Cyngor Gwynedd Council Pile On A Wales Audit Officer.
Cyngor Gwynedd Council had a full council meeting on the 3rd October, 2019, to receive the Annual Improvement Report 2018-19. The webcast can be viewed here - https://gwynedd.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/445898 and the Improvement Report, authored by the Wales Audit Office can be found here - https://www.audit.wales/system/files/publications/1358A2019-20_Gwynedd_AIR_Eng.pdf Copy and paste the address into your browser. Now the English feed is not working for this Council meeting, either. But I am hopeful this will be fixed along with the others soon. Some Councillors are speaking in English only but you will still get a taste of the mood of the meeting. The Ombudsman's 2019 Report was raised at this meeting and was referred to as "damning". Our thanks to that particular Councillor yet something else happened which drew attention and that was the treatment of the Auditor, Jeremy Evans when he was questioned by certain councillors during his presentation. This was not a meeting the Auditor would have enjoyed. The main subject of complaint(s) from Councillors and Cabinet Members appeared to be with sections of the Report regarding the Council's Youth Services and the Children's department. Now the 2019 Ombudsman's Report highlights an Independent Investigator who reported feeling bullied and overwhelmed by senior officers during her investigation and that her Report was sanitised twice that removes reference to the failings of the department. I am also reminded of the Children's Department Data breach, 2018, in which the council's Information officer took three attempts to include the full facts in her Report and even then there were issues. But it had become obvious that the Information officer was being 'handled' by someone more senior so we left the matter feeling genuinely sorry for how the officer had been used. That Report can be found here - https://gwyneddsfailingcouncil.blogspot.com/2018/09/cyngor-gwynedd-councils-report-into.html Bearing this in mind and the fact that the 2018 Ombudsman Report has yet to see the light of day, I ask the councillors present to reflect on the behaviour of certain councillors towards the Wales Audit Officer and for those councillors who did not attend to view the behaviour that was metered out to the Auditor - https://gwynedd.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/445898 Is this acceptable or appropriate ?
