WHEN WAYNE ERASMUS raised the competence of a community council at a meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council in January he ended up in a spat with the Chair and was asked to leave.
Wayne now claims that the point he was making about the lack of resources and skills at some community councils to take on assets from the County Council has been borne out. He says that recent developments at Llanedi demonstrate that its community council is not fit for purpose.
He has suggested that because Llanedi Council is Plaid Cymrudominated, his concerns are not being taken seriously.
He has now claimed to The Herald that a damning report compiled by independent auditors, BDO is being withheld from councillors and the public ahead of next week’s Assembly elections.
Mr. Erasmus told The Herald: “Questions remain over a substantial amount of money, which is unaccounted for, which was raised by the community for a swimming pool at Hendy.
“£18,000 was collected for the pool and Hendy Pool committee gave that in Trust to Llanedi Community Council. After it was decided to use the money for some other projects a residual amount of money was left but cannot be accounted for.”
Wayne Erasmus also said: “Minutes have gone missing. The precept was raised by 39% illegally. It was not minuted and not signed off. Labour councillors have asked for the original minutes and have said they would not accept fabricated minutes.”
The Herald can confirm that Llanedi Community Council were told that they had to complete an audit by (Sept 30) 2015 following the discovery of a number of irregularities.
That Audit followed a finding that an action plan put in place following the previous year’s external audit was not discussed at a meeting of the council. Budgets were not properly monitored. The financial statements provided to meetings did not show comparisons to the budget.
The budget also did not show a breakdown of reserves between general, specific and earmarked fund and the movements against these headings.
Specific statutory breaches took place in relation to the failure of the Council to approve its annual accounts; there was a failure to discuss the auditor’s report at a public meeting (or any meeting at all); the Council budget and precept was not approved at a meeting of the Council, which begs the question: ‘where and was it set, and by whom?’
Llanedi Council’s financial management was so poor, it had failed to claim VAT on expenditure for two years.
The latest report from BDO is believed to be another damning indictment on the way the council has managed its affairs.
The Herald has received copies of emails from BDO from November that suggested that a police investigation into the dealings of Llanedi Community Council was considered.
One email reads: ‘I have contacted the police to obtain confirmation of if there is an on-going investigation into the Council – if there is this will delay us as we will be unable to issue our audit report’.
However, requests made to examine the latest BDO report have been kicked into the long grass until May 19. The Herald has, however, established that the report WAS discussed by Llanedi Council in secret on April 6. According to Wayne Erasmus, in view of the impending Assembly elections, the delay in making the report public is for electoral reasons.
A request made to Llanedi Council for the report or a response to the allegations was rejected.
We asked former Llanelli AM Keith Davies whether the BDO report should be made public. He told us: “If there is a report from BDO, which raises serious concerns regarding serving councillors, be they Community Councillors or County Councillors, then that report must be made public immediately.”
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