In case anyone was wondering how much public money has been spent so far on the 'Wellness Village', the luxury private spa development at the Delta Lake swamp, then we now have a few figures, well, what they're prepared to tell us about anyway.
The project is mired in scandal, from rigged tenders to allegations of personal enrichment. Five investigations are underway and no one will touch Mr James' 'legacy to the county' with a barge pole.
Freedom of Information requests to the council have revealed that the total spend, up to the end of 2018 is an astonishing £2.2 million.
The council paid Arup a staggering £234,250 for reports for the planning application and paid itself £30,500 for the planning fees. The total costs associated with the planning application are around £340,000. That's without the costs associated with the farcical planning committee meeting earlier this month and the no doubt generous expenses for the man from Arup.
An earlier request (see 2017 blog post here) showed £750,000 on ground prep work and the latest FOI shows £481,239 was spent on design work for phase 1.
The council have spent £47,000, at least, on external legal advice.
A separate FOI, for general council expenditure on consultants turned up another £35k+ relating to the City Deal office, £3780 of that was for a Bath based PR consultant specialising in 'making words better'...
As you can see from both FOIs here (2017), and here (today's), some of these costs are shared, or hope to be shared, with the Welsh Government and other 'partners'.
All public cash.
The City Deal funding has yet to be committed and is all on hold due to the ongoing investigations. The flawed Business Case for the Wellness Village has not even been approved yet, unsurprisingly, and, due to the investigations surrounding the project, it's all on hold as well.
So far, not a brick has been laid and the pear-shaped planning approval is subject to Welsh Government call-in requests and a u-turn from NRW.
Given that next Monday the Exec Board will outline £9.3m in budget cuts, a rise in Council tax of 4.89%, job losses and a budget shortfall of £2.7m, it makes you wonder who has been dishing out the Wellness cash with such liberal abandon...and exactly whose pockets have been lined with silver...
Are our councillors, and the Plaid led administration aware of this massive waste of money? Or have they all been dazzled and duped by the Emperor's New Clothes...?
Also on the agenda is £40m worth of borrowing for the rapidly sinking Wellness Village, this figure is now likely to be a lot higher, perhaps over £200m.
On that particular point, what of the 'Accountable Officer', our soon to be retiring chief executive Mark James? As I've also said, (here and elsewhere) he needs to be investigated over all this, preferably by the police.
Without wishing to repeat myself he has been part of these dodgy deals from the start, he has his own undeclared private business interests and is an all round dishonest, manipulative individual. He's left a trail of taxpayer draining vanity projects from Boston to Llanelli and is not averse to siphoning off public money to boost the Mark James coffers.
He should be locked up, and, for goodness sake, someone hurry up and take the chequebook off him before he bankrupts Carmarthenshire.
Further recent FOIs include the Wellness Village Collaboration Agreement with Sterling and, while I'm here, an earlier unrelated request for credit card spending details.
Please search the blog for background and recent posts concerning the Wellness project and City Deal. And mentions in Private Eye...
The project is mired in scandal, from rigged tenders to allegations of personal enrichment. Five investigations are underway and no one will touch Mr James' 'legacy to the county' with a barge pole.
Freedom of Information requests to the council have revealed that the total spend, up to the end of 2018 is an astonishing £2.2 million.
The council paid Arup a staggering £234,250 for reports for the planning application and paid itself £30,500 for the planning fees. The total costs associated with the planning application are around £340,000. That's without the costs associated with the farcical planning committee meeting earlier this month and the no doubt generous expenses for the man from Arup.
An earlier request (see 2017 blog post here) showed £750,000 on ground prep work and the latest FOI shows £481,239 was spent on design work for phase 1.
The council have spent £47,000, at least, on external legal advice.
A separate FOI, for general council expenditure on consultants turned up another £35k+ relating to the City Deal office, £3780 of that was for a Bath based PR consultant specialising in 'making words better'...
As you can see from both FOIs here (2017), and here (today's), some of these costs are shared, or hope to be shared, with the Welsh Government and other 'partners'.
All public cash.
The City Deal funding has yet to be committed and is all on hold due to the ongoing investigations. The flawed Business Case for the Wellness Village has not even been approved yet, unsurprisingly, and, due to the investigations surrounding the project, it's all on hold as well.
So far, not a brick has been laid and the pear-shaped planning approval is subject to Welsh Government call-in requests and a u-turn from NRW.
Given that next Monday the Exec Board will outline £9.3m in budget cuts, a rise in Council tax of 4.89%, job losses and a budget shortfall of £2.7m, it makes you wonder who has been dishing out the Wellness cash with such liberal abandon...and exactly whose pockets have been lined with silver...
Are our councillors, and the Plaid led administration aware of this massive waste of money? Or have they all been dazzled and duped by the Emperor's New Clothes...?
Also on the agenda is £40m worth of borrowing for the rapidly sinking Wellness Village, this figure is now likely to be a lot higher, perhaps over £200m.
On that particular point, what of the 'Accountable Officer', our soon to be retiring chief executive Mark James? As I've also said, (here and elsewhere) he needs to be investigated over all this, preferably by the police.
Without wishing to repeat myself he has been part of these dodgy deals from the start, he has his own undeclared private business interests and is an all round dishonest, manipulative individual. He's left a trail of taxpayer draining vanity projects from Boston to Llanelli and is not averse to siphoning off public money to boost the Mark James coffers.
He should be locked up, and, for goodness sake, someone hurry up and take the chequebook off him before he bankrupts Carmarthenshire.
Further recent FOIs include the Wellness Village Collaboration Agreement with Sterling and, while I'm here, an earlier unrelated request for credit card spending details.
Please search the blog for background and recent posts concerning the Wellness project and City Deal. And mentions in Private Eye...
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