National Assembly for Wales

Okay, may I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Local Government and Housing Committee?  Our first item is introductions, apologies, substitutions and declarations of interest. James Evans, committee member, is hoping to join us later on in our proceedings, but is unable to be here at the beginning. There are no substitutions. The meeting is being held in hybrid format. Standing Order requirements remain in place, apart from adaptations relating to conducting proceedings in that hybrid format. Public items of the meeting are being broadcast live on Senedd.tv, and a Record of Proceedings will be published as usual. The meeting is bilingual, and simultaneous translation is available. Are there any declarations of interest from committee members? No, there are not. 

We will move on then to item 2, which is our first evidence session regarding our inquiry into the role, governance and accountability of the community and town council sector. And I'm very pleased to welcome our two witnesses for this first session, joining us remotely, Adrian Crompton, Auditor General for Wales, and his colleague Deryck Evans, who is audit manager. Okay.

Thank you both for coming along to give evidence to committee today. I'll begin with one or two questions before we turn to other committee members. Firstly, the cost of audit to town and community councils. We know that there's quite a variety within those town and community councils in terms of size, responsibilities, capacity and budgets. So, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about how the fee structure operates with regard to those community and town council audit processes, and how it compares to other organisations and sectors, and, given that variance within the sector, whether the fees are too high for some.

Great. Thank you, Cadeirydd, and thank you, committee, for inviting us along today. Certainly, our fee regime for the local government sector, including town and community councils, is set out in a fee scheme that we present to the Finance Committee each year and is then formally laid before the Senedd. The scheme essentially shows the rates at which we charge out our staff at different levels of seniority, and gives an indication of how those fees then translate into the likely level of audit fee that any given organisation will face.

We’re required by the Public Audit (Wales) Act 2013 to charge fees for our work, but we are also required to charge no more than the full cost of delivering our work. In other words, we can’t make a profit on any piece of audit work, we can’t cross-subsidise between organisations or sectors in any way—we simply have to charge what it costs us to deliver any given piece of audit work.

To give you a feel for order of magnitude, I think you’re probably aware from our written submission, our approach to audit in this sector is a baseline three-year cycle. So, in two years, we will undertake a very basic audit, which requires councils to submit very limited information to us for their income and expenditure account, six main expenditure headings, and those need to tally correctly, and some information around their annual governance statement. Then, in the third year, we will undertake a slightly fuller audit where we look for some supporting evidence for those underlying transactions and a fuller test of statements made in the governance statement.

Typically, in the case of a council that is straightforward and clean, the fee for one of those basic audits is going to be in the region of £200 to £400. For the fuller audit in the third year, it's probably £400 to £1,500, depending on the size and complexity of the council. So, certainly not particularly high, I would suggest. And as I said right at the start, it needs to reflect purely the level of work and input that we put in. One consequence of starting at such a small level of fee, though, is that as soon as an issue does arise and we’re required to do more work, proportionately, councils can see quite a significant increase.

Has that been a particular problem, that significant increase that can arise? Has that presented serious problems for town and community councils, as far as you’re aware, auditor general, or has that not been the case?

We certainly hear quite a lot from the sector about the level of fees. The principal point for me to get across, though, is that our fee reflects the amount of work that we need to put in. If councils can comply with the requirements of legislation, provide us with the basic information that we require, with some basic supporting documentation and record-keeping evidence, then the audit will be extremely straightforward. Unfortunately, in a quite significant number of cases, councils aren’t able to do that. And I think you’ve seen from our written evidence, often that is down to some fairly basic procedural errors. Unfortunately, as soon as we engage with those, that requires us to put more time and effort into the work, and consequently councils will see an increase in their fees.

Do you then engage with the town and community councils to try and prevent those issues arising, and prevent the work that you have to do and the cost that comes from that?

Absolutely. It’s probably best if I invite Deryck in at this point, as he leads on that work. But, absolutely, that’s what Deryck and his team are doing all day, every day, pretty much. Deryck.

Thanks, Adrian. Yes, very much, we do engage with the sector. We engage with individual councils when we issue our audit reports. We highlight issues and make recommendations for them for improvement for the following years. We also work with One Voice Wales. We regularly speak at One Voice Wales conferences and at SLCC meetings as well. So, we're trying to push out the messages as much as we possibly can. Previously we've issued annual reports summarising the outcomes of our audit work. That's been affected by the impact of COVID, but we're hoping to get the report out towards the end of this year, or early next year, summarising the latest audit outcomes. So, we're very much engaging with the sector, drawing to their attention the lessons that we're picking up from our audit work.

Do we see any trends, then? Are those basic failures and the additional work increasing, reducing or staying fairly constant? 

At the moment it seems to be fairly constant; 2023-24 is the latest audit round, and that's the third year of our first three-year cycle. So, I think what we're seeing at the moment is that for those councils who have not yet been through that three-year cycle, including the full audit, we're picking up the same issues this year as we have in the last couple of years. So, hopefully by next year, when we do the 2024-25 audits, we'll see some improvement from those who've been through the cycle in full once. 

Okay. Altaf Hussain. Altaf.

Thank you, Chair. I'm sorry I had to join late. My question is: I was a community councillor for 10 years, and in those years I don't think anything from audit departments helped us. It is a voluntary organisation. These community councillors are not paid. The chair has a minimal amount, maybe £500 or £600 per year. It is the clerk who is mostly acquainted with their audit and other things. We had been many times struggling to get help from audit, and maybe from the county council. They remain very busy. You have to spend a lot of money. And from One Voice Wales—they do help sometimes, but it is a hotch-potch, and being voluntary bodies, you don't have committed community councillors who can look into this. So, there should be a mechanism, really, which should be foolproof, that they need to have that help all the time available, which is not there. I'm sorry to say that.

Would you like me to come back on that, Chair?

Yes, please, Adrian.

I want to assure the committee that we do a considerable amount to try to assist the sector. We are not resourced in a way to support 730 community councils individually and neither, I think, should we as auditors. But we actively support One Voice Wales, the society of clerks, the Welsh Government and so forth in extensive guidance and support for the sector, and support for training of clerks and so on. We communicate every year to councils to give them forewarning of the focus we are likely to place in any given year in our audit of the annual governance statement. Now, that's very unusual, for auditors to forewarn any organisation of the areas that they'll particularly be focused on, but that, in part, is a reflection of exactly what you described, Altaf. I do recognise that the sector is made up of an awfully large number of very small organisations, which are populated by good people who are not being paid, but just want to do the right thing for their communities. As auditor general, though, I have statutory duties placed upon me by legislation and I'm required to exercise them. We do that in a way that I hope is as light touch and sympathetic as it's possible for us to do. However, I can't go too far down that path without bluntly ignoring the statutory framework that the Senedd has put in place. 

Okay, Adrian. That's quite clear, thank you. We'll move on to Lee Waters, then. Lee.

Just to continue on that theme, really, I'm reminded of that old saying that when all you've got is a hammer, every problem is a nail. Do you feel you have a sufficient range of tools that you can apply to the mosaic of councils that you're dealing with? Are you dealing more in the same audit template? 

Yes and no. The statutory framework requires me to undertake an audit of every single council every single year. I do have some discretion over the scale and depth of the audit, and as I said to the previous question, we have tried to lighten that regime as much as we possibly can, making it straightforward, the three-year cycle and so on. Where issues arise, though, either through our audit, through correspondence or simply because councils are larger and more complex, then we will undertake more audit work. So, I think we have sufficient flexibility at our end to tailor our audit but the regime is the regime, irrespective of whether a council is tiny or large. Is that—? 

It kind of confirms what I thought. Can I just get into that a little bit, just to understand it a bit better, because on the surface the figures are quite stark about how many councils—? You know, 50 per cent achieve a qualified audit, but when you dig into that, 60 per cent of those are for arithmetical errors or rounding errors. Now, that suggests to me an issue of capacity and capability at the council end. And given that we are dealing with quite a mosaic, because only—the figure in front of me, a very small number—I think 83 out of a total of 735 bodies have budgets of more than £200,000, but you seem to be treating them all in terms of the audit framework you apply in a similar way. And I just wonder if there's room for a more granular approach that would take into account that these may not be rogues, they're just not as smart with a calculator in rounding up as some of the bigger bodies, but there's nothing mischievous behind it.

Sure, I do recognise that. Just to be clear, and I'll ask Deryck to come in again shortly, if a council submitted with arithmetical errors, that doesn't lead us instantly to issue a qualification. We will always go back to the council, have a conversation with them, and if that can be reconciled, then no problem. It's only a qualification if those errors cannot be explained by records that the council holds. But, Deryck, anything you'd like to say about the tailoring of our approach?

Yes, sure. Picking up on that point, Adrian, we receive about 30 per cent of councils with arithmetical errors every year. What that means is we have to go back to them and try to resolve what's caused those arithmetical errors. It might be simple typos, it might be rounding differences. That indicates we have to do additional work. We have to try to resolve what's caused this problem with the accounts. As Adrian said, it doesn't mean they'll get a qualified audit opinion. We go as far as we possibly can to avoid that. It's just that the evidence was given to illustrate some of the issues that we have with the amounts we receive.

In terms of being pragmatic and flexible in our response according to the size of councils, we try to go as far as we possibly can to avoid qualified opinions where we're able to, and we give quite a bit of leeway to councils in doing so. There are some things where we have to apply a cut-off point. If a council says it's done something by a certain date and is required to do so by legislation, the cut-off point is the date specified in the legislation, because we can't extend and say one day late is okay, because then we have to consider: is two days late okay? So, we extend that concession, as it were. So, we try as far as possible. We give flexibility, but there are certain things we can't be flexible on.

What I don't get a sense of in the written evidence is when a qualified audit is issued, is that evidence that something is awry and you have concerns, or is it a more mundane matter? I think one of the examples given is that if a council decides they don't want to give anyone expenses, but they haven't notified a different body, that then leads to a qualified account. 

That will be an example where there's a specific requirement for them to do something and they haven't done so. In their governance statement, they state they've complied with all legislative and regulatory requirements.

As auditors, do you think that is something that causes you concern, or is that simply a procedural issue?

If there are very minor issues, we would tend to issue an unqualified opinion. Other matters would be ones where we think there's more of a systemic and more of a problem with the council. And there are certain things, as I said, if there's a specific requirement, and the answer is—. It's 'pass' or 'fail', in effect.

Okay. So, you're telling us you are as pragmatic as you can be.

Yes.

So, then, that means that you think, in 58 per cent of cases, where you've issued qualified opinions, there is something more than procedural, there is something not right.

In some of those cases, there will be procedural issues, but in a large number of them, they will be more—

Okay. But if it's just procedural, why can't you be more pragmatic, is what I'm trying to understand, because shouldn't you be able to sort out the wheat from the chaff here? You've just told us repeatedly that you don't have the resources to do everything you'd like to do, that you're drawn into doing lots of petty support for things that maybe only need support because your conditions are not bespoke to the size of the organisation. Shouldn't you be focusing on where you think there really is worrying behaviour, rather than just policing a rule book?

That's exactly what we do do, Lee, I would suggest. So, we have to apply a statutory framework that the Senedd has put in place. So, if there is a date in legislation by which councils need to have presented their accounts, and they don't do that, then we have to take that into account in our audit opinion. What I don't do is issue public interest reports on every council that has a qualified audit opinion. I have had to produce quite a number of those, but they're in the tens, not the hundreds. So, it's only in those cases that I would produce a report—it's in councils where the issues are of such concern, either in that space or as a symptom of a wider issue, that I'd go to that extent.

Okay. So, there seems to be quite a bit of gnashing of teeth then, both at your end and the councils' end, about making sure that they are on the right side of the rules to be complied with. Is there a case for, and have you considered, looking into the co-design of a more streamlined set of rules that you think would be on the right side of the line of propriety, but wouldn't involved all this energy on quite low-level matters?

Deryck, do you want to respond to that?

If I understand you, you're asking would we co-design a set of rules. I think—

Have you thought if it's necessary? Have you explored it with One Voice Wales? Would it help?

I think one of the problems there would be the independence of audit. We would be making judgments against something that we've designed ourselves. So, I think there would be an issue from a professional point of view there. In terms of—

Well, I'm not sure about that. Would there, really? We're talking about a high-level process of what we think is—. Is there scope for streamlining this system so we can focus on where there's a problem and not get overly worked up about petty things?

It sounds as though you're asking us to design a solution to the problem that legislation has, arguably, put in place. I don't think that's our role.

No, I'm asking you whether or not there's a case for us revisiting the legislation, based on a co-produced conversation between you and One Voice Wales, to streamline a system that everyone seems to think is suboptimal.

My personal view is, absolutely, there's a case for revisiting the system. In the data that we presented to you, as you said, the overwhelming majority of councils are very small. It feels disproportionate to me that the weight of a national audit office is being applied to those councils in audit. But that's what the legislation requires and I can't ignore that.

Okay. No, of course you can't. That's good—I think we're making some progress in where I was wanting to get to. So, in terms of the things that this committee might think about recommending, a relook at the statutory obligations for something a bit more bespoke, and with a series of different thresholds for different levels of risk, might be a useful thing to do.

Yes, absolutely. There is a trade-off, isn't there, between size of council, the connection to a small local community, but then its ability to professionalise its operation, to have a tax base that it can draw on, and so forth. But if we are working with the sector as it's structured at the moment, with that number of councils, then, absolutely, I think there is scope for the Senedd to consider different structures within the audited regime, to reflect the level of risk associated.

The sector as a whole spends something like £60 million to £70 million. It's a lot of money in absolute terms, but it's a drop in the ocean in terms of overall public spending. Within that £60 million to £70 million, the overwhelming majority is spent by a very small number of councils. So, it would seem entirely appropriate for me to be focusing there rather than on the mass.

And you don't feel that would impugn the professional integrity of auditors to go through that exercise.

It's not for me to initiate changes in policy. It's—

That's not what I'm asking. Your colleague seemed to suggest there was some kind of principled reason why auditors couldn't even have a conversation about changing a system, because that would prevent them from being independent auditors. I'm just checking that's not something you feel.

I think what Deryck was saying was that, within the current system, if we were to design the audit regime, then that would put us in a very difficult position in terms of audit independence. If the system were to change, then, obviously, we can feed in our views to that, based on our experience.

Okay. Can I just ask then, just to finish off my section? We've discussed the areas that should cause less concern, but then there will be smaller numbers where you do have actual serious concerns. And you talk in your evidence about a small number who are repeatedly refusing to engage. I'm presuming, but let's check that, that's on the more procedural, trivial end, so perhaps you can confirm that. But then, those that are raising issues that do make your hair stand on end, can you tell us a little bit about how proportionally many that is, and what kind of issues those throw up, and whether or not you think there are things we should be thinking about, about systemic change, to tackle some of the issues you are dealing with?

Yes. Thanks, Lee. Again, I'll defer to Deryck shortly, as he's at the sharp end of this. There is a—I think you can probably see it from our submission—hard core of maybe 20 to 25 councils who regularly do not submit accounts to us. There is a small number who have not submitted accounts for audit since 2019. So, there is a small element of the sector where there's a real issue simply in producing accounts. But, Deryck, do you want to say a word or two about the sort of issues that we see coming through, both at the serious end and the more common and systemic pattern?

Yes, sure. So, on common issues we find in terms of failures around controls, we find issues around procurement. The sector's not that great at procurement, so the way they go about letting contracts doesn't follow good practice. They're not covered by the procurement regulations because of their size, but they don't generally follow good practice, and that leads to losses. Internal controls are often fairly poor, so we find that members are—those who are still using cheques—signing blank cheques. We find that members are not approving payments. We find that activities are initiated by small groups of members without necessarily the knowledge of the council as a whole. What this leads to—and it is a very small number of cases—are significant losses to individual councils, and we’ve given some examples in our evidence. For example, Maesteg Town Council lost over £200,000 to a clerk who manipulated and was able to take advantage of the fact that members weren’t focusing on properly managing the public funds they were responsible for. So, that’s where it goes eventually, and there are quite a few councils who are quite dysfunctional in terms of their financial management and governance. We often come across this where there’s infighting amongst the councils as well. We have a number of cases at the moment where we are unable to complete and close off the audit because of outstanding issues that remain ongoing, which we haven’t yet been able to get to the bottom of. And, as Adrian said, there’s a large number of councils who don’t submit accounts properly. We’re still waiting for 94 councils for 2023-24 that haven’t submitted accounts to us yet. There were 160 of them at the end of September; that’s down to 94 now. At the end of September last year, there were 180 councils who hadn’t submitted accounts to us on time. So, that’s kind of the problem that we’re having, and, then, some clerks will tell us that they don’t think we should be asking for information that we’ve asked for, and it’s very difficult to get information out of some of those councils.

And do you feel you have sufficient tools and power to deal with that?

In my personal view, yes we do. We issue an audit note at the start of the year. It tells the councils what we want them to provide to us. If we don’t get that, we remind them. We then gradually escalate the process. The auditor general has rights of access to information and explanation set out in the Public Audit (Wales) Act 2013, and does have the right to ask people to attend the audit in person, for example. It’s also an offence not to comply with one of those requirements. So, we gradually escalate things through that process.

In which case, why are you allowing 15 to 25 councils to not submit accounts for four to five years?

We are gradually going through the process of escalating. The Act says it’s an offence if it's without reasonable excuse. So, we’re going as far as possible to make sure that they do comply. We are at the stage with a couple where we are considering commencing proceedings.

Okay. 

We're going to have to move on, I'm afraid, at this stage. 

Thank you for humouring me. [Laughter.]

Siân Gwenllian. 

Certainly. Diolch, Siân. My understanding is that there are something like 500 or so clerks working in the sector at the moment. So, obviously, some people are doing more than one council, but maybe 10 per cent or so of those have a formal qualification. To see that figure increase, I think, yes, self-evidently, would be desirable. I think I’d caution against going too hard down that route, though, because it brings us back to the same point. In a number of cases, I suspect councils are struggling to get people to stand as members and, indeed, people to act as clerks. So, I think it would be a mistake to make requirements too onerous so that those people were then further discouraged from stepping forward to undertake the work. But as a general point, professionalising the clerking arrangements, absolutely, would be a positive.

I don't believe so. Deryck.

No, they don't have to have any qualifications. The only requirement is if the council wants to have general power of competence the clerk has to have one of four or five recognised qualifications. But that's the only requirement.

Can you just explain that? What does that mean?

Generally in public law a public body can only do something if it's got a piece of legislation it can point to that says it can do so. General power of competence will allow a council to do anything that it's not explicitly prohibited from doing, in general. To be able to declare itself as eligible for the general power, a council has to have two thirds of its members elected rather than co-opted, a qualified clerk, and there's an audit qualification requirement as well, of two clean audit opinions.

I think the requirement to have a qualified clerk for a council that wishes to exercise general power of competence is a perfectly sensible requirement.

Absolutely. I think, as I said, professionalising the system is a good thing. An important element of that is seeing a greater number of clerks with formal professional qualifications. There is a raft of training and support, though, available to clerks who might not wish to go down that formal qualification path, which is designed to enable them to do a perfectly proper and professional role without acquiring the qualification itself.

I think we just keep coming back to the same issue. It would be, at one level, nice to say that either we want all clerks to be professionally qualified or to make training mandatory. There is a risk, as soon as you go down those sorts of paths, that in a sector of this size with this kind of structural make-up, you're going to get some that simply don't comply, and then that raises the question of where you go with those. So, yes, I'd caution against being too rigid on that front, but clearly, an exhortation to professionalise the operation is a very sensible one.

Deryck, would you like to describe what the system is at the moment?

At the moment, One Voice Wales and the Society of Local Council Clerks provide training. It's provided at a cost to the councils. I think one thing to recognise is the very small amount of time that some clerks are employed for. I've had an e-mail from a clerk this morning that explains she works two hours a week. You're not going to get someone like that to do an awful lot of training, because these are, in some cases, very part-time staff. One Voice Wales provide training; we review, though, a lot of the training material that they put out, where it relates to finance and governance, and provide a commentary on that. There is stuff available. There is plenty of stuff. There's a new governance toolkit, which has been published by the Welsh Government, along with One Voice Wales and SLCC. That provides a lot of support. There's additional support with online materials for clerks. And, as I said earlier on, we go along and we talk at conferences and explain the audit process and how councils can improve their arrangements as well. So, there is a raft of things going on across the sector. 

Yes, One Voice Wales provide specific training for councillors as well. 

Absolutely. Yes, you've hit the nail on the head. 

Diolch yn fawr, Siân. Lesley Griffiths. 

Thanks very much. Good morning, Adrian and Deryck. I just want to go back to some of your answers to Lee around legislation. Looking at your evidence, there clearly are some issues around the current legislation, and I think you flirted with the idea that there could be some barriers, and your personal view was, Adrian, that we could revisit the legislation. So, I was just wondering if you could expand a bit more on why you believe we should revisit the current legislation, and what you think could happen in relation to current issues and problems if we didn't revisit it and have a look at it. And then, just picking up what you were saying to Siân around—. The thing you used the word 'mandatory' around was around training, so whether you think that there is anything—. There could be unintended consequences, I think you said, if we did have to make training mandatory for clerks, for instance, but I wonder if you think that there's a big gap in the legislation that would assist you. 

Thanks, Lesley. I've always felt in this job that it felt like a little bit of a sledgehammer cracking a nut, at times. We can't ignore some really serious failures of governance, and Deryck alluded to one of the most significant earlier, but I think Lee is right that, if you step back from this and look at the scale of the sector, the risk to public funds involved, applying the full weight of a national audit office to the audit of some very small organisations feels a bit disproportionate. 

Within the existing legislation, I've asked Deryck and the team to think whether there's anything more that we can do to lighten the regime, but bluntly I'm not sure there is. We've made it as light touch as it's possible to be. So, if we were starting from scratch, I think, as I said, if the fundamental structure of the sector were to remain the same, with 700-odd councils, then I think having a lighter audit expectation upon the smaller councils—. You've got over a quarter of them with a turnover of less than £10,000; two thirds of them less than £50,000. You could lift those out of the regime and apply an entirely different regime to it, more based on internal audit or with occasional interventions by us, and then focus our efforts on the councils with greater spend and therefore greater risk involved. So, that's crudely where I think we should go—make it more proportionate to the shape of the sector.

Forgive me, Lesley, I've forgotten the next part of your question.

I was asking what gaps you thought there were in the legislation. So, for instance, training—do you think we should have some legislation about training? I'm not saying that your answer to Siân led me to think that was the way, but that was just an example I could think of—if you think there are any gaps in the legislation that need looking at.

I will ask Deryck to come back on that, but I don't think there are gaps in the legislation from our perspective, from an audit point of view, and that's, to be blunt, the only one with which we can speak with any authority. But, Deryck, is there anything from your perspective?

I can't think of any specific gaps. I think perhaps what's a burden for the sector is that the same rules are applied to the community councils in some areas as are applied to the unitary authorities. So, the burden on the very, very small councils is particularly large given their capacity to deliver some of the things that they’re asked to do.

Diolch yn fawr. If you're able to stay with us—

Sorry, can I just—?

Very quickly then, Lesley.

Thanks very much, John. I'm looking at your evidence, Adrian, and you say that you

'hold limited information in relation to new powers granted to community and town councils.'

And then, again, in your answer to Lee, you were saying, I think, that life would be much easier for you if councils did comply with the legislation. But I think that perhaps they're unable to do that, in a way, because they're still waiting for the opinion from you around the new legislation. So, those two things don't really marry up—would you agree?

I'm not sure I would. You mean, Lesley, that the barrier to exercising the power of competence is because of late delivery of audit.

Well, yes. I mean, some might say that.

Some have, yes. [Laughter.] 

[Inaudible.]—who shall remain nameless.

Hand on heart, in the last few years since the pandemic, we have had issues of our own in terms of our capacity to deal with what had built up to be a very significant backlog of work.

In the last 18 months or so, we’ve put more resource into the sector, we’ve changed our operational model and we are now in a much better place. I think Deryck mentioned earlier that we currently have accounts from all bar just under 100, I think, of councils. For the councils where we received the accounts by the end of September, we’re looking to have completed all of our audits on them by the end of this calendar year.

So, we are in a much better place now, and I think, looking forward, we have a model where you can have confidence that, for councils that are able to provide accounts fairly straightforwardly, we will be able to provide a timely audit. There is that hardcore, though, of councils that are very late in delivery, dating back several years, or we know have significant audit issues that we need to investigate more fully. They will always be there, unfortunately, and there will be delays associated with them.

Of those three criteria for power of competence, I'd say that the existence of a qualified clerk and two thirds of members being elected rather than being appointed are far more significant obstacles for councils to overcome, rather than our delivery.

Thank you, Chair.

Diolch yn fawr. Adrian and Deryck, if you're able to stay with us just for a few minutes longer, we've just got a couple more questions from Altaf Hussain. 

Thank you very much, Chair. My area is digital and IT. As I said, I was, for 10 years, a community councillor. There was no access to a computer; there was no access to any digital equipment. The clerk had access to all this. If you create a website, you have to pay for that and there should be somebody who has to administer that, which you'll find very difficult to cope with. And then there's a problem with the General Data Protection Regulation. So, keeping that all in mind, do you believe that councils should be compelled to publish electronically all the documents they are required to publish, and what benefit would this provide? Would it add significant additional workload on existing clerks and councils?

I'll ask Deryck to come back to you, Altaf. We were chatting about this just before the session started, funnily enough. At one level, of course, in today's world, if everything could be done online and all councils could have a functioning website that was well-maintained and so forth, things would be a lot more straightforward. But we've got to be realistic about the capacity of some councils to comply with that. Some of the smaller ones will be looking for a favour from somebody in the village who has the necessary skills to put a website together, but then you've got, as you say, GDPR considerations, you've got to maintain it and so forth. So, let's be realistic about the sector's capacity to go digital across the board right now. But, Deryck, any thoughts and observations from you? You mentioned when we were chatting earlier the situation in England.

Yes. So, linking up together with the conversation around the amount of audit work that's undertaken, in England, smaller councils don't have to have an audit every year, but they do have to publish information on websites, so that's potentially a conversation to have with the Senedd around requirements for audit for community councils.

I fully agree with Adrian; the problem we have is the scale of councils. Small councils, they do need to call in favours to manage websites; people move out of the village, and the administrator has disappeared for websites. There are a lot of issues around capacity in the sector in that regard. But, yes, certainly, the more information that can be published—subject to GDPR, obviously—the better in terms of ensuring transparency and building trust in the local communities. But there are specific issues around the sector as a whole in terms of capacity, I think.

And then my last question, Chair, thank you very much. Do you agree that there would be benefit in councils partnering with third sector organisations providing digital skills training in order to not only upskill councillors and clerks, but also the communities they serve?

I'm not sure I've got an opinion on that as Auditor General, but it sounds an entirely sensible thing to be doing.

Okay. Thank you.

Is that okay, Altaf?

Yes, thank you very much. I just want to point out one thing. In many councils, they have these clerks, but they have also appointed deputy clerks, thinking that clerks might go away and you have the deputy clerks at least. Now, many councils struggle then to have the clerks. What I personally think is that there is no link between the local authority and the community councils. It is dysfunctional, really, when it should be the duty of the local authority to look after the audit first, and from there the audit should be going to the audit department, rather than from community councils directly to the audit department.

Yes, and we'll be hearing from local government representatives in the next session, and I'm sure we can explore that, Altaf. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Adrian and Deryck. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy in the usual way. Diolch yn fawr.

Diolch yn fawr. If there's anything more we can do, John, please just let us know; I'm very happy to provide further information in writing.

That's great, okay. Thank you once again. Okay, committee will break briefly.

We've reached our second evidence session, then, on our inquiry into the role, governance and accountability of the community and town council sector. I'm very pleased to welcome here in person Councillor Anthony Hunt, leader of Torfaen County Borough Council, representing the Welsh Local Government Association; and also with us in person, Justine Cass, deputy monitoring officer and solicitor with Torfaen County Borough Council, again representing the Welsh Local Government Association; and joining us remotely, Clive Wolfendale, independent chair of the standards forum. So, welcome to you all.

I'll begin, then, with some initial questions, firstly on the relationship between different tiers of government, the town and community councils and our principal local authorities. We heard from the North and Mid Wales Association of Local Councils in the evidence that we've received that, while there are good examples of good working relationships between these different tiers, in general, they believed that relations were poor. I guess it will vary across Wales. I just wonder what your take is on that relationship and how it might vary across Wales.

I think that's a fair challenge. I think it does vary incredibly across Wales, and we've made a great deal of progress in Torfaen. I guess we're lucky in that we have six town and community councils, whereas some areas, like Powys, have a great deal more than that, and I guess, therefore, that relationship needs more working. But it's like any trans-governmental relationship, it needs work, it needs an understanding of the principle of subsidiarity—who's best to do what. I think our community councils add huge value, because they're free from some of the strains and the complexities of the statutory services that we have to run. So, we've built that relationship up, but it does, I think, have to be built up on a case-by-case basis, and that understanding developed of who does what best certainly is an important one.

Okay. Just on the same theme, we heard from the Society of Local Council Clerks that, yes, there are good working relationships between some local authorities and community councils, but other community councils face closed doors, sometimes whilst also, at the same time, being asked to take on assets and services on behalf of those principal authorities. Is that a picture that you recognise may exist in parts of Wales? Clive, I think, is wanting to come in on this. Clive.

Thank you, Chair. Yes, on that very specific—. In my own area, Conwy, there are 34 town and community councils, and there's been a recent discussion and debate around who's responsible for public toilets in the area—quite controversial. But that's actually a rarity. My perception, certainly in my own area and probably across north Wales, is that the relationship between the county and the local councils is neither good nor bad, it's just very hands-off; it's not integrated, it's not substantial, it's not nurtured. So, that would be my principal observation, that that relationship needs to be developed if there is to be a proper and sequenced and integrated method of delivery in local governance.

Okay, Clive. Thanks for that. Anthony.

Yes. It's like all relationships, isn't it? It needs to be nurtured and it needs to be based on trust and mutual understanding, and I think there are some examples of where that's worked well. The memorandum of understanding that was launched last month by Lis Burnett I think is a way of trying to get that sort of best practice spread out more, but, at the end of the day, it's always going to take people at both levels. I've worked at various levels of government, and what's consistent about them all is that, very often, their default position is to try and blame the other layer, either up or down. I think, as politicians, we need to perhaps push back at our own levels against that a little bit. And certainly, when my officials try and do that back in the council, they get fairly short shrift, and that, I think, helps develop those relationships, because the default position isn't just outsourcing blame and insourcing credit. I think that's a principle that applies across all levels of government.

What would you say, Anthony, in terms of that concern about assets and services being transferred from principal authorities to town and community councils, sometimes without the necessary support and, I guess, transfer of funding, as well?

It is potentially an opportunity, if it's done in the right way, with that relationship built up. I think the transfer of some things is a way of freeing them up from the bureaucratic burdens that we might impose on them as statutory authorities. So, if done right, with understanding, I think it's a great example of where our town and community councils can add value. I do think you have to take care, though, because the great advantage of town and community councils is that they are free from the burden of bureaucracy and administration, and, if they are given too much, then you just, in effect, create smaller statutory authorities, and that's not, for me, where their value lies. So, I do think every transfer needs to be based on that conversation, that build-up of understanding, and then there are cases where we've done that and it's got great benefits for the people living in that community. 

Yes, okay. Just getting back to consistency of approach, I think in your evidence you talk about sometimes there being informal arrangements and sometimes they're underpinned by formal agreements—you've mentioned the memorandum of understanding. Do you think that there should be a more consistent approach across Wales, and if so, what should that be?

I think consistent guidelines are a good thing, but, at the end of the day, it relies on people—people willing to invest their time, willing to put their egos aside and whatever else, and build up relationships. Because you could have all the guidelines in the world—if you've got, frankly, quite often two people or sets of people, who don't want to get along with each other, then it's going to be difficult. Whereas if you've got people who are willing to invest the time in informally meeting up, having a more formal arrangement of feedback, I think you can build a relationship that can give mutual benefit.

Okay, Anthony. Clive. 

Thanks. An interesting point. I think the problem with the consistent approach is that the councils themselves are very different. So, a large town council can have the resources, the clerical support to engage in a formal manner with the county council, whereas a very, very small community council, with perhaps a clerk working a couple of hours a month, simply won't have the resources to make that work. So, I think we're going to address the issue of size later. In principle, absolutely, I think there ought to be a protocol that defines relationship, but the reality is, as things stand, that can't work.

I see. Okay, Clive. As you say, we'll come back to issues of the differences in size later on. Did you want to come in at all, Justine? 

The monitoring officer experience is very different across Wales and, in the main, it's due to the size of the community councils. But what they try and do is just to be consistent with all community councils and try to get them to work, because they are an important layer of democracy and they have the ability to help local authorities work in a transformational way, but they themselves have to be supported. There has to be the resources there to help them to do that.

Okay. If we get on to that very significant variance in size of town and community councils, we've heard evidence that if there were fewer larger community councils, then they would have much better resource and capacity to deliver services. I think we heard earlier that two thirds of town and community councils have budgets of less than £50,000—turnover of less than £50,000—and a significant number less than £10,000. So, you know, obviously quite a lot are very small when you think of the nature of public sector organisations. So, does the WLGA, Anthony, have a view on this, whether fewer larger community councils would be a good thing? And what would that mean for local authorities if that was to come about?

I don't think there's a collective position in the WLGA. It's considered a matter for individual local authorities when they do their own election boundary reviews. I do think the point that Justine made is an important one. In Torfaen, maybe we can invest in that relationship, because it's six relationships to invest in. If there were 106, then it would obviously take a lot more officer time and leadership time. I do think sometimes some of the smaller community councils can still add a great value, and I think some of the larger ones sometimes can fall into the trap, slightly, of wanting to replicate being a slightly smaller borough council. I think we need to avoid, I guess, both ends of that spectrum. But, certainly, in my experience, there’s no huge correlation between size of the community council and its effectiveness. But I guess the strain of having lots of smaller community councils might be something that does take a lot of time for officers and members alike to manage.

Okay. Justine.

I don’t think you can have a uniform or a consistent approach to this, though, across the local authorities, because we are all so different. As you’ve heard, we have six, whereas in Powys and Monmouthshire they have more councils. It depends on whether they’re a city local authority, whether they’re rural, and then the effectiveness of them all. You may have a very small community council, but it could be really productive in engaging with the local community, and you wouldn’t want to lose that.

Yes. Okay, Justine. And, Clive.

Thanks, Chair. Again, my own county has 34 councils of very varying size. Some are small, with just a small number—in the hundreds—of population. The problem is, as you say, the administration amounts to very small amounts of money. Often, most of that is eaten up by administration costs, the cost of employing a clerk, IT costs and so on. So, actually, they’re administering very, very small pots of money in very small circumstances, perhaps hedge cutting, cleaning up the graveyard, that sort of thing.

So, having visited, now, over the past five years, quite a number of town and community councils across the country, large and small, I’m fairly certain in my view, for what it’s worth, that there is scope for rationalisation. Town and community councils struggle to attract members, struggle to attract appropriate support, and generally to ignite interest in the locality. I think all that could be assisted by some sort of review and rationalisation. Thank you.

Okay, Clive. Thank you very much. We'll move on to other committee members, then. Firstly, Lee Waters. Lee.

Thanks. We heard from one of the auditors earlier that squabbling was one of the issues that got in the way of the smooth running of community councils. This, of course, is not unique to community councils, it happens in all democratic bodies. Just thinking in terms of standards and behaviour, how effective do you think training is in addressing issues, or is it simply a tick-box exercise to show you’re trying to do something about it?

It’s not a tick-box exercise. The monitoring officers take it very seriously, and it’s very—

But does it work, I guess, is my question?

Yes, it does work, but, obviously, what plays into it is politics. You have that political agenda. But I think the training is very effective and it is well attended. The monitoring officers will support community councils in providing this training. What you don’t want is to have it too often, because you do have experienced members, you want to constantly engage with them, so you don’t want it to be annual, for example.

Do you think it should be mandatory?

Yes, I do.

Okay. I'm just conscious that Mr Wolfendale wants to come in. Can I just see if he wants to add to this?

It was that very point, actually. I think, without question, training should be mandated. If people are standing to be democratic representatives, then, certainly, from my perspective, as chair of the standards committee, and all that ensues from that, individuals who—. As Justine said, good training is provided, bilingual training, flexible training, but, unfortunately, many councillors just simply don’t engage. I don’t think that’s acceptable, and I think it should be mandated. Thank you.

Thank you.

I guess it’s an issue of horses and water, isn’t it? You can give all the training you want, if someone wants to ignore it, then it’s quite difficult. That said, I do think we need to remember that, of course, community councillors are voluntary. They very often have busy other jobs and lives, as do many borough councillors. So, I think I agree with mandating training on basics, because, as you say, if you stand for office, you should be able to uphold basic standards of behaviour. How we encourage, I guess, as well as the mandatory bit, and how we build those relationships, I think is important.

Can I just move on to—?

Just before you do, I think James would just like to come in quickly. James.

Apologies for being late. You agree with mandating, that's fine. Who do you think should deliver that training? Do you think it should be Welsh Government? Do you think it should be One Voice Wales, WLGA or, actually, local authorities who deliver it? Because mandated training is fine, and I actually agree with mandatory training for community councillors, but then it comes to the point: who delivers it? And who funds it? 

I think it should be One Voice Wales. They should be supporting community councils with that. 

But not all community councils are with One Voice Wales, though, are they?

That's the difficulty with that. Monitoring officers do avail themselves and will help community councils with that sort of training. But what we don't want to do is place burdens on monitoring officers to provide something that's not really within their control. So, I think it should be One Voice Wales. But how do you get over the fact that not everyone signs up to them? That's a difficult one.

All right. Lee.

I'm going to move on from training, then, to dispute resolution when it does happen, and the role that county councils might have within that. We heard from the clerks of the councils that they feel often, because they're employed by the community council, that when they do feel they're being dealt with inappropriately, there's no real support mechanism for them. And they made the case for being employed by the county council, so at least they were then part of something bigger that could support them. So, I'd be interested in your view on that. And then related to that is the role that county councils could play in arbitration before it gets to ombudsmen, or to help to resolve things, because otherwise things could just grind to a halt in some small local authorities while these disputes play out. So, it's the overall role of the local authorities in helping to navigate these relationships.

I know what we do at the moment. I think it's difficult to give monitoring officers additional responsibilities. Going to your point about whether clerks should be employed by the local authority—as long as local authorities have the moneys to pay them. But that in itself could be quite problematic, because it depends on the size of the community council and what the community council achieves.

Could you not employ a pool of clerks?

You could, but then the clerks are servicing the community councils. The clerks at the moment, to me, seem to have more power than that. They act like chief executives, so that's a different role altogether. So, you could be taking away a lot of the power that the community councils have. So, then, do you make the clerks more like mini chief executives? Because you look at their roles, they are really very complex roles, because it's not just servicing the councils, they're dealing with the finances, they have to prepare audits, financial audits. So, I don't think it's as easy as saying that the local authorities should clerk.

Oh, I didn't say it was easy. I'm saying that currently some of them are dysfunctional, and is there a role for the county council in that local democratic ecosystem to play a more active role? And your response was monitoring officers have got enough to deal with it as it is.

Yes—

No doubt they have, but if it's a dysfunctional local democratic ecosystem, surely something needs to give.

Yes, and they do get involved. They support their own county borough councillors in this. As for clerks, it depends on how well they know the monitoring officers as to whether they will be able to speak to them. And it's all about networking, it's who you know. So, if I was a monitoring officer, if a clerk came to me, then I would give them the time and would try and help them and find a way forward.

Should it be that random?

No. No, it shouldn't. In an ideal world, it should be more formalised, but it's a difficult position. 

Okay. I think Mr Wolfendale wants come in.

Yes, Clive.

Yes, thank you. Two important points for me, and just to emphasise I'm speaking as chair of the standards committee here, not on behalf of the WLGA. Many of the disputes that arise and many of the collapses in the effectiveness of local councils arise from disputes between members and officers. The fact is that employing anybody these days is not a straightforward or easy matter, with all the employment law, training, health and safety requirements that go with it. Many councils are simply not equipped to do it, with the best will in the world, and so it's not surprising that relationships break down. 

So, I've come to the conclusion, having witnessed this over the past five years and having seen that a lot of the work around standards and the behaviour of local councillors revolves around this critical relationship between members and staff, I'm firmly now of the conclusion that, yes, perhaps a pool of clerks or an amalgamation or aggregation of clerks should be employed by the local authority, who have the wherewithal to do that more effectively. The current system is just too ad hoc, open to abuse and leads to many, many problems that could be averted. 

And that's the second point that I think you were alluding to, which is that in terms of dispute resolution and dealing with these issues, there is a role at a much earlier stage for standards committees, comprising independent and elected members, to get involved to try and alleviate these problems with some sort of local resolution at a much earlier stage, before involving the ombudsman or the adjudication panel. This goes to the heart, I think, of where we can make some rapid improvements and help local councils to function more effectively. Thank you. 

All right, Lee, I'll just bring—

I'm finished, thank you. 

Yes. James. 

Yes, it's on dispute resolution when it goes to the next stage. Do you think the public services ombudsman actually supports town and community councils enough? Because we hear examples of where some females face some quite horrific misogynistic abuse, and that's the councillors as well, and the public services ombudsman basically says, 'Grow a thicker skin.' Do you sometimes think that the public services ombudsman is actually doing a disservice to our town and community councils, with people being held to different standards? Because I know in the Senedd, for example, if I said half the things to other colleagues that I know get said in town and community councils, I would not be a Member of the Senedd. I think it is slightly different at local government level, with standards committees. Do you think that sometimes, because it's just a lower level of government again, that it feels like they can just get away with saying what they want, and there's no recourse for saying these things?

No, I don't. The ombudsman has always been very supportive when I've asked them questions, and always very, very approachable. I can't see why they would be any different for community councils, if the clerk went and contacted them and asked them for small pieces of advice. The Heesom and Calver cases that you're referring to, that is case law, so whether you are a community councillor or whether you are a county borough councillor, that's going to apply. You have to be able to say things in chambers, in committees and act in a robust way, and it may not be the normal way that you speak to people. Now, some of it is not going to be nice to hear, but it's being able to be robust in those forums.

Clive. 

Thanks. I'm not entirely sure this is within the scope of what we're looking at today, but since you've raised it and it's at the heart of my responsibilities to chair a standards committee, actually, I do think we need to just think again about this 'grow a thicker skin' taunt that seems to be being pushed around, and that this is part of the cut and thrust of politics. Often, it's simply unacceptable poor behaviour. It's insulting, it's abusive and it's unacceptable. I don't like it and I don't like, sometimes, that we seem to be choosing to ignore it. So, I would say—again, probably outside the scope of this morning and I repeat that this is my own personal view—I think we need to revisit this and the case law that purportedly surrounds it, because the reality on the ground is it's unpleasant, it's unnecessary, and it is, on occasions, overly abusive. Thank you.

Okay, Clive. We move on to Altaf Hussain.

Thank you, Chair. It is about the audit and governance, regarding record keeping, and the extent it would be considered acceptable for other sectors that receive public funding to regularly fail to submit their annual accounts, and whether local authorities should have a more proactive role as the local billing authority, tasked with collecting and distributing the precept.

Okay.

I think, from a governance point of view, it's quite difficult. There should be clear structures in place, and I don't think it's a place for the principal councils to get involved in community councils in that way.

Right. Yes, Clive.

Thanks. I completely get where Justine's coming from, and having had experience of where small councils have transgressed as far as submission of accounts, or that simply it's gone beyond that, it is a problem about what to do. I have a lot of sympathy with county councils, who've got enough to do without picking up this issue and launching an investigation. I think—[Interruption.]

Oh, I'm afraid we've either lost Clive or he's frozen temporarily. But, Anthony, I think you wanted to come in, in any event, didn't you?

Yes. This is an example of the difficult balance, isn't it? I think that the idea of a pool of clerks is worthy of consideration, but does that fundamentally change the relationship? Primary councils are currently not the governors of community councillors, we're a partner. And the more we do on this, the more we become more like governors. And I guess—. We all believe in the openness and transparency and good principles of governance, but the more we impose things, does that make us less able to build those relationships? Because we're seen as the big, bad guys coming in and telling people what to do all the time, as opposed to a partner in governing, especially when we're asking community councils to do lots more. Does that close down some of those potential opportunities if we're seen too often, both in terms of governance and regulation, as being the bosses, so to speak? How you get that balance right, I think, is a key consideration.

Yes. Sure. Okay. I'm afraid Clive isn't able to continue at the moment.

Chair, can I ask just one question about the hostility towards the other staff?

Yes.

I have seen that. It is more of a problem with those councillors who are co-opted. They don't go through a code of conduct, they have no training, when they come, they come of their own, and they can leave at any time. So, they are not elected community councillors. So, there should be a distinction, really. And when you allow those co-opted members to come into the council, they need to abide by the rules and regulations. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, Altaf. Justine, do you see particular issues there, with co-opted councillors, as opposed to those who've been elected?

No. They add real value to committees. They are that check and balance. We use them for a variety of committees—governance and audit—and we use them for standards committees as well. On the standards committees, they really are valuable, because members automatically feel as if they're in a hard position, making decisions about somebody from another political party or of their own political party. So, having a co-opted member there really eases the process. And all the chairs are co-opted—they're all independent.

Okay. Thank you, Justine. I think Clive is happily restored to us. Clive, if you're able—. I think we can see you, and hopefully we'll be able to hear you. Do you want to continue what you were saying earlier, Clive, as well as perhaps coming in on the points we've just discussed?

I'll try and pick those up. The issue of co-opted members is interesting. Independent members of county councils go through a selection process and advertisements and are checked before admission. Very often, in community councils, co-opted members are simply just invited informally to be a part of it. It's often simply just somebody who's known in the community, and there's no structure to it whatsoever. So, I do agree with the comments made by Mr Hussain, that that is something that needs to be looked at. Elections sometimes are not well advertised, little subscribed to and so on, so I think that is an issue that needs to be looked at.

If you'd like me to go back to the point about whether having employed clerks by the county council will impair this relationship, I don't think so. I think, in most cases, that would be welcomed by elected members in community councils, as a responsibility that they can relinquish and concentrate more on the business of working to make sure that their particular locality is properly served, with the services they would want to see, and that improvements can take place, without having to worry about employment regulations and terms and conditions of service, and all that goes with it. So, I completely take the point that this does not need to be a takeover, but I think it needs to be facilitative and helpful. Thank you.

Okay, Clive. Thank you very much. Siân Gwenllian.

Who would like to offer some thoughts on that?

I'm happy to go first. I mean, encouraging participation and boosting turnout and engagement is something that we struggle with at all levels. I guess, inevitably, that's more of a struggle the further down the ladder you go, but that's something incumbent on all of us as politicians to do. How can we do it? I guess, between elections, that's by engaging as much as we can, by being open about the work that we do, demonstrating the difference that can be made, including by town and community councils, which can make a huge difference on a very local basis to people's lives and the first 100 yards outside their own front doors, and just to try and encourage that participation. I agree there's a challenge there; I agree that part of our remit is to uphold and promote that local democracy, at all tiers of governance. So, there's a job of work to do there, and it is a particular challenge at a community council level.

Okay, Anthony. And Clive.

Do you think that—? Sorry. Can I just ask one question before Clive comes in?

Yes. Go on, Siân.

Do you think that introducing the single transferable vote for community councils would be a good way of encouraging perhaps more participation in elections?

I think it's a more fundamental problem of disengagement than just a voting system, if I'm honest. People need to be demonstrated to more about how their vote makes a difference, and I think it is possible to do that at a level that's very local.

I guess the other challenge of STV would be the complexity of the system. What does, in my experience, encourage people to get involved and to participate is if there are well-known figures within the community they see out and about and can, therefore, cast their vote for. And does that sort of break or fuzzy that link a little bit, at that very local level? Whatever our thoughts about voting reform are on a national basis, I think that's a question.

Okay. And Clive.

I think what can help enormously here is the use of technology. Too often, councils that are working in a—[Inaudible.]—system, notifications around meetings are often—[Inaudible.]—notice in the local one-stop-shop. I think there's room for consistency in the application by community councils. I think that can help enormously. And I think that the use of technology, as we’re doing today, in broadcasting the work of town and community councils, is not impossible; it’s not even expensive these days. And I think further thought towards engaging people in the locality through technical means can be of great assistance.

But I think we shouldn’t just ignore the obvious here. The fact is that some of our town and community councils are simply just reiterating the work of years and decades, and going through the same processes, and they’re stuck in a rut, bluntly, that they find it very difficult to get out of, through no fault of their own; it’s simply a facet of history and circumstances. But it is not local democracy, and it's not—[Inaudible.]

Okay, Clive. Siân. 

All right, Anthony, could you—?

Yes, I completely accept that a lack of diversity across local government is an issue that we need to address. I think that only gets addressed through leadership, quite frankly. In Torfaen, 10 years ago, we had a very imbalanced group at a county borough level; we’ve now got a gender-balanced cabinet and a gender-balanced group, and that’s because we sought out people to stand for those positions. Actually having the community council there was a way of getting those people involved as a first step, who might not have gone straight into a borough councillor’s job, but who developed their skills there and were fantastic people within their communities, and are now playing a great role.

And we’ve seen in Pontypool, for example, there’s a woman leader of Pontypool Community Council, and that example of leadership has brought on lots of other women who are keen to participate in that role. On Cwmbran Community Council, we’ve got, frankly, better diversity of black and ethnic minority people than we have on the borough.

So, there are examples of good practice. I think what unites them is where there’s been some leadership to grasp that challenge and not just accept, ‘Well, that’s the way it always is, those are the people who’ve come forward’, but to instead get out there and try and encourage people who would be brilliant community councillors to come forward.

Thanks for that, Anthony. I’ll just bring Altaf Hussain in at this point. Altaf.  

Thank you very much, Chair. Just a small point, really. The community council is an apolitical council, so the democratic set-up should not be set up by the political parties. It should be for local government with local people to organise these elections for these community councillors. That is what I think. You have my example: I was, for 10 years, in a locality that was belonging to the other political party, but, when they see a person, that person merges within the community. I think that is the enlightenment that they trust you, which is missing at present. Thank you.

Anthony.

Some community and town councils choose to operate on a non-partisan basis, and that's their choice, by convention. What that does tend to do is reduce democratic contest for those places, and you get more people co-opted, which I don't think is a positive thing. It also tends to reduce everything to the personal, and I do think the role that we as—. And I would say this, I guess. I'm not saying I'm unbiased. The role we have as political parties in upholding standards and getting people to rise above just personal, personality, issues, I think, is a valued one—the role we do in encouraging people, for example to attend training, and to conduct themselves in a way that is responsible. That's not to say that that doesn't happen in those town and community councils that are run on a non-partisan basis, but I don't think it's a binary thing there. There are values that are positive that the political system brings to our town and community councils who operate in that way. And that doesn't mean that—. Just as on the county borough council, that doesn't mean that just because someone is in a different political party that you don't engage with them and respect them and take forward ideas if they have good ideas. I think we can be grown up, but still exist within a political system.

Yes, absolutely. Okay, thank you for that, Anthony. Siân—hapus?

That's certainly something that we could feed back to the WLGA. I'm sorry I haven't got an answer today about that, but that's certainly something that we can take forward.

Yes. Perhaps if you could write to the committee on that, subsequent to today, that would be useful. Okay, diolch yn fawr, Siân. Lesley Griffiths.

Thanks, Chair. Good morning. Obviously, we had some new legislation back in 2021—the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021. In relation to the general power of competence, we've heard some evidence that the new responsibilities, the additional responsibilities, appear to be onerous for councils and clerks. Would you agree with that, or do you think that's not the case?

I wouldn't want to say 'onerous' straight away without providing a bit of an explanation. I do know that there are 30 community and town councils who have attained the general power of competency. There are eligibility criteria that they have to satisfy. Not all will be able to satisfy that, for example in relation to having two years' worth of accounts. I know that some councils have used it as a vehicle to manage wedding venues, for example, and the distribution of grants. So, there is a positive way that it can be used, but the power is an onerous power, and it's likely to be challenged. There is a raft of case law around the general power of competency, and at the end of the day community councils are exactly that. They are local people trying to do the best they possibly can for their area. So, it doesn't mean that they're going to have all the necessary skills to use such a power. Where there is a statutory provision, that must be used, and then you look at the general power of competency and, really, I would respectfully suggest that you would get legal advice if you wanted to use that power, just to make sure that there's a firm legal footing. The last thing you want is to be judicially reviewed on what you're trying to do. 

So, it could be costly as well. 

Very costly, yes.

Yes, okay. On the flipside, obviously there are those additional requirements. Do you think that they've helped with accountability, with transparency?

The eligibility criteria, you mean? I think it could possibly make it difficult for community councils, especially if they're very small, because it's not just accounts; you've got to have clerks who have got qualifications. Not all clerks have these qualifications. Again, they're just trying to do the best for their area and don't necessarily want a qualification or to have to go down that route. And then you have to have—. Two thirds of your members have to be elected, and that could be difficult if you have a lot of co-opted members. So, for example, if there's a by-election, you're not necessarily going to get the number of votes to have an elected member, and somebody is then co-opted. 

Obviously, it's quite a new piece of legislation, but I think one of the things that came out in the previous evidence session before yours is that we might need to revisit the current legislative framework. Would you say that this new Act needs to be looked at, or do you think that it's too soon?

It's possibly too soon. The general power of competency came out of the Localism Act 2011, and that was England-only at that time. So, it's a new power for us. So, there is a raft of case law from the English courts. Yes, we have English and—. The English law applies to us, but it takes time for the cases to come out. So, what you would want to see are some instances going through the courts in Wales before you start reviewing it, I would respectfully suggest. 

Thank you.

Just a final question from me. In terms of annual reports and training plans under the 2021 Act, do you think that those requirements help to improve transparency and accountability? And would you have any other ideas as to what would improve accountability as we go forward?

The WLGA's position is that they don't have a view on annual reports but that it's always helpful because it promotes transparency and accountability. And I think it's helpful for monitoring officers, when they become involved with community councils, to see these things in place. I don't have any other suggestions. Perhaps making it a requirement that the position of the community councils is reported to the standards committees in local authorities, because some local authorities do that, but not all. 

Okay, Justine. Either Anthony or Clive? No? No. Okay. Well, thank you, all three of you, Anthony, Justine and Clive, for giving evidence to committee today. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy in the usual way. Diolch yn fawr. 

Diolch.

Thank you.

Diolch. Okay, committee will break briefly, until—. Well, for five minutes or 10 minutes. 

We've reached the fourth item on our agenda today and our third evidence session on our inquiry into the role, governance and accountability of the community and town council sector. Unfortunately, we're not able to be joined by the Building Communities Trust due to illness. We were expecting them to give evidence today, but illness has prevented that. But I'm very pleased to have here with us in person Dan Roberts, policy and engagement officer with Cwmpas. Welcome, Dan, and thank you very much for joining us here today.

Thank you.

Perhaps I might begin with some initial questions before we turn to other members of the committee. Firstly, then, in terms of the relationship with community councils, how would you characterise community interaction? We heard, actually, from Building Communities Trust in their evidence—as I said, they're not able to join us here today—that some community groups find that they focus their attention on what can be done without input from any tier of government. So, I guess they're not seeing community and town councils as obvious partners in terms of that community work. What's your experience, would you say?

The first thing that comes to mind in that respect is that focus that community groups, local social enterprises have on delivery. There's that limited capacity focused on delivering essential services on the ground, delivering services that are going to be really impactful on people's lives, firefighting when things go wrong, and then there are additional pressures probably one level removed from that, like having to regularly apply for more funding and then measuring impact to be able to do that effectively and everything. So, then having the space and capacity for that sort of strategic thinking about who they can work with locally to develop their impact and everything is going to be quite challenging. Obviously, there are lots of examples of where that is done, and that's good to see. But that comes through when I meet with local social enterprises regularly—they're so focused on that delivery, that taking that step back in being able to work with any level of government is going to be a challenge.

And then there's also, maybe, a lack of awareness of the opportunities of doing that on both sides. I guess that's something that's going to come up regularly about town and community councils wanting to be more active in the community, so the community groups are aware of the benefits of working with them. But then, there's the other side of that as well—making sure that town and community councils are aware of the good work that's being done by community groups in their communities and seeing the added value that can come out of that relationship.

And then—I was thinking about that—I guess the other thing, then, is, by their nature, there are going to be different roles for these different institutions and groups within the local community, so there is isn't always going to be that crossover, but there is, clearly, added value that can come from it. The benefits that community groups can have is that they can be really agile, they can work informally in some ways, whereas, for town councils, it is a bit more limited by having to go through various procedures—not as much as for other layers of government, but that is still there. But then, when those two things can come together, there is a lot of value that can come from it. I think the best example I could think of in that context was during COVID, actually, and the mutual aid groups that were set up really quickly by community groups, and they were able to do that in a really agile way, really quickly, informally in many ways, in a way that a layer of government wouldn't be able to do, but then adding the capacity of local government and town and community councils to that created a lot of additional value as well in a way that a community group couldn't.

So, clearly, there are different roles for both sides that aren't always going to come together, but, when they do, there is a lot of value that can come from it when they work together strategically.

Yes. Okay, Dan. That sort of COVID experience, then, has that continued? Is that still in place, or—

I think there are different elements of it, because I think something we hear regularly is that volunteering has been impacted in quite a negative way by COVID. People had stopped volunteering during that period and they haven't got back into the swing of doing that. Also, there are people who might have started volunteering at that time but didn't get the opportunity and then haven't started afterwards.

But there are lots—. I think, during COVID, we definitely saw lots of social enterprises massively pivoting the type of work they were doing as a result of lockdown and restrictions and everything in that really agile way—changing what they were doing to make the most impact in that community. So, it will be interesting to see whether the positive learning from that has stayed. I think digital probably is one example of that, actually. People were forced to go online, and maybe they wouldn't have otherwise, and then have carried on following that. Maybe that's not in the best way, and maybe there's more that they could do to actually do that in a better, more confident, more secure way, but that could be one example of where that has happened.

Yes. Is there any sense of competition, would you say, Dan, between the community sector, community groups and town and community councillors? Are they sometimes competing on the same territory, as it were?

I guess something that's going to come through in a lot of this work is inconsistency across Wales, because there are some examples where there that's really positive co-operation or where social enterprises or community groups have actually been started by town and community councils. That's a great example of where it can work really effectively, and there are examples of positive relationships. But then, there may be examples, as well—and I think that came through in the Building Communities Trust response—about that lack of confidence. It's natural that there's going to be that inconsistency across Wales and different experiences, and different experiences over time, as well, when different people are elected or different people are in roles. But I think, where there is that lack of confidence, that could be an issue, but, hopefully, our role is to say where there are positive experiences and then to draw on them and how that can be shared across the country.

Would you have a role, then, Dan, talking about that variance within the town and community councils—some are quite large and many are very small, really. Do you have a view as to whether larger and, hopefully, better resourced town and community councils would be better for community groups, would offer more support for community groups, or not?

Thinking about that and the impact of the size, but also the different levels of capacity and resources available to them, that's something that we see across different sectors. It's not just the town and community council sector. In the social enterprise sector, for example, in communities where there are more people, more people with skills, more people with time, experience, more money circulating locally, there are more social enterprises that are started. That's not the only factor. There are lots of other factors, as well, but that is a trend. So, that's not just an issue for the town and community council sector, I'd say; it's something across all people trying to support and develop communities. Finding your way to make that growth and development more systematic and less reliant on the individuals you happen to have—. We all know individuals in communities who are really driven, really skilled and make things happen. I think, at the moment, we're quite reliant on those people to make change happen, whereas we could do it in a more systematic way.

One interesting thing on the side: we did a bit of research recently for one local authority and one element of it was their relationship with town and community councils. So, we interviewed clerks, community and town councillors and staff in some of the town and community councils, and the size of the town and community council also impacted the relationship that they felt they had between each other—so, between the local authority and the town and community council. So, for larger town and community councils, they said that the relationship they had with the local authority was good and consistently good, but the smaller town and community councils said that, where there were good, positive personal relationships, the relationship was fine, but, otherwise, they felt ignored, seen as a hassle, a top-down approach. So, I think the size is impacting the relationship in different ways, and it would make sense that that would also then filter down to the relationship with the communities. That's something that's come through in some research that we've done recently, and it could be interesting to note.

I see. Okay. If you haven't already, perhaps you could share that with the committee, Dan. Okay. James Evans.

Yes. Thank you very much, Cadeirydd. I'm just interested in the amount—. We all know that community and town council support a lot of local organisations, a lot of local charities, but there is variability across Wales in, actually, how much funding they do provide. What levels of variability do you see across Wales in terms of what community and town councils are funding in terms of the charitable sector and how they're supporting people, as well?

I think there are massive variances, and that's come through in the written evidence. Again, I guess it goes back to the previous answer—where there are communities with more access to more resources, it's natural that that's going to happen. Thinking about how to change that and how to improve the level of finance available to community groups and local social enterprises and everything, moving toward seeing the potential role that town and community councils can have in the economic agenda that Cwmpas is supporting around community wealth building, rebalancing local economies and that type of thing, if we see town and community councils as assets within that agenda, hopefully there'll be more of an impetus on them to think about how they're using their money and the funding that's made available to community groups. Also, it would then help with engagement with this layer of government, because if there's a clear role for this layer of government in that agenda, hopefully, that would then lead to higher levels of engagement. So, I think that's the main thing that came through from this.

But then, moving on slightly, the type of support that they can give can be more than financial, as well. And coming through, in terms of the first level, would be raising awareness, supporting groups with consultations and supporting awareness of community groups within the local community, to then supporting with alternative sources of funding—you know, supporting with bids, community shares, providing that seed funding to then providing land and buildings that the councils could have ownership of, and then, finally, that end goal of these town and community councils using their own initiative and entrepreneurialism to start their own vehicles for these community groups. There are examples of that in Wales. That would be a really proactive way of doing that where that funding doesn’t necessarily exist.

Do you think people aren't, sometimes, aware of what community councils can offer? People always go to local government, to the Welsh Government, to Senedd Members to ask for funding and support, but do you think, sometimes, community councils perhaps don't promote themselves, actually, for the funding that they can offer to community groups, as well? Do you think that that's something that, perhaps, needs to be done a little bit more? They do take quite a substantial chunk of precept money from local taxpayers. So, do you think that that's something that, perhaps, needs to be promoted more, and so, when people have got an idea of a project or how to do something, actually, the local town and community councils could be an easier avenue to get support and funding from than some of the more bureaucratic structures that you have in, say, local government or central Government?

Yes. As you say, that would probably be an advantage for this layer of government, compared to other ones, and also you'd hope that this layer of government would be more embedded within their local community anyway. So, if that isn't coming through enough, then that's something that I think should be prioritised. But then it goes back, as has come through in other bits of evidence, to that lack of engagement with local communities—why is that happening across Wales? Why are some doing it more than others? I think that bit of research that we've done could be replicated across Wales, to be honest, to find out—. There is going to be such an inconsistent picture across Wales, naturally, because of the different nature of the communities, but finding out how that can be done and how these town and community councils, and what they can offer, can be more embedded within the local ecosystem—. I think there is a lot to learn in Wales from that, and it could create a lot of value for the communities and social enterprise sector.

In your written evidence, you give us a bit of an example of community-led housing that was done in Pembrokeshire and, actually, that's the local community council saying that they identified some gaps in the area and the need for affordable housing in the area. Do you think that there needs to be a lot more support for community councils to develop those ideas? Most community councils, God bless them, will oppose, actually, any affordable housing developments in their area, but some of them actually take the proactive approach and say, 'Well, let's go and do it ourselves.' Do you think that there should be some support for them with, perhaps, a little bit of seed funding from perhaps the Government, in a way, to try and help them do these types of things?

Yes. I think the advantage of the community-led housing model is, obviously, that that housing is going to be developed with the community at the heart of it, so it's less likely to have that local opposition, because they're fully consulted and proactively engaged with it from the beginning. So, we work with One Voice Wales on this. We've presented at conferences and done presentations for town and community councils across Wales to try to promote this. So, the support that the Communities Creating Homes team can offer is there and we have worked with town and community councils to try to develop that, as you said, in the written report. But, there's definitely potential for that across Wales.

It's interesting, in the written evidence, we gave the example of Pembrokeshire, and then there are two other town and community councils now that we're working with in Pembrokeshire. I think that's an example of once there is an example of good work in a local community and the benefits that can be gathered from this type of partnership and work, it filters across and it can act as a catalyst for more work to be done—in this case it's in Pembrokeshire, but that can be replicated across different parts of Wales. So, yes, in terms of the housing crisis in Wales, we're really optimistic about the role that community-led housing can play in that, and I think town and community councils can be a huge asset towards supporting that.