Any port in a (funding) storm. (Updated)

I wrote back in March this year about the Offshore Wind Site Development Competition organised by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to allocate £60m of funds to help port authorities and developers looking to develop new offshore wind manufacturing and assembly facilities. Ports which wished to apply had to prove that they:

• have access to sufficient land that could be developed into wind turbine manufacturing facilities;
• are suitable for the transport of large and heavy products;
• and already have heavy duty surfacing capable of bearing heavy loads in place. 

There was much hope at the time that, in line with the Energy Island concept, Holyhead's now defunct Anglesey Aluminium plant, which has a deep water dock, would be a very suitable location.

Happily the £60m funds have survived the Comprehensive Spending Review and the competition is still open -- although it has now emerged that because this is classed as 'business support' (i.e. a devolved function) the lions share of the £60m will be reserved for England with only Barnett consequentials available to Wales, Scotland and Northern Island. The good news is this guarantees that the Welsh Assembly will receive £3.5m towards developing a Welsh port (and just by looking at the adjacent map, it can only really be Holyhead). The bad news however is that no matter how eligible or suitable Holyhead may appear, it cannot receive any more than that amount. This has cued outrage from Albert Owen, who has said this is "another example of the Tories and Liberals marginalising Wales", whereas Ieuan Wyn Jones, asserts the decision shows a "complete lack of respect" for the Welsh economy.

My personal view is that its highly unlikely that £3.5m alone will be anywhere near enough money to properly transform the Anglesey Aluminium plant and dock into one suitable for manufacturing and shipping offshore wind turbines. Accordingly it would have been far better for the government to take a more strategic view and divide the total budget between the two or three most suitable ports (no matter in which region they are located) so that the sums each location received would be sufficient enough to deliver a considerable impact.

However -- and here's a novel thought -- instead of forever whinging about supposed slights by the coalition government, why doesn't the Welsh Assembly Government step up and show us that it can take action when required? WAG has a £15bn budget; of that approximately £1.2bn is earmarked for Economic Development and Transport. As Ieuan Wyn Jones has announced that half the Economic Development budget will now be spent on as yet undefined infrastructure projects, why can't some £11.5m of this money (i.e. 9 percent) be added to the £3.5m from DECC to make a pot of £15m for developing Holyhead port? Presumably an investment of this kind could help make Holyhead the key staging area for 'Round 3' offshore wind farms in the Irish Sea -- whilst also supporting the development of a sustainable new industry in the UK's poorest area.

The Welsh Assembly has been only too happy to waste our money on expanding mostly unnecessary universal benefits (such as free prescriptions and free breakfasts for primary school children) which neither generate jobs nor possible future sustainable revenue streams for Wales. Its time for WAG to get its priorities in order, stop using the excuse that it is 'underfunded' (according to the Holtham Report, through the Barnett Formula Wales receives £112 for every £100 spend on devolved activities in England) and go out an earn the 'respect' it says it deserves.

UPDATE: I am grateful to commenters who point out that the Port of Mostyn near Holywell, with ready access to the A55, M62, M56, and M6, is already well ahead in establishing itself as the ideal servicing location for offshore wind farms in the East Irish Sea. This clearly shows that for Holyhead to compete, DECC/WAG support to modify the port will be meaningless unless it first manages to attract wind turbine manufacturers to set up production operations in the town. Just before the election there were a number of front page stories in the Daily Post about how the then Welsh Secretary, Peter Hain, was in talks with a unnamed company to set up just such a wind turbine factory on the Anglesey Aluminium site. Hain even described it as "the beginning of good times" for Anglesey -- though predictably, as sure as today's front pages become tomorrow fish'n'chips wrappers, we never heard anything about the whole thing ever again.

I think that the 'Energy Island' concept is a good one, and, in theory, Anglesey is ideally located to take advantage of a trend towards lower carbon energy sources, be they nuclear or renewable marine technologies. But as I have written previously:

"For the Energy Island concept to be a full success Anglesey must become an originator of energy technology -- not just a destination for off-island companies to place various schemes. Accordingly the council must work to incubate Anglesey-based energy start-ups. The only way to do this would be to work with local research centres, such as Bangor University, to develop some kind of Energy Science Park located somewhere on the Island. I would further suggest that using the "Shell Fund" to provide "seed money" for such start ups would be a far more productive use of the money then purely funnelling the majority of it into Oriel Môn each year."

++ Anglesey Grants - an appeal ++

Regular readers of this blog will know that Holyhead resident, Gwynfor Pierce, has long battled with Anglesey County Council over problems he experienced regarding a Housing Renovation and Town Improvement Grant that he was awarded to improve the flats above his shop on Market Street in Holyhead. The substance of his concerns can be summarised as follows:

• Even though the building works carried out on his property via an agent were sub-standard and unsatisfactory, the council still approved payments; Completion certificates were also submitted and approved for work that was never finished and which had also been improperly invoiced by the builders;
• The costs of the works tendered were artificially inflated significantly over the actual value of the works. Consequently in order to remain within the budget of his contribution, Gwynfor agreed that non-essential items should be omitted. However with the help of a quantity surveyor Gwynfor later discovered that the items omitted were extreme, leading the flats to be judged "detrimental to the health and safety of future council occupants". Furthermore Building Control also later discovered 24 contraventions of building regulations;
• The agents failed to provide proper contracts and the council failed to ensure that Gwynfor was fully informed of his responsibilities under the grant scheme. Proper quality monitoring procedures were not implemented;
• When Gwynfor took his concerns to the council he was faced with an extraordinarily complex complaints system coupled with real difficulties in obtaining information from the council's grants files. This made it extremely difficult for him to substantiate his claims;
• The council is responsible for ensuring that all Welsh Assembly housing grants are spent properly on works that are fit for purpose and meet Welsh Housing Standards -- however in this case the works were not fit for purpose and yet the council appeared unwilling to pursue the case.

Despite the above difficulties Gwynfor faced in pursuing his case with Anglesey Council, he fought on and after years of pushing an internal audit was eventually ordered into the matter. After 120 days of investigation the result was a grudging acknowledgement by the council that,

"there are certain recommendations arising ... as regards procedures and future administration of grants". 

However it also predictably found fault with Gwynfor himself:

"[t]he investigations ... have raised questions with regard to the applicant and certain agents employed by the applicant. Some terms of the grant have not been complied with and the Council has requested re-payment of the grant monies". 

Following further pressing by Gwynfor (including this letter sent to all councillors in September this year) and the helpful intervention of Mark Isherwood AM, Anglesey Council have now gone one step further by admitting for the very first time -- and as long alleged by Gwynfor -- that,

"... evidence exists that external parties have sought to defraud the Council". 

Happily the case is now being investigated by the council's external auditors, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and the Police have been informed of the irregularities. The increasingly excellent welsh language news magazine, Golwg, has also took up the case. The Druid hopes that justice will now be swiftly served.

However the story does not end here. Gwynfor first took his concerns to the council in 2007 and it has taken him three years of continuous effort to get Llangefni to recognise that there really were serious problems with his grant. The question we have to ask is whether Gwynfor was just extraordinarily unlucky -- or whether there are other Anglesey residents who have also had a similar experience with housing grants but have lacked Gwynfor's herculean perseverance in pursuing their cases with the council?

Well, as it happens a Brynsiencyn resident, who also regularly contributes to this blog, had a very similar experience with a Home Regeneration Grant he was awarded seven years ago. He also took his concerns to the council but was repeatedly rebuffed, investigated himself for attempting to defraud the council (for which he was cleared), and was then outrageously told to stop writing to the Legal Department about his continuing concerns. Sound familiar?

Through word of mouth he found another nearby resident who had experienced exactly the same problems (even down to having the same agent and builder) -- and this despite having been told by the council that there had been no other similar problems reported concerning Home Regeneration Grants. Finally, out of frustration, he went to see our AM, Ieuan Wyn Jones and told him about both cases. Ieuan was sympathetic but ultimately unhelpful and sent him away saying,

“I believe that these two are isolated cases -- however if you find that there are enough other similar cases, then I will bring the matter to the attention of the Welsh Assembly”. 

Accordingly, today we are launching an appeal to find other Anglesey residents who have suffered a similar experiences. Explicitly we are looking for people who have been recipients of grant works to improve private/landlord/public housing but have experienced any of the following problems:

• sub-standard work which they have had to accept due to the actions of agents who have behaved improperly due to a lack of proper contracts or lack of oversight by the council;
• problems during the tendering process;
• the need to make their own repairs to the works afterwards;
• have tried unsuccessfully to obtain formal documentation explaining the policies and procedures for progressing the grant and how to sort matters out when things go wrong;
• have tried unsuccessfully to obtain redress through the council.

You can get in touch by using the 'Contact' tab above and can rest assured that your anonymity will be protected. Based on the number of responses, the plan will be to prepare a dossier of such cases which can be presented to Ieuan Wyn Jones. Then we will see whether our AM will take the acton he has promised.

Open letter to the Daily Post's Letters Editor

Dear Editor of the Daily Post Letters Page,


Please stop printing endless letters from people with no obvious economic credentials, telling us that the coalition's 'cuts' are are too fast and too deep. I am quite capable of reading The Guardian's reporting on the coalition's macroeconomic policies at first hand -- without having to re-read them several days later when recycled by a councillor from Ceredigion or some guy from Licswm, Flintshire.


Yours faithfully,
A. Druid

Tell it to the ONS, Albert.

Today the Office for National Statistics announced that the UK economy grew 0.8 percent during the third quarter, twice as fast as expected. This now means that the economy has been growing for half a year at a sustained rate of 3.2 percent on an annualised basis -- a remarkable pace.

Its ironic therefore that Albert Owen chose today to write in to the Daily Post to warn, "Every forecast predicts falling growth since [government] measures were announced, hardly cause for optimism. Failure to have adequate growth will lead to stagnation, mass unemployment and rising crime as we saw in the 1980s-90s Tory years".

Albert Owen also takes issue with Wales Office minister, David Jones: "[He] is wrong to suggest that Anglesey is the poorest county in the UK, as no like for like data exists, indeed if areas within the South Wales valleys were measured as single units they would fall behind Anglesey".

Perhaps Albert had better tell the Office for National Statistics (ONS) then, as their latest regional Gross Value Added (GVA) bulletin contains this chart:

Click to enlarge

GVA per head is basically the index most regularly used to compare relative levels of wealth -- and as the above chart clearly shows 'Isle of Anglesey' is right at the bottom with a GVA of just 55.1 percent of the UK average. Please also note that these latest figures are for 2007, i.e. before the closure of Anglesey Aluminium (450 jobs), Eaton Electric (240 jobs), Menai Electrical (50 jobs), Readileads (35 jobs) and the Vion/Welsh Country Foods restructuring (191 jobs).

Of course this is rather embarrassing for Albert because when the constituency he represents is officially declared by the ONS to be the poorest place in the UK, things by definition can't be any worse -- or to put it another way: have not improved at all over the past 13 years of Labour rule.

Anyway if Albert Owen has statistics which prove that we are not after all the poorest place in the UK, I suggest he passes them to the ONS rather than writing quibbling letters to the Daily Post.

Wales This Week takes on Anglesey Council again...

The ITV investigative news programme, 'Wales This Week' -- which previously delved extensively into 'problems' at Anglesey County Council -- is poised to make an update on the situation on Anglesey. Focussing on the 'recovery', it will be screened next Thursday evening (4th November).

Apparently the news has caused some considerable disquiet at the council with senior figures warning that it may even damage the recovery. All I can say is that it must be a very fragile recovery if some extra media scrutiny is threatening to derail it.

I also hear that several of the main protagonists in the recovery process have refused to be interviewed by ITV -- a decision I find baffling. I urge them to reconsider: they should have the confidence to put across forcefully their side of the argument. If they do not and refuse to appear then it will not only be a PR disaster for the recovery, it will also naturally make Anglesey residents believe they have something to hide.

The Wales This Week programme will also be the revealing of the results of a confidential ITV poll of all participating councillors on their opinion of interim MD, David Bowles' performance, and whether they believe the recovery plan will solve the council's problems. Expect serious fireworks inside the council if the results are not positive.

++ Anglesey Council ruling Alliance releases Manifesto ++

In a remarkably positive step the ruling Alliance at Anglesey County Council, comprising of Llais i Fôn, Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Menai Group, have just released the below Manifesto/Policy Document outlining their aims and priorities in governing the council. This document has been approved by the National Executives of both Plaid Cymru and Labour and covers the following thirteen policy areas:

• Education and Leisure
• Social Services
• Housing / Homes
• Human Resources
• Economic Development, Work and Tourism
• Transport
• The Environment
• Property
• Finance
• Customer Service
• Planning
• Law and Order
• Corporate Affairs

This blog has long argued that one of the main reasons for dysfunction at Anglesey County Council is because our councillors lack both a shared vision for the Island and a policy roadmap of how to get there. This is in large part due to a significant number of Independents who are elected without issuing to voters in their wards either individual or group manifestos. Because of this: (a) residents are only able to vote on personalities and not policies; and (b) as we do not know in detail what they are voting for, it is impossible for us to then evaluate our councillor’s performance when the next council elections come around. Accordingly we should all welcome the Alliance's decision to publish this document because -- whatever we think of its content -- it represents a belated recognition by our councillors that by engaging in a 'battle of ideas' instead of a 'battle of personalities', both local democracy and the council's responsiveness to our needs can only be improved.

I will be posting my thoughts on its content in due course, but in the meantime I urge you all to take a look at the full Alliance manifesto below and share your thoughts and comments. IoACC Alliance Policy Document#32

Guest Post: Llanddwyn Through the Lens

Instead of the Druid's usual occasional Sunday series on Ynys Môn history, today we have a guest post by the brand new blog 'Photonic Anglesey', which is dedicated to capturing the essence and beauty of our island through photography. In this guest post 'Photon' takes us on a photographic tour of one of the jewels in the Anglesey crown: Llanddwyn beach and island:

Many island dwellers and visitors alike will know and love the wonderful setting of Traeth Llanddwyn, Newborough. A miles-long shallow sandy beach looking out to the almost mystical mountains of the Llyn Peninsula, guarded to the rear by towering sand dunes that first appeared during intensified stormy weather in the early 1300s. So what better, more popular place to choose as a location for just a small selection of images that capture the varying mood of Anglesey?

Let's start with an aerial image taken from near Abermenai Point. The vast majority of people take a right turn to Llanddwyn Island from the car park, but this is the sweeping, five-and-a-half mile round trip walk that awaits a walker in search of solitude, if you turn left:

What I want to show: Varied land and seascape,
absence of people, and just the stunning beauty of Llanddwyn

Not that you can't get some solitude on the most well-trodden parts of Llanddwyn. A sneaky trick used by us locals is to simply wait for winter to arrive, when the winds sweep-up the sand and leave even the most popular beach largely devoid of people:

A stormy winter's day: Time to walk, think - and be almost entirely free of tourists!

So many people walk the soft (and hard) sands of Llanddwyn that a surprisingly large number of artefacts of human visitation are inadvertently left behind. A practice that seems to have developed into something of a custom here is the gathering and display of 'lost articles', ranging from distraught kids' toys to an array of single shoes:

Socks and shoes. Didn't the owners realise they
were walking oddly on the way back to the car?

And odd things aren't limited to personal belongings at Llanddwyn. On one sunny New Year's Day, I took that left-hand turn and walked to the end of Abermenai Point. There isn't a lot there, to be honest, but it sure clears out the cobwebs! The walk was made worthwhile by finding this peculiar scene, created by a mooring buoy and the background beach:

Come in, Number 6! I'm not sure if this escaped
from Portmeirion, but it certainly made for a good photo.

The fact that Llanddwyn is special is evident in many ways: the number of visitors, it's inclusion in the Anglesey Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the various, multi-period, often religious settlement features on Llanddwyn Island. In winter, when the greenery has died back, you can still see the outlines of many archaeological remains on the island from the air:

Mediaeval remains on Llanddwyn Island - evidence that
humans have found this place special over a long period of time.

A mile or so inland of Llanddwyn, one of the most interesting cultural symbols is a steel sculpture celebrating the marram grass weavers of the Newborough area. It's easily accessible, situated at the centre of a small car park at the end of 'Lon Filltir', but obviously overlooked by the vast majority of visitors making their way to the beach through the forest:

Remembering the marram grass weavers of Newborough.
This beautiful (well, so long as its freshly painted!) steel sculpture almost
reaches out to heaven and the spirits of the departed weavers.

I suppose we mustn't forget that Llanddwyn is home to a large variety of plant and animal life, some of it highly specialised to this wind-battered, salty environment. Perhaps one of the most hardy of all animals to be found here is the lowly barnacle, clinging tightly to the rock face, no matter how strong the waves. The large colonies of barnacles also make for a great photo opportunity:

'This Place is Getting Crowded'. Barnacles encrust
the rocks near Llanddwyn lighthouse.

So, there you are. A brief soujourn along the copious sands of Llanddwyn. It's not been easy to whittle hundreds of photos down to just seven. OK, eight. I can't resist including this one, which took some deft flying at low level to capture:

OK, it's a pretty postcard picture, but good, all the same!

I've recently started writing my own blog - Photonic Anglesey - which I hope will convey to ourselves and those outside interested in Anglesey something of what our island is all about. Sure, there'll be plenty of 'pretty' postcard images that show a beautiful beach and kitsurfing dudes. But I hope to reach beyond all that, to capture everyday moments, from a passing aircraft to a newly-wed couple outside the registry office to a photo, say, of our councillors looking stressed in a public meeting. If you think you have a good shot, and would like to share it on the blog, let me know at: gourami@ownmail.net

Please try to make your photos no more than 800kb in size, otherwise my mailbox will be full very quickly!