David Bowles, Interim Managing Director of Anglesey County Council, has released the full text of a letter he sent to all Councillors, part of which has recently been leaked.
Mr Bowles said that “the correspondence which had been marked as ‘Strictly Private and Confidential’ has been leaked, at least in part, in the past few days. I find this breach of confidentiality frankly a disgrace.”
He continued, “The motives seem to be to undermine the Council’s recovery programme.”
“As it is now in the public domain that I warned Members about their conduct in relation to a senior member of staff I think it important that it is now made public as to why I issued such a warning. There are proper ways for dealing with concerns about staff. It is clear that there has been a concerted effort to undermine Lynn Ball based on false allegations, smear and innuendo. Being a Council Monitoring Officer, a key statutory role, can be a tough job and bring the post holder into conflict with Members; in Anglesey it is especially tough. I will not accept any member of staff being undermined for doing their job professionally.”
Council Leader, Councillor Clive McGregor, said, “I support David Bowles in the actions he has taken and is taking to modernise the Council and improve relationships between Officers and Members. Whoever leaked this letter has set the Council back. However, let us be clear if any individual Member sets out on such a course of action and based on malicious acts causes losses to the Council we have an obligation to the Council tax payers to pursue that Member to cover the losses. This warning should be taken seriously.”
Councillor John Chorlton, Leader of the Opposition, added, “To leak this letter in this way in the past few days shows that some Members of the Council have not changed and are incapable of changing. They should go and the sooner the better. Ms. Ball’s job is often to tell us things we as Members do not want to hear. She has the guts to do that and we should respect her for it, not attack her.”
The way the letter was leaked gave the impression that there was a general threat of pursing Councillors for final loss arising from any complaint against staff. This statement about pursuit of Members was only made in relation to the series of allegations against Lynn Ball, which Mr Bowles has described as a “poisonous vendetta” and not made in good faith”. In such circumstances Mr Bowles is of the view that any financial loss to Council taxpayers should be recovered from those Members who caused it.
It was not designed to inhibit genuine concerns about staff and staff appraisal processes are being improved and for senior staff will involve elected Members.
