3. Will the First Minister make a statement on the disciplinary process for senior officers in local government? OAQ54487

I thank the Member for that. I have always been clear that, once the disciplinary process at Caerphilly council came to a conclusion, the regulations agreed by the National Assembly in 2006, and their implementation, should be reviewed on an all-Wales basis. The current system has not worked and needs to be reformed.

Disreputable, dishonest and should have been dismissed long ago—these are the views of Caerphilly residents about Anthony O’Sullivan, the disgraced and now finally dismissed chief executive of Caerphilly County Borough Council. He was sacked last week after being found by the whole council of being guilty of gross misconduct. There were concerns raised about the way he was appointed by the then Plaid Cymru-led authority back in 2014, when the post wasn’t advertised to external competition. That rule was changed in 2014 by the Labour Welsh Government. Will the First Minister give his commitment today that the Oldham review will consider all aspects of recruitment and disciplinary practices for senior officers, and ensure that the misery that has been inflicted on the Caerphilly county borough for the past seven years cannot be repeated?

Llywydd, can I think the Member for his continued attention to this mater? One of the first questions I answered on the floor of the Assembly as the then local government Minister was a question from Hefin David asking that the processes that have governed events at Caerphilly council should be reviewed, and I gave him an undertaking then that, once the process came to a conclusion, such a review would be instituted. And Members will have seen the written statement issued yesterday by Julie James, setting out the terms of that review, and the rapid timescales within which we expect it to report.

In the meantime, as Hefin David has said, principal councils are now required to advertise publicly a chief officer role where the salary is £100,000 or more per annum, and that is absolutely the way in which those very important posts should be made known to the public, and competed for on the basis of the best possible field of candidates. I look forward to the work that Peter Oldham QC will now carry out. I want to make sure that the whole process that was previously agreed on the floor of this Assembly is thoroughly reviewed. I want him to look at the way in which those rules have been implemented on the ground, in case there are flaws of implementation as well as any difficulties in the rule book itself. And I look forward to us being able to come back to the Assembly as rapidly as we are able to, in order to ensure that the events that have unfolded in Caerphilly will not be repeated elsewhere.

First Minister, I'm sure you will agree that it is totally unacceptable for all concerned that the chief executive of a local authority can be suspended on full pay for more than six years. I understand the case of Caerphilly council's former chief executive is the longest running disciplinary case of its kind in local government history. It is estimated to have cost the council already more than £4 million, which could actually cover all the homelessness in Wales—you know, we are suffering at the moment. And this £4 million—. Mr O'Sullivan is reported to be taking his case to an employment tribunal now. You know and I know that—you have already indicated—the system needs to be reviewed and reformed. You said that earlier on the television. Can you advise when this review will be commenced and how long you expect this process to take, please? Because this situation cannot be allowed to occur again in future, at a huge cost to the public purse and to the life and the reputation of the individual involved in this case.

I thank the Member for that. As Members will have seen in the written statement issued yesterday by Julie James, Peter Oldham QC has now been appointed to undertake a rapid review of existing arrangements. That work has therefore already begun. We hope that that will report early in the new year, so it is a genuinely rapid review, and then we will report to the floor of the National Assembly on the conclusions that Mr Oldham reaches and bring forward any changes to existing regulations that we need to make in order to avoid the difficulties that have been experienced in recent times at Caerphilly.