CALLS have been made for a Ceredigion Cabinet member to resign after he was accused of mismanaging proposals to shake-up Ceredigion County Council’s technical services department.

Alun Williams, the council Cabinet member for transport, waste and carbon management, came under fire after it emerged that consultants PricewaterhouseCooper would be paid for drawing up proposals to privatise refuse collection, the council’s fleet management and parking services, despite Cabinet members backing a scrutiny committee for the measures should be scrapped.

Cllr Williams, who described being a current Cabinet member as a “poisoned chalice” with the scale of cuts the council must make, insisted that the scale of savings the council needed to find justified consideration of privatising some services.

But Cllr Ceredig Davies accused him of costing the authority thousands of pounds by backing the proposals in the report before arguing against them in a public meeting.

Cllr Davies said: “This whole process has been mismanaged by the Cabinet and the Cabinet member of this department.

“When it came in front of the scrutiny committee, the Cabinet member tried to distance himself from something that he had been selling to the programme board. He hung his officers out to dry."

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