Council whistleblowing policy to be reviewed

Updates to Powys County Council’s whistleblowing policy could go before all councillors later this year.

The aim is to give employees, the public, and councillors confidence in making any concerns known.

At a meeting of the council’s Liberal Democrat/Labour Cabinet, senior councillors received the recommendations of a working group that had been tasked by the Governance and Audit committee to look into the policy.

Newtown county councillor Peter Lewington (Conservative), who chaired the working group, brought the report in front of cabinet and said: “This review arose from the need of our whistleblowing procedures to give confidence to members of staff, the public etc when they raise concerns about conduct or practice which are potentially illegal or corrupt, improper, unsafe or unethical, or indeed amount to malpractice or are inconsistent with standards and policies.

“So that they feel confident and are encouraged to act on their concerns and report them to use and our investigations must be robust and lawful.”

He explained that the whistleblowing policy – which is embedded in the council’s constitution – was tested by a number of fictional scenarios against the framework.

Cllr Lewington added: “Whilst the fictional cases were comprehensive and covered all the scenarios we could think of it is acknowledged that true test will only be when the policy is actually used in real life situations.”

The recommendations in the report include updating the frequently asked questions section as well as an annual policy review and report on its use to go in front of the Governance and Audit committee.

This is to ensure that: “actions have been followed through with improvements in place.”

Head of Legal Services and Monitoring Officer, Clive Pinney, explained that the recommendation would go before a meeting of the Democratic Services committee and “if” an amendment to the constitution is needed it would go before a full council meeting.

Cabinet noted the report.

The reason behind the review actually comes from a real-life scenario:

In December 2023, accusations that the council had attempted to cover up irregular use of a council credit card by the former headteacher at the North Powys PRU (Pupil Referral Unit) in Newtown were published by media outlet Nation Cymru.

A whistleblower had reported unusual purchases made in 2021 to the council.

On being told in September 2022 that no evidence of fraud could be found by the council and the investigation had been concluded, the whistleblower took their concerns to Audit Wales.

The problem then became known to Plaid Cymru group leader on Powys County Council, Cllr Elwyn Vaughan, who raised concerns about the handling of the complaint with the council’s chief executive Emma Palmer.

In January 2024, at a meeting of the Governance and Audit committee, Cllr Lewington had pushed for the Newtown PRU whistleblowing case to be included in the review so that “lessons” could be learned from it.

By Elgan Hearn, Local democracy Reporting Service