Priced-out: The housing situation on Ynys Môn

I wrote on Wednesday regarding the demographic double-whammy facing Anglesey over the next 20 years, with the numbers of over 75s expected to almost double whilst simultaneously the number of younger people aged between 25-59 will reduce by 14 percent. There are many reasons for the outward migration of younger people from the island: most notably people leaving to either attend university or to find work (in my case, I did both). However, to my mind there is one other major reason forcing younger people to leave and that is the price of houses on the Island. According to the latest figures on the BBC website, the average house price on Anglesey during the period April-June 2010 was £171,075 -- thus making Anglesey homes more expensive on average than anywhere else in the whole of North Wales.

This is particularly significant when we compare this average house price with average earnings on the Island. Using the latest figures available (2009) the average gross weekly earnings on Anglesey was £492, or approximately £25,610 p.a. (please also note that these figures include the relatively higher wages paid by Anglesey Aluminium at the time, meaning that the actual average wage on the Island has probably slumped somewhat since 2009). This means that the average Anglesey home is almost 7x the average wage. When you consider that even at the height of the housing bubble banks were not offering mortgages even approaching 7x earnings, it makes it very clear how very difficult it is for younger Anglesey residents' to get on the first rung of the housing ladder, without first being able to build up a substantial deposit. To be fair, as the below chart shows the situation is similar across the whole of North Wales, with only Conway houses being more expensive relative to local wages. However, as absolute house prices on Anglesey are that much higher it is clear that it is a significant problem here on Anglesey.

For me this highlights just how important is the need for Anglesey County Council to speed up the completion of the Local Development Plan -- which it is now working on in conjunction with Gwynedd Council. Currently present policies are based on the adopted Ynys Môn Local Plan (1996) and the stopped Unitary Development Plan (2005) -- both of these documents are seriously outdated in all areas: industrial, commercial, and, as discussed above, most importantly in the field of housing and affordable housing. Without increasing the amount of housing available on the island we will continue to drive younger people over the bridge and therefore the Council must as a matter of urgency speed up the finalisation of its joint plan with Gwynedd.

Anglesey loses out in Council budget calculations

The Welsh Assembly Government yesterday announced the amount of funding it will award each local authority for 2011-2012. Anglesey County Council will see its budget reduced from £94.9 million this year to £93.3 million next year -- a reduction of £1.6 million and equivalent to -1.7 percent. The Welsh average is a reduction of just -1.4 percent meaning that Anglesey is among the 14 councils receiving the highest levels of cuts. You can see the settlements for all Welsh Local Authorities below (and more info here):

The amounts to be spent on Social Services and Education will be earmarked within each Local Authority's budget. As these two department's account for the lion's share of the total budget, by protecting them other departments will receive higher levels of cuts. It is unclear yet what implications this will have on next year's council tax -- which was already supposed to rising by up to 5 percent.

I am not surprised to see Ynys Môn once again receive one of the worst settlements from the Welsh Assembly. Last year, compared to an average Welsh rise of 2.1 percent, Anglesey County Council's allocation was increased by just 1 percent -- the joint lowest in Wales -- and we would have received even less had the Council not been able to negotiate a 'floor'. As the allocations are calculated mainly by population and not by need, Anglesey tends to lose out despite being officially the poorest place in the UK. Furthermore Anglesey is being hit by a double demographic whammy because we have a large and growing population of elderly people, who require far more care and resources, coupled with a net outward migration of younger people. In fact by 2031, the number of over 75s in Ynys Môn is expected to almost double whilst those between 25-59 years will decrease by 14 percent -- this will place a significant burden on Anglesey County Council's social services budget unless the Welsh Assembly addresses the way these grants are allocated.

The Irish Bailout and Holyhead

The economic problems facing the Republic of Ireland are immense and especially worrying for us on Ynys Môn considering how much the Port of Holyhead relies upon a steady flow of people and cargo between us and the Irish ports of Dublin and Dun Laoghaire. Holyhead is in fact the busiest ferry port in Wales handling around 2.3 million passenger movements each year and sustaining approximately 900 jobs -- well over half of those with Stena, and the remainder with Irish Ferries, port service companies, and various other transport businesses. In 2009, according the latest figures available from the Department of Transport, Holyhead Port handled a total of 2.85 million tonnes -- the vast majority of it roll on/roll off. All of this injects much needed money in to Anglesey's fragile economy.

Of course Ireland is not just important to Holyhead and Anglesey, it is also one of the UK's largest trading partners. British exports to Ireland are three times British exports to China and five times the exports to India, furthermore Irish trade exceeds total UK trade with the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China put together. For these reasons I am pleased to see that the UK Government is prepared to help Eire and hope that this along with the IMF loans will help to buffer any possible knock-on effects on ferry traffic at Holyhead.

Ombudsman to review Holyhead Grants case

Last month I highlighted the case of Holyhead resident, Mr Gwynfor Pierce, who has long maintained to Anglesey County Council that there were serious irregularities in the handling of the Housing Renovation and Town Improvement Grants he received. After a three year battle the council earlier this year finally admitted that "...evidence exists that external parties have sought to defraud the council" and the case was submitted for further investigation to the council's external auditors, PriceWaterhouseCoopers. You can read the full story here.

Last week came further good news: thanks to Mr Pierce's persistence coupled with strong support from North Wales regional AM, Mark Isherwood, the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales has now agreed to a full review of Mr Pierce's case. Lets now hope that these issues will be resolved once and for all.

Starting out...

I would like to thank everyone for their words of encouragement since becoming a candidate. The number of supportive comments and phone calls I have received over the past two days has been humbling. I am grateful to them all and I will endeavour to continue to do my best for Ynys Môn.

In the Daily Post article on my 'unmasking' yesterday, Albert Owen MP is quoted as saying that I have "hoodwinked" people into thinking I was a "caring voice". I suppose the inference is that a Conservative candidate could never truly be caring. I hope people will see his comments for what they are: silly and needlessly tribal.

The fact is this: writing this blog, like compiling the People's Manifesto, has been a labour of love for me. Whatever Albert Owen, or other over-excited blogs on the mainland might say, I doubt that anyone can question my commitment to this Island and my desire to find practical solutions to its problems. I hope that I will now be able to use whatever extra influence I have as a candidate in next year's Assembly elections to further much needed change on Ynys Môn.

Finally, as Albert Owen accuses me of having "hoodwinked" people, let me remind him of some of his utterances over the past year:

• In January, Albert wrote this in the letters page of the Holyhead and Anglesey Mail: "David Cameron’s closest energy advisor Zac Goldsmith clearly states that if the party sticks to its existing policy it would never allow the building of a new nuclear power station. Well that rules out Wylfa B under the Tories". What Albert failed to mention was that both Labour and Conservative policy regarding nuclear was identical: supportive as long as there were no subsidies. Anyway within four months of the coalition government taking power Wylfa was indeed granted preferred nuclear build status, thus providing government support for Horizon to proceed.
• In April, Albert wrote on his election leaflets that he had "delivered to: secure new investment (£635 million) in RAF Valley by creating new jobs now and for the future in fast jet training and the Search and Rescue HQ". I revealed on this blog that the £635 million figure was the entire budget, spread across 25 years, for running the UK Military Flying Training System (UKMFTS) across a number of air bases in the UK -- not just for RAF Valley. The press picked up my post and Albert defended himself by merely insisting, "I am comfortable with using this figure". Says it all.
• Albert Owen has been most creative when seeking to find something to blame other than his own Party's policies for the catastrophic closure of Anglesey Aluminium and the loss of 450 jobs. In March he claimed it was down to "Tory hypocrisy", by September it was the fault of the company itself. The real reasons behind Anglesey Aluminium's closure are: (a) EU law which prevents government subsidy of business -- this required Wylfa to stop its cut-price supply of electricity to AAM after being acquired by the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency; (b) Peter Mandelson's removal of import tariffs on Russian aluminium; and (c) the Labour government's pledge to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050 which makes all primary metallurgical industries increasingly unviable in the UK.
• As it reflects badly on him and 13 years of his government, Albert has repeatedly tried to deny that Ynys Môn is the poorest locale in the UK. This is despite the Office for National Statistics releasing data which proves that it clearly is. 

I could go on, but I think the above is sufficient. I am not trying to make a partisan point here -- politicians from all parties tend to be economical with the truth. However the problem I have with Albert's frequent 'distortions' is that they do not help us find solutions for our exceptional problems on Ynys Môn. Unless we accurately identify our problems, and their real causes, then we will never find workable solutions for them. And from now on, as a candidate, thats exactly what I intend to do.

P.S. I wrote yesterday about Ieuan Wyn Jones's lack of engagement with his own constituency. As if to prove my point yesterday's Daily Post article reported that, "Anglesey AM, Ieuan Wyn Jones, was unavailable for comment".

The Druid Revealed

As ‘The Druid’ I have been commenting on the current affairs and politics of Anglesey since January this year when I set up this blog. I decided to start writing because it was plain to see that Ynys Môn was in decline: both economically and politically. Companies like Anglesey Aluminium, Eaton Electric, Menai Electrical, Peboc, and so on which had been operating on Ynys Môn for a generation were closing. On the other hand, Anglesey County Council had just been slammed by the Welsh Audit Office for a total breakdown in communications between councillors and officers, and then effectively taken into special measures by the Assembly Government. I didn’t want to just sit idly by so I started writing -- and for whatever reason it seems that what I wrote somehow struck a chord with other Ynys Môn residents. Before long the blog went from having zero comments, to perhaps one or two per post, to suddenly hundreds and hundreds of comments daily. It was an overwhelming experience, but it also proved to me -- and everyone else -- that there were literally hundreds of other Anglesey residents who were just as dismayed as I was with what was happening to our Island.

Of course not everyone agreed with my analyses and prescriptions, but everyone was happy to engage in mostly good humoured debates about topical issues concerning our Island. And, most importantly, people didn’t want to just criticise, they also wanted to propose solutions. Readers submitted intelligent and well thought out ideas in their hundreds to improve the Island, and it was these which ended up forming the core of the crowd-sourced ‘People’s Manifesto for Ynys Môn’ -- a labour of love for many of us. I can honestly say that my proudest moment since setting up ‘The Druid’ was not the day it was named as ‘Best Political Blog’ at the Wales Blog Awards, but the day I emailed the People’s Manifesto to Ieuan Wyn Jones, Albert Owen, and our 40 county councillors.

In addition to the People’s Manifesto there have also been a number of other key moments, and here is just a flavour:

• thanks to a reader’s FoI request, the details of Anglesey Council’s Interim MD David Bowles’ salary -- the highest paid civil servant in Wales -- were first revealed on this blog
• the fact-checking of Albert Owen’s repeated claims that Anglesey isn’t the poorest place in the UK, despite the Office of National Statistics clearly showing that it is
• the bringing to light of the shocking experiences of a number of Anglesey residents who tried to inform the council about abuses regarding Town Renovation and Home Improvement Grants.
• the first public publication of the controversial ‘Terms of Engagement’ of the Alliance which took over the executive of Anglesey County Council in June
• a look at how the North Wales Police Authority distorted the results of a poll on the public’s real opinion on elected Police Commissioners in Wales
• the truth behind Albert Owen’s election leaflet claim that he had secured £635 million for RAF Valley -- despite that actually being the total flight training budget spread across 25 years for all of the UK’s air bases.

...and many more.

You might wonder why there are two Albert Owen stories above, but none about Ieuan Wyn Jones? The reason is this: for whatever his faults Albert is at least committed to Anglesey and engages with residents openly and quickly. Indeed when I sent out the People’s Manifesto, the very first reply I received was from Albert. In contrast I never heard anything back from Ieuan Wyn Jones -- and this is also true whenever I have looked to write about him on this blog: there’s literally nothing to write because his engagement with his own constituency is so slight. And that is not just my opinion -- I have now heard the same sentiments repeated to me by many, many Islanders. As we all know, Ieuan Wyn currently has four jobs:

• Deputy First Minister,
• Minister for Economy and Transport
• Leader of Plaid Cymru, and
• AM for Ynys Môn

There is no doubt in my mind that he prioritises his attention and energies on his ministerial and Plaid Cymru responsibilities at the expense of his most important job: being our AM. As officially the poorest place in the UK, I believe that Ynys Môn can no longer afford the luxury of an AM who's first priority is not looking after his own constituency.

Anyone who has read this blog for any period of time will know that my political views are quite clearly conservative - something I have never tried to hide. Accordingly, and after a great deal of thought, I decided that I would put myself forward for selection as the Conservative candidate for next May’s Assembly elections -- not because I particularly want to be a politician, but because I have a passion for my home Island and want to do something to help halt the decline. I’m happy to announce that last night I was selected as the Welsh Conservative candidate for Ynys Môn and will take on Ieuan Wyn Jones in next year’s Welsh Assembly elections.

Paul Williams
a.k.a. "The Druid"

Therefore it is now time to cast aside my cloak and reveal my identity. My name is Paul Williams and I was born, brought up, and educated on Ynys Môn. My family have farmed the Island for centuries and I spent my younger life on the family farm just outside Llangefni (before we converted it into the very successful Tafarn Y Rhos pub). I attended Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni and my first paid job was in the Welsh Country Foods abattoir in Gaerwen. Like many of my peers I left Anglesey to attend University and picked up two degrees including a Masters in Japanese, which I now speak fluently. I went on to have considerable international business experience: I spent six years working in Tokyo, Japan, and a further six years in Frankfurt, Germany, where I was appointed to a very senior European marketing position for one of the World’s largest consumer electronics firms. I also however have experience of business on a smaller scale: three years ago, just before the credit crunch, I decided to set up my own small consultancy firm and therefore weathered the storm of the recession as a small businessman and learned intimately the problems and pressures facing small businesses all over the UK but particularly here in Anglesey. I currently live in Rhostrehwfa with my longterm girlfriend.

As the Welsh Conservative candidate, in addition to being guided by the People's Manifesto, I will be focussing on the following key points:

• championing a private sector led economic recovery on Anglesey. Over a relatively short period of time Ynys Môn has seen the closure of several of its largest firms and the loss of over 2,100 private-sector jobs, according to a study by the University of Wales. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the biggest job-creators in our economy, yet Ieuan Wyn Jones’s Economic Renewal Programme has slashed the amount of support available to these smaller firms. I will champion and support our SMEs to set-up and expand by recognising the value of these embryonic companies and their potential to grow and create employment.
• Support a smarter ‘Energy Island’ concept. I will provide full and unequivocal support for the development of Wylfa B. However for the ‘Energy Island’ concept to fully benefit Anglesey we need to be more than just a ‘site’ for nuclear reactors and water turbines. As such I will champion the creation of an Energy Technology Park on the Island and ensure that the skilled workforce needed for the power station and its construction are sourced locally.
• Support the recovery of Anglesey County Council. The political problems at Anglesey County Council have created an environment of instability and indecision which is not conducive for business investment or development – particularly due to the absence of a clear planning policy framework.
• Champion Agriculture and Tourism on Ynys Môn. Between 1997 and 2007, the economic contribution of agriculture to the North Wales economy fell by 67 percent, compared to an overall UK decline of just 7 percent. Equally, in terms of tourism, Anglesey does not suffer from a dearth of places to visit, it suffers from a lack of imagination in marketing itself. I will champion and support both agriculture and tourism on Ynys Môn.
• Defend Anglesey from disproportionate cuts. I recognise the need for the government to reduce the structural deficit, however I will defend Anglesey from any disproportionate or unfair cuts to policing, health, education and other frontline public services.
• To be a dedicated AM for Ynys Môn. It is clear that the Ieuan Wyn Jones’s Leadership of Plaid Cymru and ministerial duties are compromising his ability to give Anglesey residents a much needed and dedicated voice in Cardiff Bay. I pledge to be an excellent and dedicated AM for Ynys Môn.

As for this blog: it will continue. As far as I am concerned nothing has changed -- I am still the same person I was before becoming a candidate -- and I will continue to write about matters which effect both Ynys Môn and Wales as a whole. Like you I want to see what's best for this Island.

Paul Williams / The Druid

P.S. Some of you may have noticed that someone called Alwyn Rowlands, apparently the Chair of the Anglesey Labour Party, has recently taken to writing angry letters to the Daily Post and Anglesey & Holyhead Mail demanding that "if [the Druid] wants to become involved in politics, then come out and debate it out in the open with the rest of us". Well, Alwyn, here I am.

Old versus New in Rhosneigr

The Rhosneigr ward by-election forced by the standing down of ex-Council Leader Phil Fowlie will be held on Thursday this week.

There are two candidates standing -- regular readers will know that one of them, Martin Peet, has taken the opportunity to publicise his mini-manifesto on this site and, admirably, engage openly in discussion with commenters regarding his position on various issues. The other candidate failed to respond to an invitation from me to similarly publicise his manifesto aims on this site.

Martin Peet has openly declared that he is opposed to the recently announced plans to convert the currently free Rhosneigr Library car park into a pay-and-display site due to the detrimental effects it will have on library usage and on local Rhosneigr shops. He has also started a petition to allow Rhosneigr residents to register their disapproval. Furthermore, if elected, Martin Peet is pledged to join the Conservatives in Phil Fowlie's Original Independants group -- which is opposed to the parking changes. On the other hand his opponent has not opposed the parking charges in Rhosneigr and, if elected, plans to join the ruling coalition who have tried to impose these ridiculous parking changes without a proper debate or consultation.

Can there be a better symbol of new politics versus old politics? Martin Peet is embodying the type of open, transparent politics which this blog has long advocated and called for through the People's Manifesto for Ynys Môn. Phil Fowlie did a lot of good for Anglesey during his tenure as a councillor and Leader; it seems to me that it is abundantly clear who is his true heir in Rhosneigr.


UPDATE: The final result was as follows:

Richard Dew    319 votes
Martin Peet        58 votes

As far as I am concerned Mr Peet put up an admirable fight -- and was 100% transparent about the policies he would like to pursue and which council grouping he intended to join if elected. However Mr Dew is obviously well liked and respected in Rhosneigr and I wish him all the best -- but I still wish that the Rhosneigr by-election could have been a sea-change in Anglesey politics, with both parties transparently engaging in a battle of ideas.