
full Council.
It could well be argued that this process was too long-winded,
but nobody could say it lacked transparency.
Contrast that with the present system which, in most cases, gives
the Director of Development complete say over the sales of property
valued at less than £100,000.
At its very first meeting, the Cabinet passed the following resolution
governing the sale of council-owned land.
(a) (i) That the procedure be adopted whereby Cabinet in determining
proposals to discontinue points of service delivery will determine
the principle and method of disposal of any surplus property involved.
(ii) That with regard to other property disposals, the threshold
requiring authority from Cabinet for disposal be set at £100,000.
So, except in the rare cases where points of service delivery
are discontinued (closure of a school or office, say) the Director
of Development has no need to report to Cabinet any intention
to dispose of surplus property worth less than £100,000.
In respect of these properties the Director has a completely free
hand.
For the disposal (my emphasis) of properties over £100,000
the director has to seek the authority of the Cabinet.
However, the Director is under no obligation to seek Cabinet's
approval for the terms of any sale.
Having agreed to the disposal, the Cabinet passes a resolution
along the following lines:
That negotiations continue with the Developer on the basis
set out in the report of the Director of Development to conclude
a disposal by the Council of this industrial site on a long leasehold
basis on terms acceptable to the Director of Development.
Note that the disposal is not on terms acceptable to the Cabinet.
As I pointed out last week (see Tender
goodbye), usually the first the Cabinet know about the identity
of the purchasor, and the price, is when the matter is reported
to them some time after the sale is completed.
Indeed, at £160,000 a year in special responsibility allowances,
Pembrokeshire County Council's Cabinet must be one of the most
expensive rubber stamps in the whole of creation.
As they say, all good things come to an end, and, as if to
prove the point I have recently received a letter from the Royal
Courts of Justice informing me that my request for leave to have
the council Leader's company's planning consent for a herdman's
cottage at Cwmbetws Farm Eglwyswrw subject to Judicial Review
has been turned down.
The High Court Judge who made this decision informs me that: "Although
the defendants [PCC] take no point on delay, it is important that
[the three-month] time limits be obeyed. This is particularly
the case where challenges are made to grants of planning permission
upon which third parties are entitled to rely. The challenge is
to the committee decision of 24 May 2005; the claim was not lodged
until 2 September 2005. That would in itself be sufficient to
refuse permission."
It is difficult to believe that a High Court Judge could get it
so wrong.
In almost all planning decisions there is a a period between the
committee's resolution to grant permission and the issuing of
the consent.
Students of these matters will recall the planning committee's
decision to grant permission for a supermarket at Maes Gwynne
on the outskirts of Fishguard back in about 1997.
But, before the consent was actually issued, another supermarket
group threatened legal action on the grounds that their alternative
proposals for a store in Goodwick had not been properly considered.
Much to the annoyance of Cllr Alwyn Luke, who had been a vociferous
supporter of the "successful" Maes Gwynne application,
planning officers delayed issuing consent and at the next meeting
the decision of the previous committee was overridden.
The point being that a planning decision does not become effective
until the consent is actually issued.
On the question of the three-month time limit for Judicial Review
in planning cases, the law is absolutely clear: time runs from
the date the consent is issued; in the case of Cwmbetws 6 June
2005, and not the date of the committee meeting.
For that proposition we have the authority of Lord Steyn; delivering
the judgment on behalf of all five Law Lords in the 2002 House
of Lords' case R v Hammersmith and Fulham BC ex parte Burkett:
That case hung on the single question of when the clock starts
for the purposes of the time limit imposed on applications for
Judicial Review.
Lord Steyn couldn't have been clearer when he ruled: "For
all these reasons I am satisfied that the words "from the
date when the grounds for the application first arose" refer
to the date when the planning permission was granted. In the case
before the House time did not run therefore from the resolution
[of the planning committee] of 15 September 1999 but only from
the grant of planning permission on 12 May 2000. It follows that
in my view the decisions of Richards J and the Court of Appeal
were not correct."
So the reason why the county council made "no point on delay"
is that there was no point to make.***
If that was the only issue in question, I would appeal.
But that there are other more complex issues such as whether the
council made an error of law, which could lead to the decision
being quashed.
I am currently seeking legal advice on these and other matters.
However, whatever the legal niceties, the fact remains that, when
the planning committee sat down to determine this application,
it had before it a report which was factually inaccurate.
The evaluation section of the report reads: "The agricultural
holding is a mixed farming unit with approximately 142 hectares
(350 acres). Of the land 280 acres (113 hectares) is given over
to grassland supporting a dairy herd of 165 dairy cattle, 162
other cattle and over 350 tack sheep."
And later: "Based on the size of the holding and the farming
regime (my emphasis) there is considered to be a functional
need for an additional dwelling to accommodate a full time worker
. . ."
Unknown to the committee, by the time of their meeting the dairy
herd had been sold off.
The formula used by the council to calculate a farm's labour requirements
rates a dairy animal at 36 hrs per annum and a beef animal at
16.
So, even if the dairy cattle had been replaced by beef cattle
at the rate of 2:1 (the council suggests 1.7:1) there would be
a reduction in the farm's labour needs under this new "farming
regime".
The council did try to wriggle out of this problem by claiming
that even without the dairy cows the farm still qualified for
an extra dwelling.
As I have already demonstrated (see Fantasy
figures) arithmetic is not the council's strong suit.
It is not easy to see by what process of logic a reduction in
manpower requirements translates into the need for extra workers'
accommodation.
And, of course, the one person who knew that the report before
the planning committee was factually inaccurate was the Leader
of the council, who, in common with all members, would have received
a copy of the agenda three clear days before the meeting.
Putting aside what m'learned friends think about it, what proportion
of the Pembrokeshire electorate believe that the Leader of the
council, of all people, had a duty to inform his fellow members
that the report in front of them contained manifestly false information?
From my own, admittedly unscientific, polls I would put the figure
at well north of 90%.
M'lud, I rest my case.
*** I did explain this point to the reporter from the Western
Telegraph who rang me for a quotation. If you have read this week's
edition of Wales' biggest selling weekly snoozepaper, you will
notice there is no mention of this in its totally one-sided report.
Still, having your integrity attacked by Cllr Bill Hitchings,
who I once caught claiming a first class rail fare for a journey
to an Association of Port Health Authorities' conference in Hull,
when he had actually travelled by car, plumbs the depths of hypocrisy
almost as much a as being accused of being a liar by ex-Cllr Maurice
Hughes (see Smear-Leader).
It is also interesting to read, on page 12 of the county council's
house magazine, that, with regard to Cllr Brian Hall's recent
brush with the Ombudsman, Cllr John Davies feels "It would
be improper for me to prejudge the outcome [of] a continuing legal
process" while, on Page 5, Hitchings, another member of the
Independent Group mafia, feels perfectly able to comment on the
"continuing legal process" (I have a right of appeal)
of my Judicial Review application.
What people must try to realise is that the only word that adequately
describes a political system, where those in power operate under
different rules to the rest of us, is Fascism.
I will deal with this subject at much greater length next week.
Back to home page