Education Cabinet member has to hand parts of role over

A Llanidloes county councillor who has taken on the education portfolio at Powys County Council is having to hand large parts of his brief to another Cabinet member because of a conflict of interest.

The new education Portfolio holder Cllr Phyl Davies is a director in his family’s bus company, Llanidloes based Celtic Travel.

Celtic Travel provides bus services to and from schools in the the county.

It has been said in PCC meetings that transport costs in the county run at £68,000 a day or around £10 million a year.

A spokesman for PCC explained that transport had been put under the wing of Finance portfolio holder and Conservative group leader, Cllr Aled Davies.

The spokesman said: “Aled Davies already has responsibility for transport because of that issue.”

He explained that Cllr Aled Davies that this was, due to the business interests of Cllr Phyl Davies and former planning and economy portfolio holder Cllr Martin Weale who also owns a bus company Weales’s Wheels.

Because of this he explained, Cllr Aled Davies had looked after the scheme of building the bus stop/transport interchange in Llandrindod Wells which was opened earlier this month.

But, with council leader Cllr Rosemarie Harris looking to add two more cabinet roles and re-aligning the portfolio’s to fit the way the current services and departments at PCC are organised, the transport portfolio could be moved somewhere else.

 

By Elgan Hearn, Local democracy Reporting Service