County Councillor Barred From Public Office

A Pembrokeshire councillor has been suspended from office until the end of November for breaching the authority’s code of conduct over a planning matter on behalf of a friend he had holidayed in Mexico with.

Back in May, at an extraordinary meeting of Pembrokeshire County Council’s standards committee,  Milford Haven North county councillor Alan Dennison was found to have breached the code of conduct for members, and was suspended from office for a period of four months.

However, Cllr Dennison was able to keep performing his role as a county councillor while an appeal he lodged with the Adjudication Panel for Wales against the decision was in process.

That concluded yesterday, July 28, all seven of his grounds for appeal failing.

The May committee found Cllr Dennison failed to declare personal and prejudicial interests in relation to a call by an applicant known to him, who he had lent money to and holidayed in Mexico with, to have a planning application decided by committee rather than by officers.

In an application before Pembrokeshire County Council, Lee Bridges had sought permission for retrospective engineering works to provide an external dining area at Masonic Hall, Imperial Function Centre, Milford Haven.

The application was due to be decided by planning officers, but, at the request of Cllr Dennison on behalf of local member Councillor Terry Davies, who was unable to attend due to a family issue, an unsuccessful call for it to be decided by councillors was brought before the county council’s planning delegation panel meeting of February 2025.

The May 2026 special standards meeting heard of a long string of connections between Cllr Dennison and Mr Bridges.

These included the councillor had been secretary, from 2018-2022, of the local Masonic Lodge which owned the building where the works took place, and becoming director of Imperial Hall Ltd, Mr Bridges’ company, from 2020-2023 after providing a since-repaid loan to him.

The meeting also heard Cllr Dennison was aware of the planning history regarding the applicant, who he and his family had gone on a two-week holiday with Mr Bridges and his family to Mexico, their connection “more than a casual acquaintanceship”.

The committee also heard the issue of a potential prejudicial interest was raised with Cllr Dennison by the council’s monitoring officer, advising him to withdraw representations at the delegation meeting due to a “perception of bias and predetermination”.

After concerns were raised by councillors, a complaint was made to the Ombudsman by Assistant chief Executive Richard Brown; the Ombudsman concluding a member of the public with the knowledge of the facts would see a potential prejudicial interest.

Cllr Dennison, at the meeting, said his representations at the delegation meeting were only made in a ‘pp’ signed-for form on behalf of Cllr Davies, saying it was not his but Cllr Davies’ call, he only attending the meeting as a member of the public.

The administrative term pp stands for per procurationem, a Latin phrase roughly meaning “on behalf of”.

Members found that Cllr Dennison had a personal interest based on his “close personal association with Mr Bridges,” along with Cllr Dennison being a member of the Masonic Lodge which occupied the land and building, along with the ongoing friendship effectively made him “an advocate”.

They also found that Cllr Dennison should have left the public gallery as soon as he became aware of the item under discussion, in accordance with Ombudsman guidelines.

Defending himself personally, Cllr Dennison said he, as a councillor, was “driven for the benefit of the people of Pembrokeshire,” with his councillor salary donated to a dogs’ hospital charity in Sri Lanka.

The Adjudication Panel for Wales application for permission to appeal identified seven grounds of appeal, none of which Judge Meleri Tudur of the Adjudication Panel for Wales in a July 28 report considered to have a reasonable prospect of success.

The first ground of the appeal, that the request to call in the planning application was entirely written and conceptualised by Councillor Terry Davies, with no personal exercise of power by the Applicant”.

“The main plank of the applicant’s contention is that he signed the request form ‘pp Cllr Terry Davies’ and did not therefore have any personal ownership of the contents of the document,” was concluded as “within the range of reasonable decisions available to the committee and does not demonstrate an arguable error of law on their part”.

The second ground was “that the Standards Committee approached consideration of the question of whether a close personal association was demonstrated between the applicant and the planning applicant, applying the test subjectively based on historical ties rather than evaluating the exact nature of the administrative ‘pp’ action”.

Again, this was found to have no grounds, being “a disagreement by the applicant with the Standards Committee’s conclusions but does not identify an arguable error of law on their part,” as was a third ground that the request to call-in the planning item “was entirely written and conceptualised by Cllr Davies”.

The fourth ground “that the applicant was not bound to leave the public gallery whilst the request was considered by the Planning Delegation Panel” was also found to be not arguable.

The fifth ground “that at no time, either verbally or in writing did the Monitoring Officer dispute the Applicant’s comment it was she who had mentioned prejudicial interest was a grey area,” did “not detract from the fact that the Monitoring Officer concluded that in the Applicant’s position, there was a personal and prejudicial conflict and that he should withdraw the application”.

The sixth ground “that the suggested breach of completing the referral request form is impossible given no advice has been mentioned by the monitoring officer regarding the form completion” did “not identify an arguable error of law on the part of the Standards Committee and has no reasonable prospect of success”.

The seventh ground was that “the sanction of suspension for four months is excessive”.

The Judge stated: “Whilst it can be said that it is generally arguable that a sanction imposed was too harsh or too lenient, in this case, given the findings of four separate breaches and the Standards Committee’s reasoned decision making leading to the conclusion, I am satisfied that the ground does not have a reasonable prospect of success.”

The report concluded: “Since I have concluded that there are no reasonable prospects of success for any of the grounds of application, it is not necessary to convene an Appeals Tribunal in this case.”

Since that decision, a message has been sent to all councillors from Rhian Young, the council’s monitoring officer and Head of Law and Governance confirmed the four-month suspension, effective from today, July 29: “During the period of suspension, Cllr Dennison will not be entitled to undertake any duties as a councillor, attend meetings of the council or its committees, or represent the council in any official capacity.

“He will resume his duties on November 29.”