Now that a new council has been elected to serve the people of Conwy, I look forward very much to seeing who will be appointed as cabinet member with responsibility for handling the issue of Colwyn Bay pier.
I also look forward to meeting him/her as soon as possible.
Posted in Colwyn Bay pier, Council elections
There has been yet a further development in the strange, eventful history of Colwyn Bay pier.
Today, in Mold County Court, His Honour Judge Milwyn Jarman QC adjourned the hearing of Mr Steve Hunt’s claim for a vesting order to a date to be fixed later this year.
The consequence is that the council’s title to the pier will remain unclear until the court has made its final order. It should be noted that judge apparently criticised the council for failing to file its skeleton argument until late on Friday afternoon.
This really is a dreadful mess, and it must be wondered why the council thought it a good idea to acquire the pier when it knew that there was a dispute over its ownership.
One must equally wonder why, in the circumstances, the Welsh Assembly Government thought it sensible to pay a large sum of money, believed to be around £36,000, for the pier.
Given the continued litigation, I’ll leave it at that. I’m far from happy, and I shall certainly be discussing the issue with the new council leader as soon as possible after the local elections.
Posted in Colwyn Bay pier
Tagged Conwy County Borough Council, Steve Hunt, Welsh Assembly Government
This morning, Sara and I attended a memorial service at St Trillo’s church, Rhos on Sea, for the victims of the Titanic disaster a century ago. The service also honoured the memory of Commander Harold Lowe, a native of Barmouth who was fifth officer on the ship and who was commended for his coolness in organising the lifeboats to pick up survivors after it sank. Commander Lowe is buried in St Trillo’s churchyard and I was pleased that his grandson, John, was also present.
St Trillo’s is an ancient church with long seafaring connections. It was for many years painted white (a practice recently revived), enabling it to serve as a navigation mark for ships on Liverpool Bay. Its tower is topped with a construction known as the Rector’s Chair, which once held a brazier that was lit when enemy ships were sighted.
John Lowe told me how deeply touched he had been by the fact that his grandfather’s memory was still so honoured a hundred years after the Titanic sank. It is, however, unsurprising that it is, given that his conduct that night was so outstandingly brave.
The Titanic disaster will, I am sure, live on in our national consciousness for many years to come. The impact of the disaster upon Britain was, in many ways, similar to that of the destruction of the World Trade Center on the United States.
The Titanic was vaunted by its constructors to be of such an advanced design as to be unsinkable. Similarly, I remember visiting one of the Twin Towers in February, 2001, and being told be a guide that the skyscraper had been designed to withstand the impact of an aircraft.
Both the Titanic and the World Trade Center were visible symbols of national prestige. Both were destroyed by dreadful and unforeseen forces; in the case of one, the power of nature, and, of the other, human evil.
In each disaster, the conduct of individual people illuminated the dreadfulness and gave cause for faith in the essential decency of humankind.
That is why it is right that we should revere the memories of people such as Harold Lowe, just as we should remember those victims and rescuers who lost their lives in New York City on 11 September, 2001.
Posted in Clwyd West, Life
Tagged Harold Lowe, Rhos on Sea, RMS Titanic, World Trade Center
This blog appears to have attracted the attention of Mr Llŷr Huws Gruffydd, who is a Plaid Cymru regional Assembly member for North Wales.
Quoted in the North Wales Pioneer, Mr Gruffydd suggests that my criticisms of Conwy Council’s handling of the Colwyn Bay pier issue are “potentially harmful to the council’s efforts to acquire further funds for the pier”.
He says:
“Publicly doubting the council’s endeavours will only hinder the efforts to save the pier. He really should know better.”
Mr Gruffydd clearly does not get it.
Contrary to his views, the essential problem is that nowhere near enough public scrutiny of the council’s proposals for the pier has ever taken place. If it had, the current sad state of affairs might have been averted. We need more public discussion of this important issue, not less.
It is also worth pointing out that the group running the council at the relevant time was a coalition of parties led by Plaid Cymru.
So perhaps Mr Gruffydd ought to be having a quiet word with the likes of Dilwyn Roberts, the former Plaid council leader, and Phil Edwards, former leader of the Plaid Cymru group, rather than berating those who are trying to shine a little light on the routinely opaque modus operandi that seems to have prevailed in Conwy when his party was in charge.
He really should know better.
Posted in Colwyn Bay pier
Tagged Colwyn Bay, Conwy County Borough Council, Phil Edwards, Plaid Cymru
Sara and I were at the launch last night of local historian Graham Roberts’s latest book, Colwyn Bay at War.
The event, at the church hall in St George’s Drive, Rhos on Sea, was attended by hundreds of local people, most of whom bought copies of the book, all of which Graham autographed.
During World War II, virtually all the hotels in Colwyn Bay, as well as Rydal and Penrhos schools, were requisitioned by the Ministry of Food, many of whose civil servants remained in the town until well into the 1950s.
The work they carried out was tremendously important. As Graham puts it in the book:
“Britain was probably the only country in Europe never in danger of starving during the war, thanks to the organisational skills of the civil servants working in Colwyn Bay, to our fertile soil and continuing trade links with the rest of the world.”
Graham gave the audience a very witty introduction to the book, observing that Colwyn Bay had a “very good war”. The Ministry of Food officials brought a new vibrancy to the town, which was augmented by the presence of several hundred American GIs.
There were, however, some privations. One lady present at last night’s event recalled that orange juice was strictly reserved for infants.
“I was eight years old when the war started,” she reminisced. “Too old for orange juice and too young for Yanks.”
Graham Roberts developing writer's cramp
Inspired by David Cameron’s recent visit to Porthdinllaen, Tim Erasmus has written an interesting blog post on Prime Ministers who chose North Wales for their holidays. I commend it to readers, if only for the insight it provides into the amorous adventures of Herbert Asquith, a Prime Minister I had previously thought of as weak, indecisive and vacillating, and certainly no Lothario.
The post also includes a photo of a vacationing Churchill, who was himself a visitor to the area.
My late uncle, W O Jones, once told me of an encounter he had with Churchill and David Lloyd George at the Royal St David’s golf course in Harlech.
W O and a friend had applied to become members of the club, where it was the practice for probationers to make themselves available for caddying duty for several months before full membership could be conferred.
On the day in question, the two young men were waiting at the club when Lloyd George and Churchill turned up and accepted their offer to act as caddies. W O carried Lloyd George’s clubs and his friend caddied for Churchill.
At the end of the round, each statesman pressed a coin in his caddy’s hand. W O was delighted to find that he had been tipped a half sovereign by L-G and then a little deflated to find that his friend had received a full sovereign from Churchill.
Both young men had done rather well, though. This was before the First World War, when many a man of similar age could have lived for a week on Churchill’s bounty.
Posted in Trivia
Tagged David Cameron, David Lloyd George, H. H. Asquith, North Wales, Winston Churchill
Out canvassing this evening in Colwyn Bay with a strong team of activists. We covered a large area in one of the hillier parts of this hilly town.
Canvassing is the best part of politics. The very best. There’s nothing like it. You can expatiate to your ego’s content on the floor of the House or pronounce ad nauseam to the proffered mike. You can send out your press releases, compose your newsletters and do all the whizzo social networking that technology allows; but no other campaigning technique is quarter as effective as speaking to people on their own doorstep.
Because there, they are not “the electorate”. They are not focus groups. They are people whose suppers you have disturbed, who are trying to put the children to bed, who were listening to the news, who want to get the lawn mown before it gets dark. They’re real people who weren’t expecting you, and, to be honest, they’re in a bit of a rush.
Not that they’re ever rude, of course. British people rarely are. In fact, they’re the politest people on earth. Even if they won’t vote for you, they’ll usually apologise for it: ”I’m sorry, but we’re Labour.” They’re nice people.
And, by and large, they won’t give you too hard a time, either. They actually appreciate the fact the you’ve called. On the whole.
But they do want to know your position on the issues they’re concerned about. Which, even if it’s a local election, are usually national ones. Taxes, pensions, policing. And they’re usually well-informed about them, too.
So to heck with the computer and the studio: go for the doorstep. Every time. Speak to your voters; listen to them; let them listen to you. Have a laugh with them. Argue with them even, but not too much.
And most of all, respect them. Completely. Because they are the reason you’re there in the first place.
And, without them, you are entirely irrelevant.
A little earlier today, discharging what I consider to be part of my duties as a reborn Twitterato, I sent out a tweet noting that this is the anniversary of the 1992 general election, which Neil Kinnock managed to turn into a Labour defeat, contrary to what almost every pundit would have had us expect.
It was a message I anticipated would attract a degree of dissention from the left, and so, indeed, it did. Within seconds, I received a tweet from a gauchiste, not so subtly drawing my attention to the tremendously relevant fact that the Tories hadn’t won outright in 2010, either.
So far, so banal. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have bothered commenting, given that it was the sort of response that was wholly predictable. It’s just part of life on Twitter.
However, what has prompted me to blog about the incident is the way that the leftist’s tweet was worded. It commenced with the non-word “Er…”.
Which made me think: this happens all the time. Tweet after tweet on Twitter is prefixed with “Er…”. Or sometimes “Um…”. Or, from time to time, a conflation of the two: “Erm…”. And almost invariably with those three little dots.
Why, I wondered, does this happen? Given that Twitter rations you to 140 characters and thereby demands verbal economy, why waste two (or five, if you include the dots) on an apparently meaningless “Er…”?
So I decided to ask the tweeter why he’d started his tweet with “Er…”. His reply was: “That was supposed to show my incredulity at your tweet.”
That didn’t really wash; what I had originally tweeted was: “Notable anniversary: 20 years since Kinnock snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the 1992 general election.” It wasn’t a statement to give rise to incredulity, being one of fact, though admittedly politically nuanced.
Having reflected on it, I have concluded that, far from being a waste of characters, the Twitter “Er…” is in fact a highly effective way of showing contempt for the point of view the tweeter is seeking to contradict. It conveys both a degree of hesitancy about intervening to correct what is clearly considered the opinion of an idiot and, simultaneously, the lofty superiority of someone who knows better. One imagines the tweeter typing it with lip curled in a particularly supercilious sneer.
In short, it is the tweeter’s very economical way of conveying the same sentiment as the politician’s “with respect”; and it is, therefore, rather rude.
Er… at least, that’s what I think.
After my Lenten break, I’m back on Twitter.
I have to confess that I was a bit ambivalent about returning, especially since one of my best Twitter mates, @eilirjones, had decided to give it up altogether a week or so ago.
However, I have to say that I have been astonished and delighted by the warmth of the welcome I have received from my Twitter friends and followers. I know very few of them personally, but it’s been like returning home to a very large, very vocal and very funny (in all senses) family.
So I’m delighted to be tweeting and to be tweeted again, if only for the joy of learning who Samantha Brick is. Important stuff like that escapes you completely if you’re not plugged into Twitter.
Sitting at home in Rhos on Sea, I was surprised to see this visitor gazing languidly at me over my garden wall, entirely unfazed by my presence.
Rhos now has quite a large population of foxes, so it isn’t unusual to spot one; but this was easily the tamest I’ve seen.
I know they are supposed to be pests, but they really are the most beautiful creatures.
I have known my constituent Colin Dale for several years.
Colin used to run an antique shop in Llandudno with his wife and they are still very much involved in the trade. I hadn’t heard from him for a while, but yesterday he left a comment on one of my blog posts. Clicking on the link to his website, I was astonished to discover that he had, in the 60s, been a DJ with the pirate radio station, Radio Sutch.
According to the Pirate Radio Hall of Fame:
On 24th May 1964 pop performer David “Screaming Lord” Sutch launched Britain’s third offshore radio station, named after himself. Radio Sutch was not a serious venture. The flamboyant singer hired the trawler Cornucopia. Bedecked with skull and crossbones flags, this small vessel put to sea with numerous pressmen there to record the scene. The newspapers lapped up the story and plastered pictures of Sutch all over the front pages, just as he had hoped.
It is thought unlikely that Sutch ever actually broadcast from the Cornucopia. DJ Colin Dale has told The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame that the vessel was only used for publicity purposes. The equipment, such as it was, was soon transferred to a disused war-time anti-aircraft fort complex in the Thames estuary, Shivering Sands.
Radio Sutch commenced transmissions with a power of less than 1 kilowatt on an announced wavelength of 197 metres (in fact 195 metres, 1542 kilohertz). The first record on the station was Sutch’s own Jack the Ripper.
One of a chain of anti-aircraft forts built in the estuary during the Second World War, Shivering Sands was old, rusty and dangerous but considerably more stable than a 70 foot trawler like the Cornucopia. The disc-jockeys consisted of Sutch himself, his band-mates and their associates, his manager Reg Calvert, members of Calvert’s family and a couple of engineers trying desperately to keep the shambles on the air.
Colin has set up a fascinating website, which I strongly urge readers to visit. Apart from a tremendous collection of photos and press cuttings, it contains a recreation of a Radio Sutch broadcast, hosted by Colin himself.
It’s almost as good as paying a personal visit to Shivering Sands.
An early morning, insomnia-induced, trawl through the published minutes of Conwy County Borough Council relating to Colwyn Bay’s Victoria Pier has provided interesting reading.
I have no doubt, however, that the exercise would have proven considerably more illuminating had the material not been so lavishly “restricted” (i.e. censored) by the council pursuant to paragraph 14 of Part 4 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972.
The 1972 Act provides, in essence, that the public and press may be excluded from council meetings whenever it is likely, in view of the nature of the business to be transacted or the nature of the proceedings, that “exempt information” will be disclosed. Paragraph 14 provides that among the categories of information that may be “exempt” is:
information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information).
Given that Conwy has invoked paragraph 14 in connection with most of its deliberations relating to the pier, we can only guess what transpired during many of the ten full council, cabinet and committee meetings at which the issue was discussed.
However, the minutes of the special meeting of the full council held on 8 June, 2011, record the following (edited, with my italics):
“The Leader presented a report in relation to the current position of Colwyn Bay Pier and the options available to the Council…
“Following a request at Cabinet on 24 May 2011, additional information in relation to costings and risk assessments were presented to Council.
“Members discussed the options available in great detail and agreed to endorse Option 3 (seek to acquire freehold).
“Concern was raised with regard to the Council’s Capital Programme and the need to provide opportunities for other areas of the County Borough, other than the Baylife+ Regeneration Area. It was therefore agreed that the restoration of the Pier should only be funded through external grants.
“RESOLVED-
“(a) That Option 3 (seek to acquire freehold) of the report be approved…
“(e) That the Council expects the renovation of Colwyn Bay Pier to be funded from external grants and does not therefore anticipate any call on the Council’s capital programme for that purpose.”
In retrospect, given the events of this week, the expectation recorded in sub-paragraph (e) would appear to have been somewhat over-optimistic, not to say cavalier. It calls further into question the wisdom of completing the purchase of the freehold without confirmation of grant funding.
On 15 November, 2011, the council cabinet met to consider a report on the progress being made in preparing detailed proposals and funding applications for the restoration and development of the pier. The minutes record (again edited, with my italics):
“Members considered the risks to the Council once the Pier had been acquired and the contingency plans if the proposals failed.
“The Business Plan and Profit and Loss Projections were discussed in detail and it was felt by some Members that the Business Plan was over ambitious and the following concerns were highlighted:
“Income in relation to the footfall particularly in relation to the catering and bar functions
“Expenditure in relation to Staffing Costs…
“There was also concern in relation to the reputational risk to the Council, and in response the Chief Executive provided Members with details of the key trigger points and the phased programme of action options that could be progressed based on the degree of funding success. The Chief Executive confirmed that final approval [of the Business Plan] would be dependent on all funding packages being in place.
“Members acknowledged that the Business Plan was the basis for the proposals and that more detailed plans would be required if HLF supported the initial application.”
Indeed, it would appear that the proposals reflected in the business plan were considered so over-ambitious that two senior councillors, Philip Evans and Graham Rees, voted against the resolution approved by the cabinet that they “form the basis of partnership grant applications, led by Conwy County Borough Council to the Heritage Lottery Fund, Convergence and others so as to realise these proposals”. It must also be wondered why it was apparently considered unnecessary to work up more detailed plans before submitting the bid to the HLF.
I have previously expressed my concern that the council’s discussions on such an important issue were conducted in private, without scrutiny by public or press. The above extracts from the restricted minutes, I feel, justify that concern.
Certainly, given that the pier has now been acquired, the issue of commercial sensitivity would appear no longer relevant, and it would be appropriate for the council to publish in full the minutes of the meeting of 8 June, 2011, and the background documents considered. People have a right to know why the council made the decision it did, and what led it to “expect the renovation of Colwyn Bay Pier to be funded from external grants” and not to “anticipate any call on the Council’s capital programme for that purpose”.
Before the HLF funding bid is resubmitted, it will be highly desirable to obtain a strong degree of input from the public. The publication of the minutes and the background documents will be invaluable for such purpose and to inform the debate that I believe is essential. I have no doubt that it will also prove helpful to Shore Thing and the council itself.
Finally, a new council will be elected on 3 May. Given the experience over the pier, electors will very probably consider that they have a right to a significantly improved level of transparency. I do hope that the new councillors will ensure that that is what is provided.
Whilst I have thoroughly enjoyed blogging today, the exercise has served as a reminder of the level of commitment required to do so on a daily basis. It would, to be frank, be impossible for me to maintain that commitment during Parliamentary term; there simply wouldn’t be enough time.
Blogging has also made me appreciate the value of Twitter, a communication medium I once spurned. Twitter has the enormous advantages of brevity and immediacy. It enables you to react swiftly to events and get your message out to people who want to read it. To a politician, it is invaluable.
As my followers will know, I have given up Twitter, along with alcohol, for Lent. I have actually missed Twitter much more than wine, although my abstinence from tweeting has restored some valued stillness to my life. Nevertheless, I could have done with it this week, what with the big local news of the failed lottery bid for the pier and the wreck of the Carrier.
Lent ends at midnight tomorrow. By then, I will have maintained Twitter silence and rested my liver for 47 days. Easter Sunday will see normal service resumed, with judicious tweeting and moderate imbibing.
But, I must assure you, no over-indulgence in either.
The Easter break also gives me the opportunity to blog my appreciation of the actions of the emergency services in dealing with the wreck of the MV Carrier at Raynes jetty, Llanddulas.
The rescue of the seven crew members, in the appallingly foul weather of the night of 3-4 April, was nothing short of astonishing. The seamen, all Polish, were successfully winched off the ship by helicopters from RAF Leconfield and RNAS Prestwick. Also involved in the operation were the Llandudno and Rhyl lifeboats, HM Coastguard, North Wales Police and North Wales Fire and Rescue.
Remarkably, not one of the crew or the rescuers was injured. It was a textbook operation, properly praised by the Prime Minister when he visited Llandudno yesterday.
Since the events of that night, arrangements have been made for removal of the ship’s fuel, which it was feared might significantly pollute the coast. The contract provides that the pumping vehicles must be stationed on the cycle path above the wreck, ensuring that the A55 remains open throughout the bank holiday weekend. When the vessel has been emptied of fuel, attempts will be made to refloat her.
I have discussed the incident with my colleague Mike Penning MP, the shipping minister, and have also had daily briefings from Gold command. I have been enormously impressed by the quiet efficiency shown by the senior police officers in charge of managing the incident.
The conduct of all the emergency services on Tuesday night, and since, has been wholly exemplary. We in North Wales should be thoroughly proud of them.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been heavily involved in the tortuous recent history of Colwyn Bay’s Victoria Pier. If you’re not up to speed on the issue, I suggest that you use the search facility in the top corner.
My blog postings have become increasingly infrequent over the past couple of years, largely because my workload is now such that what passes for my spare time is chiefly occupied in sleep; my life has become what my grandmother used to call “bed and work”. However, since there have been significant and worrying developments in the pier saga over the last couple of weeks, I felt it appropriate to take advantage of the Easter break to compose this post.
The first piece of news broke last week. Readers will recall that the trustees in the bankruptcy of Mr Steve Hunt, the former owner of the pier, disclaimed their trust last August. As a consequence, the pier (to short-circuit the legal intricacies of the process considerably) fell into the ownership of the Crown Estate. Last week, Conwy County Council announced that it had purchased the pier from the Welsh Assembly Government, which it had itself just acquired it from the Estate. The purchase price is understood to be around £36,000.
Hard on the heels of that announcement came the news, three days ago, that the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) had turned down an application by Conwy for a grant of £4.9 million toward the cost of restoration of the pier. In a press release, the head of HLF Wales said:
“This month’s HLF Board meeting was very over-subscribed. The quality of bids was exceptionally high and, regretfully, we just didn’t have enough money to support all the applications we looked at on the day. We will be meeting with representatives from the Council shortly to discuss the best way forward for their project.”
The consequence of these two developments is that Conwy now owns a listed building in the most appalling state of disrepair that is disfiguring the seafront of Colwyn Bay. It hasn’t a penny to repair it, but does have an obligation, given the pier’s listed status, to restore it. The cost of restoration is now probably north of £10 million. To demolish it would probably cost around £1 million, but to do that the council would require listed building consent, which would take time, during which the pier would have to be repaired.
The liability for all this cost falls on the council taxpayers of Conwy county, who are already reeling after another substantial tax increase this year. It is a dreadful state of affairs that could have been entirely avoided if the issue had been properly handled by the council.
Readers will probably know that the council has been in dispute for some years with Mr Steve Hunt, who contends that he was wrongly bankrupted for non-payment of business rates. That issue is, essentially, a legal matter between Mr Hunt and the council.
Mr Hunt is not the most user-friendly person in the world (as even he would probably acknowledge) and the manner in which he has tended to express himself has sometimes been unfortunate. It has probably cost him some friends in the council, if he ever had any. He considers, however, that he has justifiable cause to feel aggrieved by the council’s conduct. That may well be the case, but, since it is the subject of litigation, it would not be proper for me to comment further.
I do, however, now feel it proper to acquaint readers with my concerns over the council’s handling of this issue.
My overriding objective in connection with the pier has been to try to judge the mood of the people of Colwyn Bay and to ensure that it is properly represented. To that end, I held two public meetings in 2010, at which the issue of the pier was fully discussed, and formed the firm opinion that there was a considerable desire within the town to see the pier restored if at all possible. This was not by any means a universal view; the well-respected Colwyn Bay Civic Society, for example, considered that the pier had had its day and should be demolished. That remains the Society’s position.
Nevertheless, given that the majority of those who attended the meeting, and who wrote separately to me, clearly wanted to see the pier restored, I pressed for the council to engage with Mr Hunt and his trustee in bankruptcy. I took the view that it was neither proper nor realistic for Conwy to try to behave as if Mr Hunt didn’t exist.
It was clear to me, however, that Conwy didn’t want to speak to Mr Hunt. At a personal level, this was perhaps understandable, given the less than complimentary terms in which Mr Hunt had spoken and written about council members and officials. However, it was equally clear that there would be no progress unless and until some constructive discussions took place. For that to happen, people would have to put personal issues aside.
It was not until April of the following year that I managed to set up a meeting, which took place at my office and was attended by a senior councillor, senior council officers and Mr Hunt himself. I privately considered it a remarkable achievement to get them all to sit in the same room.
The question of the HLF bid was discussed. It was clear that Mr Hunt, as a private individual, would not qualify for funding. The council’s preference was for a not-for-profit company, Shore Thing, to lead the funding bid, supported by the council itself. To do so, the council would need to have legal title to the pier, although Shore Thing would probably need a lease.
I expressed concern about the wisdom of the council’s acquiring the pier, given its condition, without an assurance that the HLF would make funding available. The cost of restoration would be enormous and it would be folly to take on the liability otherwise.
As a suggestion to progress the issue, I proposed:
That, it seemed to me, was a way of progressing the matter without exposing Conwy to financial liability. The terms of the lease and underlease would, of course, have to be negotiated and would have to be watertight, but the council had excellent in-house legal advice available to it.
Everyone present at the meeting seemed to think that the proposal was sensible, including the councillor. It was understood that there would be further discussions between the parties and that the council should take advice from the District Valuer as to the proper level of rent. Those were commercial considerations, not issues for politicians, and should be dealt with separately.
I was reasonably cheered by the outcome of the meeting and briefly blogged about it. At last, it seemed, people were parking their personal differences and concentrating on the principal issue.
A few weeks later, I attended another meeting at Conwy’s offices in Llandudno Junction. Mr Hunt was again present, but the councillor who attended the meeting at my office had been replaced by a cabinet member. I was hugely disappointed by both the lack of progress since the previous meeting and the attitude of the cabinet member, which was, frankly, negative in the extreme. He made it clear that he would not deal with Mr Hunt and that he took exception to “what he’s said about me”. The council, he said, would not enter into an agreement for a lease, but would seek to acquire the pier directly. I understood that Mr Hunt had in fact proposed three options for leases for the council to consider, but the councillor was apparently prepared to entertain none of them.
I told the councillor that I was very disappointed and that I felt that the course he was proposing to follow was dangerous and would put council taxpayers’ money at risk. An altercation developed between Mr Hunt and the councillor; the councillor then left the meeting before it had formally concluded. I was dismayed by his apparent inability to separate personal and business considerations.
The council’s acquisition of the pier and its failure to secure HLF funding are, for the reasons set out above, a very serious matter. The council has handled the issue poorly and now needs to concentrate all its efforts on working up a stronger bid for HLF funding. The line it has put out to the press (“It is not a case of now or never”) seems, frankly, complacent and lacks the sense of urgency one might expect.
Yes, this is a very serious matter; not only for the people of Colwyn Bay, but also for the people of the entire county of Conwy, who now find themselves the involuntary owners of an enormous and depreciating negative asset without the means to restore it.
I have already contacted the council’s chief executive and propose to meet him soon to discuss the way forward. I am anxious to do all I can to help rescue the HLF bid. And there are a lot of other local people who, I am sure, would be equally pleased to help. The council should be speaking to them, too.
Not only do we need the HLF money, we need another £5 million or so on top, in order to restore the pier. We need to consider where that is to come from. We also need to talk about the attractions that will be located on the pier and whether they will produce a sufficient income stream to maintain it. Everyone with a sensible proposal for a sustainable future for the pier should be invited to come forward and have his or her say.
And, most importantly, we need to ensure that all this is done in public. No more closed meetings with press and public excluded, which have been the council’s modus operandi hitherto. This is one of the biggest issues in Conwy and it is essential that we all know what’s going on.
With a bit of maturity and sense of purpose, something good, even wonderful, may yet come out of this miserable episode. But the ball is now firmly in Conwy’s court. Let’s hope that their past performance is not an indication of things to come.
