A NUMBER of businesses which provide work opportunities for disabled people are set to close.

Wrexham Council’s executive board members voted, after an ill-tempered meeting, to shut Le Cafe and Portable Appliance Testing (PAT) in Rhosddu as well as the Coverall laundry in Rhosymedre.

They also approved finding another organisation to provide the cafe service at Alyn Waters Country Park in Gwersyllt from April next year and claimed they would also provide ‘greater opportunities’ elsewhere.

However, the move was condemned by some councillors during a fiery meeting at the Guildhall after they accused lead members of ignoring a recommendation to delay the decision.

The suggestion was made by the backbench cross-party safeguarding, communities and wellbeing scrutiny committee, whose members felt there was insufficient information about the replacement service for the 36 disabled people affected by the changes.

Labour committee chairman Derek Wright said the executive board had disrespected their views and ignored council protocol.

“There are no comments in either the verbal report or in the written report of why these recommendations haven’t been included," he said.

“In fact, they’ve been completely ignored as far as I’m concerned.

“There are 52 councillors on Wrexham County Borough Council involved in decision-making.

“This is not the case now, it is just 10 with no regard or respect for the other 42, particular scrutiny members.

“I call for this item to be deferred and brought back to a future executive board meeting when a complete report can be given on all items.”

However, Mark Pritchard, leader of the independent and Conservative-led authority, said the committee’s views had been reflected and described Cllr Wright’s comments as "unfair".

At one stage he called for a break in proceedings to try to calm the debate.

He said: “Derek, it’s an unfair comment from yourself. I could be a little stronger but I won’t.

“You said no respect or regard and that is not true.

“I can assure you I have the utmost respect and regard for every elected member in this chamber and this council, so I hope you do find time to apologise, but that’s an issue for you.”

Leader of the Wrexham Independent Group, Cllr David A Bithell, was also disappointed by the comments and asked for an apology.

He added: “We don’t have to take on board what scrutiny says because we’re the executive board. We can make decisions.”

A number of councillors raised concerns about the potential impact of the decision on disabled people.

In response Cllr Joan Lowe, lead member for health and adult social care, pledged that everyone affected would be supported to find a new job.

But Plaid Cymru group leader Marc Jones criticised the lack of detail on the new service and said the decision was down to cost-cutting.

He said: “The squaring of the circle is this is about saving £344,000 worth of money and the only way you can do this with the sort of service we’re providing is cutting jobs unfortunately.

“We see in the report we’re looking at the possibility of compulsory redundancies. There’s obviously going to be voluntary redundancies as well.

“What we don’t say in this report is what we’re going to offer people and I think this hits the heart of the matter.”

To provide reassurance to councillors, Ian Bancroft, the authority’s new chief executive, asked for an update to be given to them at a later date on how many new jobs had been found.

Executive board members unanimously voted in favour of the proposals and added a recommendation for the scrutiny committee to receive a progress report in six months time.