Councillors have agreed to put aside a further £150,000 of taxpayers’ money to cover rising legal costs in a long-running pay scandal involving three senior council bosses.
Chief executive Anthony O’Sullivan, his deputy Nigel Barnett and head of legal Daniel Perkins were all suspended on full pay in 2013 in the wake of a report from the Wales Audit Office which declared their pay rises were unlawful.
At a full council meeting on Tuesday, November 22, councillors voted to set aside a further £150,000 to cover potential legal costs up to the end of March next year.
This is in addition to £220,000 that was agreed at a meeting back in July.
Secret pay rises to around 20 council bosses were deemed unlawful by the Wales Audit Office because Mr O’Sullivan had himself written the report recommending the pay rises and that he was present at a secret meeting of five councillors that agreed them.
Assistant Auditor General Anthony Barrett said the meeting itself was illegal because it had not been publicised beforehand.
Mr O’Sullivan saw his salary increase from £132,000 to £158,000, although after details of the increase were leaked to the media this was reduced to £5,000.
The Wales Audit Office report prompted a police investigation and Mr O’Sullivan, Mr Perkins and Mr Barnett were arrested in 2013 and charged with misconduct in a public office.
The trio have been suspended on full pay, since their initial arrests, pending a council disciplinary investigation, which had to be put on hold for two years because of the criminal investigation.
In October last year a judge dismissed the case due to a lack of evidence.
Speaking at the meeting on November 22, council leader Keith Reynolds said: “It gives me absolutely no pleasure at all to have to move the recommendation [to agree to the extra £150,000] and I do it extremely reluctantly.
“But, as everyone in this chamber is aware, we are bound by a statutory process over which we have no control or no discretion in the way it has to be managed.
“In those circumstances, I would ask members – I’m sure everyone reluctantly – to support the recommendation in front of us.
“Perfectly frank – we have no choice.”
After a question by Blackwood councillor Nigel Dix, members were told the amount agreed in July this year was not enough, and that further requests for more council money may be needed in future.
Plaid Cymru councillors, in the main, decided to abstain in the vote to approve the £150,000.
Group leader Colin Mann said: “Colin Mann said: “Members of the public I speak to find it very hard to believe this is still ongoing.”
He added: “It seems to be turning into an even bigger gravy train for lawyers.
“My belief is that this has gone past the cost of building a new primary school.”
Will Caerphilly Council cut some dead wood from it’s payroll to cover the cost of this ongoing, never-ending fiasco? will it make a reduction in salaries to pay for it? will they cancel some of their opulent events to find the money? will they cancel next years pay increase for it’s staff? No what they will do is hike up council tax bills and make cuts to essential services, then whine about food banks, child poverty, deprivation and low income families struggling to make ends meet.
I paid off the remainder of this years council tax this month. It really is depressing that the council can think of nothing better to do with my money than put it straight in the pockets of a group of wealthy people who have done no work for us since March 2013.
It will soon be four years of this farce. Let’s hope that in next year’s election people think carefully before putting their cross against their usual choice, Labour and Plaid. We need a change.
We sure do need a change and over the last few months there appears to have been quite a shift in the way ordinary people are voting and thinking about the political establishment, a movement, one man has called it. Perhaps the good people of Wales will finally wake up and give the establishment a good kicking in the local elections, although I won’t hold my breath – May 2017 is a long way off and the hereditary voters with the memory of a stickle brick will have forgotten about financial scandals like this one long before then.
We can but live in hope. This debacle has cost the tax payer £Millions, wages for the suspended admin workers, pay for the replacement admin workers and now massive legal costs. All this expenditure goes through ‘on the nod’ from both the parties whilst the council moans about ‘Tory cuts.’ Expect more of the same if you vote Labour or Plaid next May.