The ruling Labour group called on Cllr Davies to publicly withdraw his unfounded allegations, asserting that he is pursuing a personal vendetta and exhibiting gross misconduct.
Labour Councillors have said that these ‘unfounded’ allegations are not just damaging to the reputation of the Town Council, but also constitute defamation of character of the Town and County Councillors.
Carmarthenshire News Online reached out to Cllr Terry Davies for a comment on the accusations he made against the Town Council:
“No I have not accused any Councillor of taking any sort of bribe,” the Plaid Councillor told us.
“The YouTube article was in reference to Keir Starmer and Vaughn Gething. With VG (Vaughan Gething) accepting the £200,000, which we know.
“I had the complaint from Arfon the clerk, as Labour members said I did say that,[but] the post certainly did not say that. After carful consideration with the clerk I did add to the article to take any misleading point away for clarity.
“I did not intend to offend anyone but surely this (the comments) did embarrass Labour, I felt it best to exercise some clarity and apologise if my remarks did offend.
“As you know, in opposition I do have the right to scrutiny for the electorate and to question and debate on such expenses and donations.
“I placed a personal apology if anyone mis-read the post and I certainly did not intend to give that impression. I did not target any individual in Llanelli as to the party or individual in Llanelli accepting any amounts of money in donations.
“The reference to Llanelli Town Council with Labour is where Labour voted to reward themselves financially by introducing a large figure for expenses for the first time in the history of Llanelli Town Council for each meeting and this is amounting to over £20K taken from the council account this year, effectively from the two most deprived wards of Carmarthenshire.”
Carmarthenshire News Online reached out to Llanelli Town Council to verify these payments and to clarify what the formal arrangement was. The Town Council obliged us with this response:
“The Town Council has in accordance with the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales’ Annual Report approved determinations in relation to Councillor Expenses.
“These are approved at the Town Council Annual Adjourned Meeting in May. Link to the minutes of that meeting held in May 2024 is below, a similar decision was made in May 2023.
“The payments made are published on the Town Council website, the most recent statement published can be found at the following link.”
Returning to Cllr Terry Davies’ statement, he said:
“If you check last years expenses against this years expenses and who has claimed on those expenses I think you will be shocked.
“The post has been vetted by independent participants in discussion and the following statement from one is “Terry I see no intention of that here. Clearly the readership knew what I was talking about, but Labour is very unhappy and obviously embarrassed on the exposure.
“Labour see the article as damming but the opposition sees there are questions that need to be asked from the community, as they had no say in the democratic process with the Town Council going from a voluntary position to a money motivating councillor position in mid term.
“Given the financial , fiscal challenges that the Town and County faces especially next year I see this as unfair on those struggling to find the money to pay the rates, even more so now that Keir Starmer has also cut the fuel grant to the OAP’s.”
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