ALARMED no doubt by the sheer ferocity of opposition to its mad plan to close all sixth-forms in the county, Ceredigion council goes into pass-the-buck mode and comes up with the very surprising claim that it didn’t write the review containing this insane proposal. As everyone had been led to assume.
The ‘don’t blame us’ assertion is slipped into one of a sheaf of replies to questions posed by Frankly Speaking.
I’m told: “When you state ‘the council says’, please note that the review has been carried out on behalf of the council and not by the council itself.”
Oh, really? So who did write it, and why can’t you volunteer the information, instead of waiting for us to make this the subject of a second question? Why indeed has the council kept the whole thing up its sleeve for so long? Presumably because it would have liked to take the credit for a strategy now totally discredited.
The authors, we’re told, are two former head teachers – Huw Foster Evans, ex-head at Ysgol Morgan Llwyd, Wrexham, and Geraint Rees, formerly of Ysgol Plasmawr, Cardiff.
Just that. The answer begs questions of obvious public interest but, this being Ceredigion council, nothing is volunteered.
How much did the council have to pay for the Evans/Rees review?
Was the full council involved in the decision to commission an external review, including its cost, or were these decisions taken by the cabinet alone?
Did the authority ever consider doing the work itself, thereby, presumably, saving the taxpayer quite a lot of money?
Three days after seeking answers, I’m told my inquiry is “being considered”, but I must wait another three days for a response.
Earlier, the authority had accused me of inaccuracy in a piece a fortnight ago laying bare the potentially devastatingly damaging effects on post-16 students if it closes all sixth-forms.
It is of course a plan that, at a stroke, would seriously diminish, and impoverish, the scope of learning currently on offer at Ceredigion’s comprehensive schools.
Instead, there could be a single so-called ‘centre of excellence’, probably in Aberaeron, posing a very likely insuperable problem for students living north of Aberystwyth, who would be faced with organising (or more likely not) their own transport for round-trips of up to 60 miles.
As even the council recognises, this inept blueprint would throw a grenade into Ceredigion’s post-16 organisation and be seen as threatening job-security and staff morale, as well as being bad environmentally because involving increased travelling for staff and students.
So what is the council’s complaint? I wrote: “This insane proposal, waved through by the county council’s malleable cabinet, basically offers two choices, both unacceptable. Close some sixth-forms. Or the whole lot.”
Not so, I’m told in an unsigned email from the authority’s press office. I’m chided for not mentioning a feasibility study schools have been told to carry out, looking at, yes, closing all the sixth-forms. Effectively, therefore, looking at betraying up-and-coming potential sixth-formers, the pupils teachers have been nurturing, A-levels and universities in mind.
Yes, the council complains, but you didn’t mention the other option we have our eye on – that of “developing the current situation”. And what would that look like?
It would mean post-16 provision continuing, for the time being, at all six schools. But it would see current school governors “surrendering…post-16 responsibilities to a Strategic Board.” Whether such a board would be elected or not is unknown, the council admits. But this body “could, over time, recommend a reduction in the number of sites and what is provided at each site.” In other words, all sixth-forms could be axed.
Maybe not the way to stem second homes glut
OF TWIN Welsh government initiatives aimed at making it easier for people to buy and rent in their home towns and villages, one will certainly succeed. The other is problematic.
The success story is going to be the £50m national empty homes grant scheme launched earlier this year, which offers up to £25,000 per building to pay for improvements to bring places back into circulation.
This strategy is operated on the government’s behalf by Rhondda Cynon Taf council, which has brought 922 empty homes back into use, through this and other schemes, since 2017.
But its benefits spread to rural west Wales. In Gwynedd, where local people are routinely and depressingly priced out of the housing market, the council has intervened to itself buy houses that are then affordably rented to local people. In addition, through the empty homes scheme, 116 individuals – at the last count – have been able to bring 50 empty houses in the county back into use.
Less clear-cut in certainty of benefit are evolving radical measures giving councils in Wales extra powers designed to stop a preponderance of second homes gouging the life out of too many rural, and particularly coastal, parts of the country. Councils are now busy exercising new, and newish, powers to dramatically increase the amount of council tax that second-home owners must pay.
But they will also be able to bring in changes to planning rules to make it harder for houses and flats to be bought as holiday retreats. Three new planning use classes – primary home; second home; short-term holiday accommodation – mean councils will be able to amend the planning system to require change-of-use consent from one class to another.
In Ceredigion, a report following public consultation recommends a 100 per cent council tax premium on second homes from April next year, with a second rise to 150 per cent in April 2025.
Just under 1,700 properties in the county – out of a total of 33,856 – are second homes, most being on the coast. New Quay accounts for 27.2 per cent of the total, followed by Llangrannog, Borth, Pontarfynach, Penbryn, Aberseron and Aberporth.
So what’s the theory? A second-home owner rebels over the council tax premium and decides to sell up. Do they pitch the asking price at an amount affordable to a first-time buyer living locally, or rebel for a second time and keep it high? Somehow, this second seems more likely, especially if the owner feels indignant at being eased out.
Will this leave the house empty – and completely wasted? Will it eventually be bought by another rich weekender from outside Wales? Certainly, any spending by occasional occupants will in the meantime be lost to local economies.
Will the house in question be snapped up by someone intending to rent it out as a holiday home at £900 or more a week, more at bank holidays (destructive dogs welcome)? Unless they’re clobbered by the new change-of-use consent rule, they’ll just tack punitive tax premiums onto the rent.
So, much uncertainty about whether stinging the rich will free up houses desperately needed by the poor.
Backyard boom for the casual slur
CALLING someone a nimby is a divisive denunciation that can easily generate ill-will on either side of an argument. As a basis for calm discussion, it’s a non-starter.
So it was a pity to see Chris Simpson, one of Ceredigion’s enduring Green voices, hare off down this rhetorical blind alley in a Cambrian News letter last week.
Going for the jugular, he labels as “a bunch of nimbys” a whole swathe of people living on the Waun in Aberystwyth because they oppose the threatened swallowing up of that area’s one remaining sizeable and publicly-owned green space by a proposed county council-backed housing estate.
All the residents want is preservation of Waunfawr’s Erw Goch field as a valued recreational area, which is what it’s been for decades. That necessarily involves opposition to surrendering the site to bricks and mortar.
They’re not, however, driven by a blinkered, indifferent not-in-my-back-yardism. Their motivation is precisely the opposite. In demanding preservation of a rare open green space, they’re putting forward the interests of an entire local community.
Chris is also critical of Frankly Speaking, my column in the Cambrian News. He says he thinks I’ve been “bamboozled” by the protesters. No, all things considered, I see their case as unassailable.
8 December 2023
Bronterre News 