CONSERVATIVE councillors have been accused of “talking down” a council they used to run and of “never having a good word” to say about it.

The Conservatives were ousted from power in Monmouthshire at the last local government elections in May 2022, from what had been the only authority where the party held majority control in Wales.

They were succeeded by a minority Labour administration, which a year later struck a coalition deal with the council’s only Green Party councillor, and under new Welsh legislation the council has had to produce an annual “self-assessment report” every year since 2022.

The latest report was presented to the full council’s September meeting and listed what the council’s leadership considers to be successes against its agreed targets, listed in its community and corporate plan.

Those range from reducing the council’s carbon emissions, allocating an extra £2 million to its infrastructure budget with the majority spent on road improvements and schools outperforming other counties in Wales at GCSE in 2024.

Conservative councillor for Gobion Fawr Alistair Neill said the report had marked the council’s education performance as “good”, but said results aren’t compared with “excellence but the rest of Wales” and that international testing has shown Wales to be below average in reading, writing and mathematics.

Cllr Neill, chairman of the Performance and Overview Scrutiny Committee, said all councillors would congratulate schools on results, but the self assessment report is intended to measure the council’s peformance.

Labour member Armand Watts hit back and accused the Tories of talking the council down and claimed they continually praised themselves while running the authority.

“I think the authority has had it problems, but has has worked really hard this year under extremely difficult circumstances,” said Cll Watts who represents Bulwark and Thornwell in Chepstow.

“The level of attainment in education this year has been amazing. It really hurts me to listen to any members of this authority talk it down in some way.”

He praised director of education Will McLean and said: “The director has led the service in some very difficult circumstances with next to no money at all and we’ve had a remarkable year.

“I feel really passionate about it. I think it is really poor of the Conservatives to start to try and do us down when we’ve had years and years before of back slapping and self-congratulatory nonsense.

“It was a sea change to see this Conservative administration go into opposition, and all we’ve had is whining and moaning... they’ve never got a good word to say about this authority and if they do it is couched in criticism.”

The self-assessment report, which marked performance against environmental targets as “adequate”, and all other measures which related to how the council is addressing inequality, supporting the economy, addressing homelessness, supporting the vulnerable and education as “good”.

Cllr Neill said the council had failed to take on board suggestions from his scrutiny committee on how the report could be improved, or its repeated call to set up a peer assessment with other councils and raised what he considered significant issues that had been overlooked.

The council approved the report.