Cyngor Gwynedd Council - One Child In Care Costing £25,000 A Week...

Cyngor Gwynedd council held a meeting of their Governance and Audit Committee on Thursday, 16th January, 2025. It was not webcast and so not available for viewing later by councillors and the public.

The agenda pack can be found here - 
https://democracy.gwynedd.llyw.cymru//documents/g5292/Public%20reports%20pack%2016th-Jan-2025%2010.00%20Governance%20and%20Audit%20Committee.pdf?T=10

A member of the committee raised concerns that the Plaid Cymru councillor, Dafydd Meurig, was not in attendance at the meetings...

The minutes of the previous meeting contain -  
           
Many people would challenge this statement especially in light of recent complaints that have avoided proper scrutiny. 

As the committee are probably not aware of these complaints pushed through via the cabinet they simply accepted the report...

It was believed that the performance of cyngor Gwynedd's information department in dealing with FOI requests was to be discussed. The agenda simply informs -
Note: Freedom of Information Requests Audit –
a request to consider that the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 are addressed by the Committee – the Committee to receive an annual report setting out the Council's Arrangements to deal with Freedom of Information matters.

Under the 'Implementing The Decisions Of The Committee, in relation to the -
REVENUE BUDGET 2024/25 - END OF AUGUST 2024 REVIEW -

The intention was for the Statutory Director of Social Services to provide an update during the 28/11/24
Committee on the work involved with the overspend in the Department for Adults, Health and Wellbeing.
Due to IT issues during the meeting, the Director was unable to report. The intent is for him to present/report in the next committee.
An update on the current situation - the outcome of the end of November 2024 review will be reported in a
separate item on the Committee's programme.

The director did inform the meeting that one child was costing the council £25,000 a week (£1.25 million a year). Huw Dylan Owen also made mention that one child was living in a caravan. The audio was not great for this part of the conversation.

One committee member asked questions of the director - the director did not answer them...
Towards the end of the meeting, the chair did bring attention to this and told the member that she would ensure the questions were answered albeit outside of the meeting.

The Capital Programme was discussed, along with the Savings Overview and the Forward Work Programme. The Audit Wales report was also presented.

Dewi Morgan, the council's head of finance appeared to take a swipe at the officer in attendance from Wales Audit, complaining that the media channel S4C had read the report and presumably raised concerns with the figures. Once again, the audio for this section was poor...

The Wales Audit officer simply responded by telling Morgan that the figures used were those that Morgan himself had supplied....

The committee also heard concerns from a member that the planning committee was refusing applications for social housing in the Llyn area and that their decisions were putting schools in the area at risk. The chair thanked the councillor for raising the issue.

Something is very wrong within Gwynedd council...

 

Cyngor Gwynedd Council - Falsus In Uno, Falsus In Omnibus

Cyngor Gwynedd council have now appointed Huw Dylan Owen as Director of Social Services. The former Director had no experience of social service matters so someone with the correct background for the position hopefully meant that the past maladministration and failings within the services would not be repeated...

Bearing in mind, that Gwynedd council have admitted that the culture within the council needs to change, it is disappointing that the present director appears to be behaving in the same manner as his predecessor. In his annual report, presented to the council earlier this year, he states - .
...no young person from Gwynedd has been remanded since 2020.

This is not true and while the council may argue this was correct at the time of writing - it was most certainly not at the time of publication. Mr Owen's generic report also states -
Another example is that we refused to welcome Youth Justice inspectors as they were unable to guarantee bilingual inspectors, and they agreed to delay their inspection until this was possible.

How long ago was the last inspection?
It is unacceptable that the youth justice inspectors are not bilingual, but this does mean that the service avoids inspection by an outside agency and should be of concern to all...

Moving on, Mr Owen mentions feedback and recommendations from government regulators, perhaps not realising Gwynedd council has a history of agreeing to recommendations and then ignoring them...

The director goes on -
Unfortunately, cases have arisen where things go wrong and where we have not provided a service of the expected high standard. There is a statutory complaints procedure in place to ensure that we receive feedback, and respond to any concerns so that we do not repeat mistakes. Reference has already been made to the main trends of the complaints for this year, and an official summary will appear before the Care Scrutiny Committee in September 2023. We intend to place our complaints report and comments on the Council’s website in the future so that they are available to the public.

Gwynedd council's democratic services were recently asked for a copy of the report that the director informed at a previous meeting was available for members on request. It took a second email asking for an update to which an officer replied with -

The annual Social Services complaints handling reports have been presented to Cabinet and Scrutiny in the past but the reports for 2022/23 are yet to be scheduled to be presented to a committee meeting.

This word salad from the democracy service ignores the fact that the statutory documents have not been presented for proper scrutiny for nearly five years and confirms yet another statement from the director's report that is incorrect.

The children and adults complaints handling reports are important documents. Alongside the Director's Annual report they are the first documents to be read by government agencies as a snapshot of how the departments are performing. They may also be read by investigators when more serious concerns are raised.

A reminder that these reports have been called out for their disingenuity and data manipulation since 2016 and no complaints handling report has been presented to the care scrutiny committee since 2019...

For what its worth, the report from the director can be found here -
https://www.gwynedd.llyw.cymru/en/Council/Documents---Council/Performance-and-spending/Adroddiad-y-Cyfarwyddwr-Gwasanaethau-Cymdeithasol-22-23-SAES-2.pdf

Something is very wrong within Gwynedd council...