A vote of no confidence in education portfolio holder Cllr Pete Roberts was not permitted due to the rules governing Powys County Council meetings.

Instead, opposition councillors were only able to symbolically stand to express their disapproval at the lack of political accountability, following the publication of the Estyn inspection report on Powys County Council’s education service.

The contents of the report were debated by councillors at an extraordinary meeting on Thursday, April 10. Published last month, the report highlighted a series of “poor” inspection results for secondary schools and schools for all ages in the county, alongside leadership weaknesses at all levels. Estyn issued four recommendations for the council to address.

During the meeting, councillors received a presentation from members of the Liberal Democrat/Labour cabinet, who outlined the council's response to the critical report. This is the third such report from Wales’ education watchdog since 2011.

Council leader, Liberal Democrat Cllr James Gibson-Watt said: “It’s important we apologise to the pupils, their families and the staff working in our schools for the shortcomings that have been identified.

“I take my share of responsibility for that; I speak for the rest of the cabinet and hopefully for the whole council in a shared responsibility and the report makes that abundantly clear.”

He believed the report to be a “curate’s egg” which showed the “peaks and troughs” that education in the county had gone through in recent years.

Cllr Gibson-Watt said: “Our task now is to make sure we don’t continue that cycle of decline and achievement, but put in place systems that will last for many years and consistently deliver sustained improvement.”

He believed there are “positive signs” and that the new leadership team in the department is rebuilding trust with schools “especially the secondary sector” and there is a “sound base” to improve.

Leader of the Reform UK group Cllr Iain McIntosh said: “I will not accept responsibility for these failures.

“The criticism is about political leadership; it’s not the entire council - it’s the cabinet.”

Powys Independents Cllr Jeremy Pugh said: “This failure has not been coming for a day or two - it’s been coming for an awful long time.

“Pete (Roberts), it’s time you showed some honour and integrity and fall on your sword.

“You are at the top and need to take responsibility.”

Cllr Pugh put forward a motion to hold vote of no confidence in Cllr Roberts.

However, council chairman Cllr Jonathan Wilkinson (Conservative) explained that this could not be allowed as the motion of no confidence needed to be submitted by 5pm the evening before the meeting.

Cllr Roberts said: “I have considered that question of should I step down since Estyn shared their report.

“The majority of areas that are not criticised are where I have brought my influence to bear.”

He believed that under his watch, the school transformation programme had been accelerated and that he had delivered on Welsh medium education as well as giving the “the appropriate challenge and support” to departmental staff.

He explained that he had spoken to teachers last week at Ysgol Maesydderwen in Ystradgynlais  who said they saw value in his “interventions”.

Cllr Roberts continued: “It is that confidence that I take. If the leader wants to remove me, so be it.

“But while I have the leader and the ruling group’s confidence, I will be moving forward on what is going right and working with officers to extend my skills and knowledge into areas of the service I have given a light touch until now.”

Powys Independents Cllr Ed Jones said: “Because we can’t vote, I will ask members to stand up if they have no confidence in the cabinet member.”

All across the chamber, opposition councillors stood up.

Powys Independent joint-leader Cllr Beverley Baynham said: “Whatever the discussion, a motion rising from the debate should be allowed to run.”

She asked whether standing orders could be suspended to allow a motion of no confidence to be put to councillors.

Head of legal services Cliver Pinney said that this would be possible, but councillors would need to vote first to suspend standing orders.

The motion to suspend standing orders was then put to a vote with 24 councillors voting to do this but 34 voted against it.