Anglesey Council Fails to Get its House in Order.

Like many folk on Anglesey, I've been on the receiving end of some very strange happenings relating to the people dealing with information requests at Anglesey Council.

Back again...

Dubbed a "basket case council" by Private Eye during its darker times some years ago, Anglesey has struggled to keep up with the times relating to data protection.  So much so that, sixteen years after its introduction, the Data Protection Act still isn't being properly respected at the Council.

The current ramp-up to an ICO Enforcement Notice began in 2011, but the problems go back much, much further than that.  One of the biggest problems was said to be councillors waltzing-in to departmental offices and demanding to see data about people they had no right to see.  This is to be set against a background where, according to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2011, the majority of councillors hadn't even thought about registering as Data Controllers, even though they were obliged to.  A letter to all councillors from the Authority seemed not to have stirred too many into correcting this unacceptable state of affairs.

By now, the Council has attracted the ire of the Commissioner, leading to an Enforcement Notice and three months to get its house in order.

The Council's press office say they were "surprised" to receive the Notice, even though a simple search online shows they were given a Preliminary Notice as recently as August 2015.  Nothing like a bit of feigned indignation, eh boys?

Able Pupils and the Absent Policies.

A long time ago - about ten to be more-or-less exact, the Welsh Government supported the concept of Able Pupils policies within schools.

So won over by the argument for supporting clever kids was Cardiff that it went so far as to call this a 'National Priority.'

Then we had the financial crash and a bit of a downturn, to say the least.  The able pupils were left to their own devices, with schools, almost to a man, failing to implement them.

Without money to back them up, APPs were never going to make much of an impact in a school system already strapped for cash and producing little by way of successful results.

That said, all the research shows that, if you properly embrace APPs, the whole school - and not just the brightest - improves in outcomes.

But, with the usual militant lefty antagonism towards anything that smacks of preferential treatment, many headteachers, if not most, were also highly resistant to concentrating on able pupils.  Most often, such pupils were clever, and would be just fine without any further attention, so the story went.  There was a whole body of kids with no ability that the schools did get awarded for getting them to write their own names - just - by the age of 11.

And that is where the effort of schools goes - into ticking the boxes and collecting the credits.

I've been involved in trying to have APPs applied to our kids for something like four years by now.  In our first school, the headteacher took to lying about the operation of an APP at her school.  We asked for a copy of the APP.  She said she had one but no copy was made available.  We asked to see the names of our kids on the register she claimed they were on.  We were met with lead-booted foot dragging.

It took that first school about 18 months to produce the most poorly-written APP anyone could have put together.  It was triumphantly handed to me in person before Easter holidays, which was surprising, given the headteacher claimed she'd had one all along.  There was then the usual crap about school statistics, and how this supported the headteacher's view that 'tracking' (how they love that word!) and outcomes showed all pupils were being catered for.

Except, the level of achievement stopped at level 6 (I think it was.)  I asked: have you ever looked if anyone might actually be capable of attaining level 7 - or more?  I posited the view that, from the information provided by the school, it strongly appeared that nobody was actually looking to see if anyone was that clever.

Well, they wouldn't, would they?  The only thing schools are expected - and consequently are - doing, is meeting the bare-minimum achievement scores set by government.  There's a whole industry out there ranging from seminars to, if some stories are to be believed, diktats from LEA chiefs to 'not be too hard on pupils' when marking national tests.

I had, incidentally, also asked the LEA for statistics on able pupils across their authority area.  Surprisingly, and even sinisterly, they said they couldn't access that data and that I had to ask my school - which they named.  But that wasn't the request I'd put in.  I hadn't said which school my kids attended.  They'd actually become so irritated by a simple question that they went out of their way to try and match my name up with where my kids went to school!  After a lot of foot dragging, they accepted they did, after all, have that data.

When it became clear that the heateacher and the LEA that propped her up with malicious and false allegations against parents had no interest in hearing reason and tangled themselves up in a ludicrous web of lies, we moved school.  Two years later, we're much closer to where we would like to be, a huge improvement, not least because the school actively listens to reasonably-put arguments.  I was also relieved and delighted - when I really ought not to have been - that our new school, without prompting - said that nobody was really looking at how well able pupils could do, because the whole system was geared towards something else.  You can take a lot of reassurance from honesty like that.

The fight for properly-implemented APPs will reappear at secondary level, no doubt, but that is for another day.  

So, the story of Wales' Able Pupils Policies which - you will recall - are meant to be a matter of 'National Priority' - have fallen well and truly by the wayside.  Make no mistake that if you, as an interested or concerned parent, want to make sure your kids are suitably stretched, then it's definitely down to you and you alone to have a meeting with the school to make sure it happens, and that you are subsequently and routinely shown evidence from time to time that it really is happening.  If your school doesn't like parents being involved to that degree, it's time to look around for an alternative.

Revealed: The Costs of Newborough Beach.

Figures released under a Freedom of Information Act request (FoIA) have today revealed the extent of wasted resources at key north Wales nature sites.

Natural Resources Wales took over the running of Newborough Forest and the Cefni forest areas about a year ago, following a revamp of authorities across Wales.

In 2013, NRW, against what I understand were clear warnings, constructed a timber boardwalk and viewing platform amongst the sand dunes at Newborough Beach.

After the storm.  £153,643 worth of platform lies in ruin after the 2014 storms.

Those who care about the area raised an eyebrow at the destruction of localised areas of the dunes, which are in a protected area.  Nevertheless, once completed, the structures were very well received and popular.

A few months later, following winter storms, the viewing platform lay in ruins, washed away by rough seas and winds.  Timbers from the site were apparently turning up at Aberffraw, where people were only too willing to use them for their own designs!

The platform was removed with remarkable rapidity that suggested not only a risk to the public safety, but also considerable embarrassment.

Whilst the boardwalk remains, it is steadily being smothered by this winter's wind borne sand, and it's clear it will become a natural part of the dunes in no time.

Those who understand sand dunes will not, of course, be surprised.  What is surprising is that NRW pressed on, regardless.

In doing so, they spent a total to date of £153,643.44, where the larger part of that would seem to have been, from the materials and engineering involved, on the defunct viewing platform.

At the entrance, things haven't been much better.  Folk pay to go in, at £3 a shot.  Other pay £15 a year if they are local.  Very local people get in for free.  So expenditure on income generators is to be expected.

However, NRW spent £17,221 on a new 'hydrokerb' barrier in August 2013, only to abandon it when it proved unreliable a year later.  To cover this problem, which apparently had no contractual fallback, NRW paid £13,280 to build a manned kiosk at the entrance.  At £3 a car, it won't take too long to regain this lost money.  But, it has to be asked why a brand new hydrokerb that didn't work could not have been the installer's liability, and not the public purse's.  Why such a much larger, non income-generating amount was spent on something that almost immediately became driftwood, is less clear.

This isn't the only waste at Newborough.  Whilst the figures weren't requested for this item, some glitzy timber banner frames and colourful fabric banners were put up in around 2012.  These had already begun to fade after one summer, before being entirely ripped away by the winter gales.  Nobody seemed to have thought about gales on Anglesey.  The local council also had no record of planning permission for these structures, nor any idea whether planning was necessary.  It seemed it was, and hadn't been sought.

Meanwhile, at the Cefni reservoir, £23,000 has been spent last summer on creating wildlife wetlands on a mini-scale, which involved the building of earthen-rimmed ponds.  Again, surprisingly for a bunch of supposed environmental 'experts', the earth was washed away on at least one pond, prompting the NRW to temporarily abandon them.

When asked for evidence of applications and granting of consents for the diversion of watercourses to create these ponds, the FoIA release stated the information wasn't held.  That means that the consents weren't sought.  NRW says that they are "investigating the situation", which appears to mean consents weren't even considered.

Ah well.  Now you know...

Update:

A NRW response to a FoIA request on the 'Mawndir Mon' project at the Cefni revealed expenditure of about £23,000 at this one site alone.  NRW was the body approving and administering the money for this work which, it is very keen to point out, was actually carried out on the ground by none other than Anglesey County Council.  The Council, wouldn't you know it, is the body responsible for approving abstraction consents from watercourses, but didn't bother for its own work.  

Little wonder, then, that there was a clear scramble in mid-winter 2014/15 to remove all traces of the diversion engineering.  The remaining earthworks and channels, however, are a bit of a giveaway, still...

Richard Parry Jones: Thank You, and Goodbye.

Anglesey Council's current Chief Executive, the bumbling and much older than PR images suggest, Richard Parry Jones, has decided the "time is right" to hang up his suit - and his £140,000 a year job (that's more money in a day than most get in a week.)

Richard Parry Jones.  Getting out before the going gets hot!

 

So, apart from his increasing bumblingness, what has prompted the retirement?

Well, it's about as clear as a crystal vase: his council is going to cease to exist, he's of an age where sensible people should let go, and why would he want the hassles of managing an authority merger?

Anglesey is one of the intransigent and donkey-like councils that doesn't want to save public money by amalgamating as Leighton Andrews is hell-bent on ensuring will happen.

Despite this, Parry Jones has been very busy, I gather from insiders, talking to Cardiff about how an amalgamation might proceed.  In this, at least Parry Jones has the sense to see the writing on the wall.  Not that the elected councillors will give up their £27,000 a year 'allowances' without a fight.

It's clear that Anglesey is going to be forced to merge with Gwynedd, come what may.  Andrews is already flat out on extending his legal powers to prevent what he calls "negative behaviours" (i.e., obstinacy) on the part of senior council officers in trying to obstruct the merger process through contract deals, for example.

I would wish Parry Jones a happy retirement, except that, as soon as his massive pension is being paid in, he'll no doubt be off on lucrative committee memberships, directorships and so on.   So, I'll bid the good luck to Leightnon Andrews, who needs all he can get in fighting the lead-weighted footdragging of Wales' local government parasites.

 

The Failure That Is Anglesey

This week, we latest GVA statistics were released for Wales.  They make for despairing reading, if you live on Anglesey.

GVA - Gross Value Added - is a measure of the contribution of each individual producer, industry or sector in the UK.  It is commonly modified to a GVA per head of population, where it becomes 'how much of a contribution each person made to the UK economy.'

Anglesey has the lowest GVA figure across the whole UK.  Not just Wales - the whole of the UK.  And indeed, this is not the first time we've seen this outcome - it's been the same for a very long time.

And it's not just a slight difference that leads us to the bottom - our GVA per head is less than half the UK average.  We are, in every sense, a poverty-stricken island.

My name?  Anglesey.

Worse than this is the fact that Gwynedd has seen a rise of 3.4% in the period 2012-13 in its GVA figures, whilst Anglesey dropped 1.5%.  So it can't merely be blamed on geographical location.  There's something special about Anglesey that leads it to consistently be a huge under-achiever.

But maybe this is not surprising when our current portfolio holder for economic development is a former farm insurance salesman who, later, couldn't even make a sweet shop pay.  That, and the legion of well-paid tortoiseshell bespectacled officers who don't appear to be on any sort of performance-based renumeration.  If they were, perhaps we'd see something better than sitting back and watching the island sink into economic oblivion.

Sadly, the answer has, for many years, been seen as 'Wylfa B, Wylfa B, Wylfa B'.  All the eggs in one basket.  A simple measure of desperation.  You'd think the politicians would learn and set their sights on a diverse economy based on small, efficient businesses.

But, why worry when your councillor's allowance each year take you twice as high as the per-capita GVA?  That is the simple disconnect between the governed and the governors.  The workers and the wasters.  Whilst they may laugh in the poor people's faces, it is a dangerous place to go, as any history book will inform.

Caught by the glitz, the self-importance and the trips abroad, our council can only join-in with its central government master and repeat that the vast majority of people support Wylfa B, when independent studies do not support this idiotic bleating.

Meanwhile, it's clear that Anglesey has been ill-goverened into the ground whilst our noddies fought amongst themselves for power and privilege. Reap the benefits, folks, and pack-off your kids elsewhere.  Oh, and pray that Cardiff will wield its legal powers to bring the sick joke that is Anglesey Council to a very swift end.

Anglesey Council - The Dumb Dinosaur Wakes Up.

This week, Anglesey's bumbling Chief Executive, Richard Parry Jones, has written what is described as a 'frank but constructive' letter to Horizon Nuclear.

Horizon, whose knees probably won't be trembling very much, say they are 'disappointed' by the Council's letter.  Hey, join the queue of the disillusioned, Horizon!

The motivation is said to be the lack of clarity over just how many jobs, and just how much economic benefit Horizon will provide to locals, as opposed to workers parachuted-in from new plants reaching completion across the world. This, from a Council whose own clarity consisted of trying to keep hidden from the public its interim MD's pay packet (that was £1200 a day, plus a few more perks, by the way.)

It is remarkable that Anglesey is only now asking these questions.  Residents have been chatting about them for years now.  For years, the Council has been ramming its 'Energy Island' (a trademarked, jolly cover for 'Nuclear Island') down the throats of residents, even though the programme appeared with no public consultation nor any identifiable mandate.   Search online, and you will find endless rose-tinted press releases by the Council, coupled to ludicrous certainty about the New Dawn awaiting Anglesey, if it gets Wylfa B.

Energy Island(TM) has delivered dubious results for Anglesey.  Most of the whoopla about tidal energy has died away, leaving little more than, erm, Wylfa B and ever-more wind turbines that would have arrived without the Council's hamfisted involvement.

The point never addressed by our hopeless Council and our uselessly compliant local media is that Anglesey has had a nuclear power station operating since 1971.  During that time, it has stood as a perverse, government-sponsored mini-island of prosperity for the few who work there, whilst the vast majority of the island's 70,000-odd population have just grown poorer in a rapidly-declining economic environment.  Nuclear power does not bring widespread and lasting economic prosperity.  Wylfa A proves that much.

Also rammed down our throats has been the shrug-shoulders to new pylons across the island, whilst other parts of the UK have protested their way to climb-downs by National Grid, now burying their lines in many parts of England, where the people are less willing to sit and do as they are told.  According to insiders, Anglesey Council has been busy working hand-in-hand with National Grid to aid their 'preferred option' of more pylons whilst trying to appear at arms' length to the public.

The new nuclear build is said to be wanted by the majority of Anglesey residents - but only if you listen to the biased views of Horizon and the Council.  A study by Bangor University found the wrong questions were being asked and, consequently, yielded the wrong answers.  The majority, it seems, are not in favour of 'Wylfa Newydd' and its patronisingly Welsh cottage-like name.  The latest missive of concern by Parry Jones now insists that the "vast majority" support Wylfa B, and that this support is "of the upmost [sic] importance."  No points for written English, then.   No doubt by 2015, it will be 'everybody, to a man'.  Such are the assertion-laden tendencies of little men.

The reality of Wylfa Newydd has been apparent to everyone except Richard Parry Jones and his merry men, it seems.  Whilst Horizon has been tokenistically pumping money into Coleg Menai and training a few people up, these are not going to be the experienced engineers and plant installers that will be needed for an efficient construction project.  Nobody believes that those people will be local; they will obviously come hot from other projects to keep their skills honed and ready for the next one, somewhere else.

Sure, some people like painters, plasterers, and maybe a builders' yard or two may become rather wealthy from Wylfa B, the vast majority of spending will not be local due to its highly specialised nature, and the expected reliability of supply.  'New turbine assembly, you say?  Yeah, I had one round the back, somehwere', isn't the kind of exchange we're likely to see at Llangefni Jewsons any time soon.

It's rather galling to find the Council repeatedly make reference to 'evidence-based' decision making, when its own claims about the degree of public support has already been shown to be highly-questionable at best, and plain wrong at worst.  

It's also a bit rich that this Council wants clarity and adherence to policy by industry when its own development plans ground to a halt years ago.  This is, in every way, a failed Council trying to make out it's an authority with clout.  It's a bit late for that.

Still, maybe Parry Jones and his lot can take another fully-justified and necessary trip to Japan to 'clarify' the position.  Nice work, if you can get it...

Anglesey County Council: Back to Normality

In the week where we discovered the 'Basket Case Council' sent a Council tax invoice for one penny to a father who'd recently lost his daughter (being invoiced), we find general business is back to normal in Llangefni.

Over the past couple of years, Cardiff has been gearing-up to rid itself of the financial dead weight that 22 local authorities represent in Wales - a nation of just 3 million people.  The clearest signal that change would happen, no matter what, came when new legislation - the Local Government (Wales) Measure - to permit a forced amalgamation of local authorities was passed in Cadiff in 2011.


Despite the endless slef-interested bleatings of the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), it's clear that not only is Cardiff intent on cutting the number of councils, but is intent on doing it quickly.  After all, the financial crisis has been going on for five or more years by now, and the impacts about to be felt by the average Joe.

The Williams Commission was clear in identifying the problems and providing the solutions on a plate to Ministers.  Under such pressure, several councils, including Gwynedd, have already relented to the very clearly inevitable and offered themselves up for amalgamation.

Anglesey, however, has other ideas.  Never one to be anything other than ridiculous, Anglesey has stated it will stick it out and resist amalgamation.  It says is wants a meeting with Cardiff to "learn more" about the process of amalgamation.  This is very interesting, because for months, the bumbling and ageing Chief Executive of Anglesey, Richard Parry Jones, has been popping down to Cardiff for plenty of meetings.

Chop, chop - merge now!

There is no defence against cutting the bloated public sector within Wales, which in many areas provides the only well-paid employment to be found.

It's also clear that much of the resistance to amlagamation is utterly predictable and self-interested moaning from councillors and senior officers alike, both groups fearing a curtailment to their lavish expenses and very positions.

Anglesey's councillors, for example, now cost well in excess of £1 million per year in annual allowances.  One elected member pocketed £43,000 last year (2013/14), according to Anglesey's own data.

Yet, whilst there is plenty of hand-wringing about how services "must be cut", and endlessly raising Council tax by 4.5-5% per year  - every year - none of the councillors discuss cuts to their own allowances, which are in many, if not most cases, higher than the average annual salary for the island.

Anglesey has never worked as a Council.  Mired in scandal and alleged corruption from the outset, it has been subject to condemnation by one District Auditor after another.  In the 1990's, heads did roll, albeit with golden 'goodbyes' and nothing by way of personal accountability, as is the way of the State.

We've since seen direct control from Cardiff by Commissioners, the initially top-secret payment of £1100 per day to a parachuted-in and widely-derided interim MD, and various special measures of various departments.

More recently, a Family Court Judge, no less, stated very publicly that he suscpected Anglesey's Social Services might be trying to cut costs when they completely failed to adhere to the law in stopping a child returning to its mother.

This is not a council in which the public can have faith.

The message to the self-interested public money grabbers who are once more putting their pockets, rather than the people first, is clear: you must merge, and quickly.  You have no track record other than failure on which to rely, and it is to be hoped that Ministers will dismiss the bleatings, and wield the axe in a deicisive manner.