The Workforce Partnership Council has addressed this issue in the round for local authorities and the First Minister gave an undertaking that, once the processes in Caerphilly have finished, we will undertake a review of disciplinary action for the top tiers of local authority officers. I don't think it's at all right to compare two local authorities in the way that you have, because a large number of other issues will have come to bear in how a local authority structures its corporate core: what services it delivers and why something may or may not cost more than at another local authority. 

The truth is that most local authorities are really struggling with austerity. They've had their budgets either flatlined or cut for the last nine years. We know that all local authorities are really struggling to deliver much-valued and welcome local services and most of them are doing a fine job in making very bad decisions in the sense that there are no good decisions when you're cutting services that people rely on.