To attend a public meeting of Gwynedd council or one of its committees, you are first met with a locked door to the building where the meetings take place. A sign instructs visitors to sign in at another building across the road 100 metres away.
There you are informed that if attending a meeting you do not have to sign in...
Returning to the venue - a public building - you then have to wait for someone to open the door for you to gain access. This can take some time and means you can miss the beginning of the meeting and cause disruption to others when you take your seat.
On leaving the meetings, members of the public are reporting they have been approached by a woman demanding to know who let them into the building. One visitor says they felt harangued by the official and had to walk away.
Another person who attended a meeting said that the committee he attended broke for lunch so he left the council chamber and walked down the stairs to the exit. The monitoring officer, Iwan Evans, stood at the bottom, staring at him. He nodded and said Hi - Evans ignored him...With Evans was Vera Jones, the Democratic Services manager, who approached him also asking how and why he was in the building and said she was asking as she was interested in how to improve things for those attending public meetings.
Jones was told that being allowed access to the public building, having a visitors book in the actual building and signage to the chamber would improve things for visitors. Jones agreed but did not give an explanation as to why these things are not already in place...
The visitor says that he felt so uncomfortable by Jones' questioning that he did not return to the committee meeting after the lunch break. One wonders if that was the intention of the two officers?
Have others had similar experiences when attending meetings?
Something is very wrong within Gwynedd council...
