Diolch

Thanks to anyone who voted to help this blog achieve the giddy height of number 31 in this year's Top 50 Welsh Blogs (up from 45 last year). And congratulations to Blog Menai for winning top place.

Aberystwyth University voted best in Wales again

Aberystwyth University has been voted the best in Wales for student satisfaction for the sixth consecutive year. It was also rated the fifth best in the UK.

The results are from an annual survey of students aiming to help inform the choices of prospective applicants about where and what to study. A total of 252,000 students participated in the survey this year, a response rate of 63.1%.

Overall satisfaction at Aberystwyth University remains very high at 92% - an increase of 2% on 2009 and 10% higher than both the Welsh and the UK average.

Students were asked questions grouped into seven areas: ‘the teaching on my course’, ‘assessment and feedback’, ‘academic support’, ‘organisation and management’, ‘learning resources’, ‘personal development’ and ‘overall satisfaction’.

Aberystwyth University subjects achieving a very strong performance in the survey for ‘Overall Satisfaction’ were:

• Agriculture

• Biology

• Celtic Studies

• English

• Physical Geography

• Sports Science

In 2008 a survey of students showed Aberystwyth was the top town in the whole of the UK for providing a sense of community and student safety.

Apart from the obvious quality of teaching and organisation at the university itself, the consistently excellent results in all fields are thought to be partly due to the relative size of Aberystwyth University in a small town, helping to create a community feeling and allowing students to interact well with local people.

Aberystwyth Roundup

It was good to hear it’s been agreed that the former Conservative Assembly Member Lisa Francis will chair Aberystwyth’s campaign for a Yes vote for in the coming referendum on more powers for the Assembly. Having been on Aberystwyth Town Council with her, I know she’s good at working with members of other parties and, unlike some in her party, has always been enthusiastic about Wales. She’s ideally suited to bringing local parties together in a united campaign and convincing Assembly sceptics.

On Monday (16th) there’ll be an 8-foot pair of wellies in Aberystwyth town centre as part of a flood awareness campaign by Environment Agency Wales. Further campaigns will focus on Tregaron and Capel Bangor.

Compassion in World Farming will be holding a meeting in the Morlan on their vision of the future of farming in Wales. The meeting is on Thursday 18th at 7.30

Many people will regret that the one-day Castell Rock festival isn’t happening in Aberystwyth this year. However the idea hasn’t gone away and the festival could be back another year.

Despite the pending cuts, development continues apace around Aberystwyth:

Planningpermission was given last week to convert the old antiques showroom in Maes Iago (next to the Academy) into 14 flats. I argued that it would be more suitable for offices and the ground floor should be retained as retail but lost the vote by 8 – 6.  

Work has finally started this week on the planned new GP surgery, pharmacy and creche on the west side of Penglais Hill. Padarn Surgery in North Parade will eventually move there.

A planning application has been submitted for 79 new houses at Piercefield Lane in Penparcau

The extra layer on the Bronglais Hospital car park is on schedule for completion in the Autumn. Despite recent press reports, it’s hoped that the building of the new A&E Dept can start in the new year.

Ysgol Plas Crug, already engaged in a substantial building programme to replace current portacabins with proper classrooms, Have put in a planning application for a new staff car park due to the horrendous parking problems in the area. They then withdrew it after parents complained it would reduce the children’s play area.

Just opposite, Aberystywth Rugby Club has received planning permission for an extension to their clubhouse.

Work is also re-commencing on the second block of flats at Yr Aelwyd, the former Urdd building in Llanbadarn Road.

Council leader still getting it wrong on Aberystwyth shops

It’s good to see some strongly-worded letters in today's Cambrian News, critical of last week’s comments on shops in Aberystwyth by Council Leader Keith Evans. He'd been presented with a petition by 1,000 people calling for large chain stores to come to the town. Unfortunately he had entirely misinterpreted this as support for last year's plan by the Council to demolish the heart of Aberystwyth and specifically criticised Cadw Calon Aberystwyth's successful campaign to save the 17 small shops in Chalybeate Street and Great Darkgate Street. Cadw Calon's campaign attracted a petition of 2,300 signatures.

In fact, many of the small traders who joined the Cadw Calon Aberystywh campaign themselves want to see appropriately placed larger stores coming to the town and have consistently said so. But not at the cost of their own businesses and the entire character of the centre of Aberystwyth. With the post office redevelopment scheme currently dead, the Council’s plans now revolve around the much less controversial Mill Street car park area.

Ceredigion third in Wales recycling league

Following on from the post about recycling on 1st August, figures published today show that Ceredigion is currently third in the Wales recycling league with 47% of waste recycled.

Denbighshire and Ynys Mon are top on 51% and 49.3% respectively. Bottom are Blaenau Gwent on 29.2%, with the Welsh average at 39.2%.

The Welsh government's target for the last year was 40% which Ceredigion achieved comfortably. But the target increases to 52% by 2012/13 with financial penalties for those councils not making it, so the pressure to improve further is very much on.

IBERS redundancies cut by half to 35

A feared 70 redundancies at IBERS (Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences) at Capel Dewi near Aberystwyth is now finalised at 35 after involvement from Assembly Member Elin Jones and a campaign by students. Although good news, it has to be remembered this still can't be fun for the 35.

The Facebook group ‘Aber Students against cuts to IBERS’ has posted the following closing message:

"It now appears that the redundancies and cuts proposed for IBERS at Aberystwyth University have been finalised and implemented, with only 35 redundancies of the original 70 being made.

"This group was started to allow people to register their objections to the proposed cuts which at first outlined a significant number of teaching positions to be cut and also at the frustration and anxiety caused by the conflicting information released by the University’s senior management team.

"Though it took the University a while to fully start to engage with and listen to students, I think through the Facebook group and the petition presented to the University’s Council, we really did have an effect on the University’s attitude during the whole process.

"It was always my intention to close down the ‘Aber Students Against Cuts to IBERS’ Facebook group when I felt its existence was no longer necessary, and this message is just to let you all know that I will be closing the group down from now.

"I do hope that this whole process has brought about a sea change in the attitude of the University towards student engagement, as they can see how effective the Guild of Students is at lobbying, and how passionate and committed Aberystwyth Students are when the quality of their education is threatened."

Bow Street station campaign builds up steam

The campaign to reopen a railway station at Bow Street, just north of Aberystwyth, is gaining ground.

The Welsh Government is currently undertaking an appraisal of the idea following the publication of the TRaCC Rail Study in April and is now looking for evidence of community support. Bow Street station would fill an eight mile gap in the Cambrian line between Aberystwyth and Borth stations. The original Bow Street station closed in the 1960s.

A similar appraisal is also taking place for a possible station at Carno, between Machynlleth and Caersws. The Welsh Government's National Transport Plan is committed to there being an hourly daytime rail service between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury by 2011.

Anyone wanting to support the Bow Street station proposal should e-mail enquiries@tracc.gov.uk or write to the TraCC Office at Canolfan Rheidol, Rhodfa Padarn, Llanbadarn Fawr, Aberystwyth SY23 3UE before September.

Ceredigion’s big recycling leap

Ceredigion Council’s plans to change its rubbish collections starting in November are causing a stir. Currently waste that can be recycled is collected in clear plastic bags every two weeks across 80% of the county, with the usual black bag (or ‘residual’) waste being collected each week. As reported on this blog in February, the plan is to reverse this so that recyclables are collected weekly, along with an added weekly collection for separated food waste, with the left over residual waste picked up fortnightly. To simplify things, all rubbish in Aberystwyth will be collected on the same day of the week instead of the current split days.

The driver behind this is the European Landfill Directive which pressures governments to incrementally increase recycling and reduce the waste being buried in the ground. Governments are fined if they don’t fulfil the directive. They therefore pass the financial incentive down to Councils whose job it is to administer waste collections. Each year the fee for sending waste to landfill rises a bit more so that Councils need to increasingly look for ways to reduce their waste to balance the books. This year the tax is £48 per ton with a planned rise to £72 eventually. The fine for exceeding the landfill allowance is £200 per ton. Councils that don’t reduce their landfill won’t be able to afford this.

Apart from the financial imperative, there’s a further logic behind Ceredigion’s scheme. In the last two years, since the introduction of the Council’s fortnightly kerbside recycling collection, the amount of waste being recycled in the county has doubled whilst the amount of residual waste has halved. Most households participating in the recycling collection now put out a significantly larger bag of recyclables than of residual waste. Reversing the two collections has a clear logic to it.

Aberystwyth Town Council supports the increased recycling collections but want the weekly residual waste collections to remain. This undoubtedly expresses the current public view but, according to Ceredigion, misses the point. The planned new scheme is not just aimed at keeping pace with the current demand for recycling but to increase it. Although Ceredigion has a higher rate of participation in recycling – currently 47% - than most other councils in both Wales and the UK, there are still many people who don’t take part. Some people simply don’t want the complication of cleaning and saving recyclable material until the next fortnightly collection. They just want to stick it in a weekly black bag to get rid of it as fast as possible and they’d probably still do this if both recycling and black bags were available alongside each other each week. The hope is that, if recycling is actually made easier than not recycling, rather than just an option, then even the most recalcitrant of people will decide they may as well do the right thing and recycle.

This all sounds very understandable, but there are potential problems. There are many non-recyclable things other than food waste, some very smelly things, that one would not want to keep in a small town centre flat with no back yard for two weeks. There’s likely to be a tendency for some of these things to find their way into recycling bags, contaminating the rest of the contents. Worse, in most people’s eyes, the town’s rubbish bins may suddenly start to overflow with household waste - a seagull bonanza.

Some occupants of HMOs in Aberystwyth seem to have difficulty putting their black bags out on the right day as it is, resulting in bags ripped open by seagulls and the contents strewn about the street. How much more difficult will it be to get the day right when they’re collected fortnightly. The mess caused by seagulls is already a highly sensitive issue in the town without adding to it. For the scheme to work well the arrangement of household waste will require a degree of domestic organisation that some town centre households don’t seem to possess.

At a recent briefing meeting council officers gave assurances that the scheme would be assertively policed. An intensive public information programme will be undertaken. Fifteen council officers have recently been through a course in administering on-the-spot fines under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act to people putting their rubbish out on the wrong day. Landlords will be asked to help. Housing associations will be briefed, students e-mailed, other councils running similar schemes liaised with.

The controversial element of the scheme is the cutting of residual waste collections. Ceredigion Council views this as the only way to force the whole population to recycle rather than just the socially responsible. Only a few years ago, anyone wanting to recycle in Aberystwyth had to have an almost religious commitment to collecting and transporting their empty baked bean tins and marmalade jars out to Aberystwyth Recycling Centre at Glanyrafon (not the municipal waste tip but a small organisation that hasn’t received the credit it’s due for kicking off the whole recycling effort in the area). Then the Town Council, to its great credit, provided recycling bins around the town. Finally, after many years of campaigning, Ceredigion Council began its kerbside recycling collections. Making recycling an option for those who want it has achieved a lot. The new scheme takes it to the next level where life becomes difficult for those who do not.

There’s no doubt it’s going to be an in-depth test of the population’s commitment to recycling, a commitment that has been impressive in Ceredigion up to now. One thing councillors learn quite quickly is that people don’t like change, and, in terms of everyone’s domestic arrangements, this is quite a big one. But if we’re to take climate change seriously, reduce pollution and our use of finite resources, this is the kind of change we were always going to have to make eventually. This is the moment recycling has been building up to, the moment when the scales are tipped and recycling becomes the main waste event with the shrinking bag of residuals increasingly an afterthought.

There will be tests of the Council’s and the public’s resolve, especially in the first few weeks. The Council will need to respond quickly to problems and the public don’t yet have confidence that they will. Every household in the county will need to give deeper thought to what they throw away. But, if the scheme can be made to work, everyone will benefit. And since the majority of people do get rubbish day right, by going fortnightly, the amount of black bags out on the streets could be halved. The seagulls will be gutted.

Glyndwr to rise again

Cadw have published a plan to revive the spirit of Owain Glyndwr at key sites across Wales. The historic environment body for Wales proposes a series of major improvements to eight sites aimed at publicising Glyndwr’s life and achievements, improving the conservation of the sites and, of course, bringing money to the areas in the form of heritage tourism.

The eight places identified as best telling the story of Glyndwr’s life and uprising in the 14th century are:
* Aberystwyth Castle
* Canolfan Owain Glyndwr at Machynlleth
* Pennal near Machynlleth
* Harlech Castle
* Bryn Glas battlefield at Pilleth near Knighton
* Hanmer near Wrexham
* Glyndyfrdwy near Llangollen

The report’s proposals for Aberystwyth Castle, more modest than at some of the sites, include:
* A programme of re-enactments, including Welsh language performances
* Exhibitions and displays in the usually closed tower and underground room
* Interpretation panels
* Signage from the town centre and station
* Flying the Glyndwr flag from the tower all year round

The report points out that Aberystwyth Castle, despite having a, “pleasant, open and welcoming ambience” in a prominent setting a short walk from the town centre is currently downplayed and taken for granted as part of the town. The castle was the scene of a major siege involving Glyndwr towards the end of his uprising.

Canolfan Owain Glyndwr in Machynlleth is now working on a consortium, including Ceredigion Council, around the Aberystwyth/Machylleth/Pennal cluster of sites to access European and other funding based on Cadw’s proposals.

Although Glyndwr’s main image is as a warrior (as in the above statue in Corwen), he was a much more rounded figure than that with interests in higher education and internationalism. Whilst he's very well known to Welsh nationalists, Cadw’s plans will raise awareness amongst the mainstream population and visitors to Wales.

Prom bikes plan shelved till the Autumn

The plan to provide a motorbike parking area on Aberystwyth promenade (covered here) has been shelved until the Autumn following public protests. The delay will give the Council time to re-think the plans in the light of the comments made.

I have to say I feel a little sorry for Ceredigion's Highways department. They must be getting used to this kind of situation. It doesn't matter what the issue is, the scenario goes like this:

1/ There are widespread public protests about something or other. Everyone seems to be unanimous that 'something must be done'. So clear is the public view being expressed that it seems a waste of resources to do a full consultation.

2/ The Council takes heed and puts a plan together.

3/ On hearing of the plan, a completely different set of people, maybe even larger than the first and who were previously silent, launch a major counter-protest.

4/ Those originally calling for the plan melt away.

5/ The Council retreats with its tail between its legs.

Aberystwyth Roundup

Ceredigion Council continues to pursue the building of a multi-storey car park on the site of the current Mill Street car park. The Cabinet have now agreed the criteria for choosing the developer which will include stipulations on the quality of the building, use of local materials and support for the independent retail sector in the town. It’s hoped the building could be complete by 2014.

Plans to create a school for 3-19 year-olds in the Tregaron area have been passed in principle by Ceredigion’s Council Cabinet. Although the decision will involve closing several small schools in the area, it’s been far less controversial than similar plans for the Llandysul area passed three weeks ago because input from Assembly Member Elin Jones and County Councillor Catherine Hughes among others has succeeded in brokering two crucial concessions with the County Council’s education department.

A new federal primary school will be built at a site yet to be identified to the west of Tregaron to cover Llangeitho, Bronant and Penuwch schools. Similarly, a federal primary school will be created in Pontrhydfendigaid to cover the area to the north of Tregaron. There have been widespread concerns about the future viability of Tregaron secondary school which currently has over 200 vacancies and the plan is intended to end these worries. The planned new school will also be Welsh-medium, a step which will significantly help the long-term future of the language in North Ceredigion. Consultations involved a series of meetings with school governors and two public meetings. The Council will now proceed with a formal consultation, in line with legislation, to close the existing schools at Tregaron, Lledrod, Bronant, Llangeitho, Penuwch, Pontrhydfendigaid and Llanddewi Brefi.

Aberystwyth Town Council has moved to the (currently) stifling heat of the top floor of the Business Centre in Baker Street after being ejected from the Town Hall in preparation for the development of a new library there.

Hywel Dda Health Board's consultation on changing the official name of Carmarthen Hospital from ‘West Wales General’ to Glangwili Hospital has ended. On deadline day the internal staff poll was running at 58.3% in favour with 41.7% against whilst, the last time I looked, the public poll was running at a much clearer 80% in favour.

Siop y Parc in Blaenplwyf was the venue for the launch last week by Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones and Assembly Member Elin Jones of a scheme to offer grants of up to £1,000 to people and small businesses living in broadband not-spots. A total of £2 million is being made available by the Welsh Government to finance the cost of installation with individuals and businesses being able to combine their applications to buy a broadband solution for their wider community.

An exhibition of children’s drawings from Gaza will be on display at the Officers Club, Terrace Road, Aberystwyth from 12th – 17th July with support from the United Nations.

The Welsh Arts Council has announced that all four arts organisations in Ceredigion currently receiving support from them will continue to do so in the next financial year. The four are Aberystwyth Art Centre, Cwmni Theatr Arad Goch, Theatr Felinfach and Theatr Mwldan in Cardigan.

Plaid Cymru activists are meeting at Aberystwyth University this weekend for their Summer School, an event the party have been holding since the 1930s. Aberystwyth will also be the venue for the party’s annual conference from 9th – 11th September to be held at the Art Centre.

A recent report on the seaside industry has estimated that 1,200 jobs are directly supported by seaside tourism in Aberystwyth. The report also found that the seaside tourist industry adds £300 million a year to the Welsh economy.

Aberystwyth University have submitted a planning application for a ground source heat pump on land next to Pantycelyn hall of residence.

Seagull season again

This slightly lost looking chap is a juvenile herring gull. And he’s probably hungry. There are plenty of them around Aberystwyth at the moment and, as happens at this time every year, they’re out looking for food the easiest way they know – by breaking into black bin bags on Tuesday and Thursday mornings which are rubbish collection days in Aberystwyth town centre. The result is often rubbish strewn all over the streets until a Council worker arrives to clean it all up.

Ceredigion Council regularly receives pleas from residents to find a way to end the problem. As an opposition councillor it would, of course, be easy for me to criticise, say, the Cabinet Member for Environmental Services over this. But, having regularly lobbied Council officers on the issue over the years, I know they’ve explored every conceivable avenue. Some of these have been more effective than others (last year a thicker kind of plastic bag was trialled - the seagulls laughed and cheerfully pecked their way through them ) but I like to think some of the measures they have adopted have been put in place because of the lobbying we’ve done.

Aberystwyth town centre is full of Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs) and narrow pavements, neither of which can accommodate proper bins. Bearing in mind these unavoidable physical limitations, let’s look at the more successful steps that have been taken over the past couple of years:

1/ A separate food waste collection has been introduced using hard containers so that black bags contain much less food than in the past, thereby reducing the incentive to the gulls.

2/ On most days council officers are out cleaning the streets from 6am. On Tuesdays and Thursdays – collection days – additional Environmental Services officers are out monitoring the way black bags are put out and searching damaged bags for evidence of names and addresses. Working on the premise that the best way forward is to target individual transgressors, they then knock on the doors of those with damaged bags and discuss with the resident alternative ways of presenting their waste, e.g. was the bag put out at the correct time, is the property suitable for a hard bin (which the Council provides cheaply), do they make use of the recycling collection etc...

3/ If no-one is in a letter is sent to the resident and/or landlord. In the case of HMOs copies are then sent to the Council’s HMO Officer who then tackles the landlords individually. Since the beginning of the season in March close to 150 such letters have been sent out. Only a handful of properties have had to be told a second time.

4/ Each term all 8,000 students are e-mailed with advice on putting out their waste via the University e-mail system. Council officers also attend the Fresher’s Fayre

5/ Lastly, in a new move that hasn't yet received publicity, the Council last week passed a motion to bring in on-the-spot fines of up to £300 for people leaving out black bags on the wrong day and other littering offences.

Is this enough? Could more be done? One solution often mooted is a cull of seagulls. Quite apart from the public outcry these generate, attempted culls elsewhere have been found to be ineffective as the birds killed are quickly replaced by others. Anyone wanting to conduct a cull requires a licence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. This specifically excludes the opening of rubbish bags, noise or droppings as a justification, so a license would probably not be forthcoming.

My feeling is that, if the Council is taking all the reasonable steps above, then the next most important thing is to give good publicity about who to contact when a mess is created and then respond quickly to calls. That way any litter problems are short-lived.

The seagull problem is only there, of course, because we feed them our rubbish each week. The gulls are probably very grateful and must think we love them. Unwittingly the Council may now have come up with a measure to address this that looks likely to be far more effective than all the others brought in so far. As reported on this blog, at an unspecified time in the next couple of years, and for reasons unrelated to gulls, the Council intends to increase its recycling collection to weekly and to cut the collections of those enticing black bags to fortnightly. At a stroke this would reduce by a half the food available on the streets.

A couple of years ago I was at a public meeting of around 80 townspeople at the Morlan in which the seagulls issue was raised. The chair decided to hold an impromptu straw poll on whether ‘something should be done’ about them or not. When the hands were raised it became obvious the meeting was split down the middle.

So, over to you. Do you think the seagull situation is a real problem or a fuss about nothing? Has it got worse or better in the last couple of years? Is the Council doing enough and, most importantly, given the realities of the situation, is there anything you think it could do better?

Llandysul school plans to go ahead

Ceredigion Council today voted to endorse the recent decision of their Cabinet to establish a new school for all children between 3 and 19 in the Llandysul area and to close five primary schools. There were angry scenes in the public gallery, to coin a journalistic phrase, when the result of the vote was announced as around 30 parent demonstrators shouted and held placards as they walked out.

The opposition Plaid Cymru group on the Council had proposed that, instead of school closures, a federation should be created in the area with existing primary schools under one headteacher but this was narrowly defeated 17 – 14.

Glangwili

Hywel Dda Health Board are consulting on changing the official name of Carmarthen Hospital to Glangwili from the current 'West Wales General Hospital'. The hospital's official name has always seemed odd when there are actually three other large hospitals in West Wales - Bronglais in Aberystwyth, Withybush in Haverfordwest and Prince Philip in Llanelli (not overly happy about that last name either).

Elin Jones, Ceredigion's Assembly Member says,

“I've always called the hospital Glangwili. Having been brought up in the Lampeter area, it's been my family’s hospital and I never went to see my grandmothers in West Wales General. However, I went several times to Glangwili!

“In my experience only NHS managers have referred to it as West Wales General Hospital, and not patients and visitors to the hospital. I believe that it’s better for all District General Hospitals to be known by their local names – after all, they're all hospitals in west Wales, and no one hospital in particular should hold the name for all of West Wales”.

The online poll will be available on the Hywel Dda Health Board’s website until 9th July.

Ceredigion & Powys to share highway services

Ceredigion and Powys Councils are planning to increasingly share their highway services in an effort to cut costs.

The two councils have been meeting for some months to sort out arrangements and are now in agreement that they can work more closely together on a regular basis following the holding of workshops between the staff of the two authorities.

The working together is likely to involve sharing highways contracts and workloads to take advantage of economies of scale. Ceredigion is also working with Powys on waste. The Councils have promised their staff the plans will involve no redundancies but that, when vacancies arise, they will be looked at across the two authorities. Responsibility for any work will remain with the individual authorities.

As an illustration of the kind of pressures highways authorities are going to be under in the new financial climate, the new Trunk Road budget is due to go down from £16.3 million per year to £8.1 million from September.

Gwynedd have also been involved in the talks but want to do more research before agreeing to take part. It may be that they’re also considering an arrangement with Denbighsire, Conwy and Ynys Mon. The idea of involving the private sector was thrown out unceremoniously at a meeting of Ceredigion councillors several months ago.

Ceredigion and Powys working together fits in with the Wales spatial plan which identifies Aberystywth as the main town in mid Wales and a town of national significance, as shown by the locating of the new Assembly offices at Parc y Llyn.

Plaid call in Llandysul school plans

Plaid Cymru have today called in the recent decision of Ceredigion's Council Cabinet to create a new school for all children aged 3-19 in Llandysul and to close five existing primary schools in the area. The calling in motion has been signed by Ellen ap Gwynn, Catrin Miles and Ian ap Dewi. The issue will now be discussed at a special meeting of the Council's Education Scrutiny Committee on 28th June ahead of a full council meeting on June 30th. As reported below, a similar proposal to create a new large school in the Tregaron area and close further primary schools is due to be discussed in the Cabinet meeting on 6th July.

Aber University selected as possible Olympic mountain bike training camp

A tweet just in from Aberystwyth University tells me they've been selected as a possible pre-2012 Olympic Games training camp for mountain biking, presumably due to the proximity to Bwlch Nant yr Arian and Coed y Brenin mountain bike tracks coupled with the good sports science facilities at the University.

Meanwhile, today's street cycling races in the town (see photo) went extremely well with entrants from all over Wales and several races over-subscribed.

Prom bikes to be organised this summer

Motorbikes will be given a designated place to park on Aberystwyth Prom and banned from parking wherever they please. That’s the decision agreed by the Ceredigion Cabinet on Tuesday. The plan follows numerous complaints over the last couple of years at the way bikers have been commandeering the full width of the Prom on some summer weekends, at times forcing pedestrians to pick their way through them in order to pass.

Some local people have called for bikes to be banned from the Prom altogether but the majority view recognises the economic value to the town of the large number of bikers, many from as far away as Shrewsbury, who enjoy a leisurely Sunday ride through the bends of Powys and North Ceredigion before ending by the sea at Aberystwyth. The mostly mature bikers are impeccable in their behaviour but, without parking being organised in some way, have often allowed haphazard parking to get out of hand.

The new parking area will be a seven metre wide strip of the Prom running alongside Marine Terrace from the North side of the snack bar by the bandstand for about 100 yards towards Constitution Hill and will accommodate around 100 bikes.

Aberystwyth roundup

After a bit of a hiatus on this blog over the past couple of weeks, here’s roundup of local stories:

Ceredigion’s Council Cabinet has voted to build a new Welsh medium school for all pupils aged between 3 and 19 in the Llandysul area. The plans will involve the closure of five small primary schools – Llandysul, Coed y Bryn, Aberbanc, Pontsian and Capel Cynon. A similar proposal for the Tregaron area is to be discussed at the next Cabinet meeting on 6th July.

The next round of public exhibitions on the proposed wind farm at Nant y Moch started on Wednesday in Penrhyncoch. The new proposals have reduced the number of turbines down to 64 from an original 106. The final decision wil be taken by the PCI , probably in 2012. If permission is given, the project could be completed by 2017. Further exhibitions will be held on:
Thursday 17th June, Y Plas, Machynlleth 3-8pm
Friday 18th June – Neuadd Goffa, Talybont 3-8pm
Saturday 19th June – Neuadd Capel Bangor 9am-2pm

Aberystwyth Art Centre has been credited with contributing £10.65m to the local economy each year in a study by a Cardiff-based concultancy firm. This amount has apparently increased by 50% over the past five years.

After a few teething difficulties with negotiating new contracts, Tai Ceredigion, the county’s new housing association, have undertaken to cut the grass of all its sheltered accommodations on a three-weekly cycle, significantly better than the performance of Ceredigion Council who previously managed the buildings.

A planning application for an extra 28 new housing units at Llys Ardwyn, on the site of the old Penweddig school, is the subject of a prolonged tussle between the developer and Ceredigion’s planning department. Last week’s meeting of the Council’s Development Control Committee agreed to ask planning officers to negotiate a smaller scheme. The Council’s Highways department also has concerns about the amount of traffic the new units would generate.

Hywel Dda Health Board are hoping that money saved from the revamped Bronglais Hospital scheme (see story below) can go towards a new health resource centre in Aberaeron.

Ceredigion Council has announced that sales of the various town centre council offices sold off following the building of new offices on the outskirts of Aberystwyth amounted to almost £850,000.

The Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth has launched its new report, Zero Carbon Britain 2030. The report looks at political and economic solutions to the challenges set by climate change.

Lib Dem policy changes begin

This blog avoids too much political sniping. But it does seem that a significant point was reached on Tuesday when Ceredigion's MP Mark Williams and other Lib Dems voted against including Trident in the government's forthcoming Strategic Defence Review, despite having given assurances during the election that they would oppose the massively expensive weapons system. The vote, which would have forced the government to consider scrapping the £100 billion programme as part of their financial cuts, came as an amendment to the Queen's speech proposed by Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the SNP. More details here and here. This could be the first of many Lib Dem policy changes as a result of their alliance with the Conservatives.