Council boss had shares in firm that got £38m grant
Chief Reporter A COUNCIL leader who resigned over a perceived conflict of interest had bought shares in a company that received funding of £38.5m from the City Deal on whose Cabinet he sat, we can reveal.
But Councillor David Poole, who resigned last week as leader of Caerphilly Council, said the semi-conductor firm IQE had been awarded the investment before he bought shares in it. The former leader also claimed he had been advised by a senior council officer that he did not need to declare his shareholding in the firm.
Cllr Poole referred himself to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales after the Wales Audit Office raised concerns.
As the leader of Caerphilly Council, he served on the Cabinet of the Cardiff Capital Region City Deal with nine other local authority leaders.
In May 2017 the City Deal’s Cabinet, including Cllr Poole, agreed to contribute £38.5m from its Wider Investment Fund towards the establishment by IQE of “a major, cutting-edge facility, as an anchor in the region for highend production of compound semiconductors”.
It was the first such investment since the £1.2bn City Deal had been formally signed two months before.
Last month the Wales Audit Office published its annual Audit of Financial Statements Report on the Cardiff Capital Region City Deal (CCRCD).
It contained a section which read: “[Our] work has identified an issue in respect of the Registration of Members’ Interests within one authority and the processes and procedures in place to notify CCRCD’s Director and Monitoring Officer of those interests. Consequently, we intend to write to CCRCD’s Director, and the local authority concerned, in relation to this matter in the near future.”
We have established that the matter referred to was Cllr Poole’s purchase of shares in IQE. When we asked him to explain what had happened, Cllr Poole said: “I had some savings in the bank, but the interest on them was reduced to 0.5%. I decided to buy some shares and because I knew IQE, decided to buy shares in it. That was in October or November 2018, well after the investment made by the City Deal in IQE.”
Cllr Poole said he had been advised by a senior council officer that he did not need to declare an interest. However, in June this year IQE was discussed by the City Deal Cabinet, and Cllr Poole said he felt it appropriate that he should declare his shareholding in the company at that time.
Earlier this month Cllr Poole crossed out his declaration of interest in IQE, indicating that he no longer had a shareholding in the company.
Colin Mann, leader of the opposition Plaid Cymru group on Caerphilly Council, said: “Cllr Poole is a very experienced councillor and was a senior council officer before retirement, so will be well aware of both the fundamental necessity to declare interests and the issue of conflict of interest. It is always the ultimate responsibility of a councillor to declare an interest. He knows that well, so why didn’t he declare that interest immediately he bought the IQE shares?”