A BBC Wales plan to build a grandiose new headquarters on Cardiff’s Central Square is in trouble.

The auditor-general for Wales has been asked to intervene and investigate claims that the Welsh government invested £10 million to improve road access to Cardiff Bay after being promised the new HQ would be placed there.

Former first minister Rhodri Morgan claimed online that he had made a verbal agreement with top BBC project director Nigel Walker, the former Welsh rugby and athletics star, to site the new HQ at Roath Lock in the bay.

You’d have thought the ever-shrewd Morgan would have a bit more than the verbals for £10 million, wouldn’t you?

The BBC says Morgan is mistaken and that the suggestion that a single individual in the BBC could make such a commitment does not stand up to scrutiny.

Current First Minister Carwyn Jones says there was no formal agreement — but the government’s preference would be a site in the bay.

The whole saga has moved South Wales Central AM Eluned Parrott to write to Audtor-General Huw Vaughan Thomas asking him to look into the claims.

“It is absolutely astonishing that £10m would be spent on the basis of a verbal agreement that was not even adhered to. After all, a responsible government doesn’t spend millions of pounds on the basis of a chat!” she points out.

It’s no surprise to the rest of Wales that two bits of Cardiff, only a mile-and-a-half apart, are the only ones in the running to host an enterprise of amazing prestige at the heart of Welsh broadcasting, which will employ hundreds of well-paid workers and develop highly skilled jobs.

Why do you need to be so central? 

Apart from the extra swank it gives — at twice the cost of elsewhere.

With modern technology deployed in the communications and entertainment industries a new site in a field somewhere would do. 

We could build those access roads for far less than Morgan managed.

I can in fact give you an inside steer on this story, for when it was announced that BBC Wales was considering moving from its present HQ to a new site for their programming, my local trades council — Vale of Clwyd — wrote to the broadcaster suggesting this would be an ideal opportunity to spread the operation around and give central and north Wales’s bright young people the chance of highly skilled, decent employment.

Too often the only option for our young people is to move to other parts of Britain if they seek a future that matches their qualifications.

The BBC has facilities in Bangor and Wrexham, and a small one in Aberystwyth, all of which we believed should be enhanced and given increased staffing.

This would also mean better coverage of these areas, both in news and entertainment terms, by a company which overwhelmingly presents Wales through the eyes of Cardiff and the south-east.

This was backed by Darren Millar, the Tory AM for Clwyd West, but our entreaties were met with a bland statement from the BBC on how well it covered Wales, citing two programmes made in mid-Wales to prove its point (it didn’t).

No matter where BBC Wales ends up, this fixation among decision-makers at publicly funded bodies for wanting to abide in gold and ivory towers will continue to dog their thinking on where they need to work.

THE announcement that Indian-owned Tata Port Talbot steelworks is to sack 400 of its 4,000 staff is yet another example of the downgrading of Wales, replacing productive manufacturing jobs with retail outlets.

Shame!