All four Plaid Cymru councillors in Powys sat on the fence and abstained during the budget vote, the results reveal.

At a Powys County Council meeting on Thursday, February 26, councillors voted narrowly for the 2026/2027 budget, which includes a Council Tax rise of 4.9 per cent.

With just 31 councillors out of a total of 68 being part of the ruling Liberal Democrat/Labour administration, there was a real threat of the budget being voted down if all opposition groups and non-aligned councillors voted against it.

It is the way at Powys council that councillors vote electronically and, if the technology isn’t working, a verbal vote is needed.

This means that to anyone watching, you only know for certain which way a councillor has voted when they say it out loud.

In full council meetings, the voting results get published soon afterwards.

The voting results show that in the vital vote to set next year’s budget and Council Tax, Plaid Cymru group leader, Cllr Elwyn Vaughan, and Cllrs Bryn Davies, Alwyn Evans and Gary Mitchell all abstained.

The vote was 31 in favour, 29 against and four abstentions.

And opposition councillors are wondering whether support by the Cabinet for the forthcoming National Eisteddfod in 2027, to be held in Cllr Vaughan’s own Glantwymyn ward, played a part in the way the group voted?

An opposition councillor told the LDRS: “Plaid let us down and rolled over for the Lib Dems and Labour.

“A deal about the eisteddfod will have been made.”

The LDRS put this allegation to Cllr Vaughan.

Cllr Vaughan said: “This has nothing to do with the eisteddfod.

“I welcome the investment from the Welsh Government following the agreement with Plaid Cymru to provide more funding to local authorities.

“The reality is that this was the only budget on the table and, if we voted against it, we would have to meet again in a couple of weeks’ time to go through the same debate.

“There is too much moaning in these meetings and not enough realisation of the massive financial challenge facing the council, with no clear answers.”

Cllr Vaughan said that the budget had gone through an extensive scrutiny process and stressed the need to remodel the way rural councils such as Powys receive their funding so that it: “reflects the true cost of providing services here.”

Cllr Vaughan said: “At the end of the day it was a Lib Dem/Labour budget, and I wanted a lower Council Tax — as that was the reason why Plaid Cymru secured millions more for councils in Wales.”

He added that he did welcome the extra funding in the Powys budget going to schools.

The voting results also show that the Green Party’s Cllr Jeremy Brignell-Thorpe (Montgomery and Forden), who resigned from the ruling coalition last month due to a planning row in his ward, voted to reject the budget.