PROTECTING OUR LOCAL SERVICES

Across our city our bus service, along with many other previously provided services, have suffered as the Labour controlled city council has repeatedly failed to step up to protect services.  The City Council certainly did not feel the need to inform residents of the significant changes made to the City Bus Service until after the changes had been made.

Our bus services have been reduced to a minimum with reductions in the evening and Sunday services having been hit the hardest. The Labour dominated City Council has also failed to campaign for the security of our bus services.

At the most basic level quality public services are central to the prosperity of our nation. They are the very glue that binds our society together and the safety net that supports the most vulnerable in our society. The more Plaid Cymru councillors elected this May, the better the quality of services we can expect.

Since 2011-12, central Welsh Government funding for councils has decreased by 6.5%. This decrease in funding has a neglected some of the weakest and most vulnerable people in our communities, hitting them hardest. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that local councils could see their budgets cut again in the next few years.

Despite the threat of cuts, Plaid Cymru will continue to fight to protect the weakest and most vulnerable members of our communities – including the elderly, the disabled and children - who rely on key services provided by our councils.

Plaid recently demonstrated our commitment to protect council budgets by securing an additional £25m for our councils by in influencing the most recent Welsh Government budget. Our elected members will continue to fight for fair resources to protect services, which so many people rely upon. Plaid Cymru will also concentrate on protecting front-line staff and delivering first-class front-line services.

FLY-TIPPING - OUR SHARED PROBLEM...

Recent fly-tipping in Allt-yr-yn

Whether you live in Allt-yr-yn, Pill, Tredegar Park, St Julians or anywhere else in Newport - fly tipping is a problem – with rubbish and waste being dumped in quiet streets, nature reserves, in fields or in the drainage reens on the levels (something which aggravates drainage problems and flooding). Newport City Council is directly responsible for removing dumped items from any council owned land, including housing estates, grass areas, parks and reens, canals and public highways.

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Recent fly-tipping in Allt-yr-yn

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The South Wales Argus (back in July 21015) reported that there were more than 7,000 fly-tipping reports but only five prosecutions in the last four years in Newport, a Freedom of Information request showed. No-one was taken to court in the city between April 2011 and March 2014 and the five offenders the council prosecuted in 2014-2015 were handed fines totalling just £2,600, the Argus reported.

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It was noted in 2015 that fly-tipping costs Newport council tax payers £300,000 a year. Fly-tipping in Newport by and large fell in the four years between 2010 and 2014, with 2,014 reports in 2011-12, 1,982 in 2012-13, 1,578 in 2013-14 and 1,672 in 2014-15, totalling 7,246, the Freedom of Information request showed. In February 2017 the South Wales Argus reported that 135.8 tonnes of waste was picked up by the Pride in Newport team since it was launched.

Recent fly-tipping in Allt-yr-yn

It remains one of those anti-social problems that plagues all of our communities across Wales affecting both relatively well off and less affluent communities of our country and our city. It affects both rural and urban areas equally and despite the best efforts of financially strapped county councils shows little sign of being discouraged or curbed.

Domestic waste aside much, but not all, a significant amount of the dumped waste appears to be construction or builders waste – something that may well be aggravated by the charge that commercial concerns face at some refuse sites (including Newport). What’s needed is to develop a realistic all agency approach, which can bring an end to the problem of fly tipping – something that may involve accepting commercial waste at the tip for no fee.

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PLAID CYMRU'S MANIFESTO FOR NEWPORT

Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales is campaigning on five main issues in Newport:

• Making sure Newport gets it's fair share of the City Deal investment to improve local transport and create new jobs locally.
• Tackling the business rates scandal to help support local traders and to further revive Newport as a shopping destination.
• Campaigning for the Welsh Government to proclaim Newport as Wales's digital capital, building on our cyber security and digital reputation to help make Newport a digital world capital.
• Building affordable and sustainable housing, striking a balance by protecting our precious green spaces as well as providing affordable homes and converting empty properties.
• Campaigning against the black route of the proposed M4 Relief Road, thereby helping to save our environment and defending Newport's Port. This will allow us to invest in an alternative, sustainable and cheaper route.

If you want to find out more about Plaid Cymru in the City of Newport, visit our website: 

http://www.NewportPlaid.cymru

GREEN BELT? FOR WALES??

There is a clear need for a Welsh Green belt across all of our country, to fringe our urban areas, to help focus out of town and fringe of town developments, not to mention helping to protect green spaces between and within some of our urban areas. It's worth noting that 'Green belt', if respected is a useful planning tool, originally introduced for London in 1938, it was then rolled out to England as a whole by a government circular in 1955 but interestingly enough not to Wales.

The original concept was to allow local councils to designate green belts when they wanted to restrict or control urban growth.  The idea worked and worked well, as by 2007, Green belt covered something like 13% of England (about one-and-a-half million hectares) despite the best efforts of previous Conservative, New Labour and Conservative–Liberal Democrat Governments it is still remains relatively well protected by normal planning controls against "inappropriate development".

Here in Wales we have one patch of notional green belt (or Green wedge) and that lies between Cardiff and Newport. Scotland has seven and Northern Ireland has 30 - each has its own policy guidance.  The preservation of green spaces aside, it comes down to planning permission, which can be a touchy subject, especially when a development (whether for commercial, housing or energy development) is controversial or the final decision is made against the wishes of local people.

It should be pretty clear to most dispassionate observers that in Wales, we lack a coherent national strategic development plan for Wales judging by the half-baked way local unitary development plans have been put together over the years. A number of which are focussed on housing developments, which have done (and will do) some pretty serious damage to our environment in the process without any necessary improvements in infrastructure e.g new railway stations with reasonably priced (or even free), adequate and secure park and ride facilities at Caerleon (closed as a result of the Beeching cuts in 1962, in the UDP since 1984) Llanwern and Magor.

In the south east, along the coastal belt and in and around Newport and Torfaen (not to mention Cardiff and Caerphilly) the last thirty years has seen a significant if not spectacular growth in the amount of housing, a significant percentage of which has never aimed to fulfil local housing needs. As a result the infrastructure along the coastal belt between Chepstow, Caldicot, Rogiet and Magor is struggling to cope with existing developments and this is well before the projected expansion of housing on and around the former Llanwern site really kicks in.

Northern Newport has now been linked to the south Cwmbran - something that has brought little material benefit to the residents of either urban area but has contributed much to traffic congestion. Similarly linking Cwmbran with Sebastopol will bring scant benefit to local residents. Even if eventually housing is built on the land just exactly how much of it will be affordable to local residents?

When the Severn Bridge tolls are reduced (rather than removed) after 2018, there will be a significant bump in house prices as people living in and around Bristol move cash in on cheaper housing over here.  This will impact on both affordable and available housing, developers will no doubt pitch their developments accordingly to cash in on perceived higher wages in the Bristol area and perceived cheaper housing over here (and no doubt our local authorities will fall over themselves to accommodate the developers wishes regardless how local people feel).

The National Assembly should know better and act accordingly, the institution when established was supposed to have sustainability enshrined in its actions, but, at times you really have to wonder, especially when it comes to the impact of some of the proposed developments on our communities. We need to protect the green wedges around and within our urban communities – because once developed they are gone for good.

The problem caused by a lack of protection to our Green wedges, etc is aggravated by the fact that what one generation of elected officials (and council officers) envisages as a green wedge, green lane, etc is often seen by later generations of elected officials (and council officers) as either prime land for development or a nice little earner to help balance out the books - this means that there is a real lack of stability and a long term vision for many of our urban areas and impacts on our quality of life. 

The National Assembly needs to act like the Welsh Parliament it should be and take the long view and create Welsh Green belt land with full legal and planning protections. This might go some way to calming things down when it comes to development planning and might introduce a more long-term sustainable democratic element into the process. This is something that could be accomplished by creating Welsh Green belt land, as part of the process we also need an urgent and open debate into the planning process in Wales - something that has been long overdue.

Successive Westminster government’s (in England) over the next few years will continue to talk about getting planning officers "off people's backs" with a relaxation of current rules. When they talk about ‘people’ they mean developers. In true Spiv fashion ‘for a limited period, people are able able to build larger extensions on houses (up to eight metres for detached homes and six for others). Shops and offices will also be able grow to the edges of their premises as Plan A (harsh Public Sector Cuts) continues to unravel and on the back of BREXIT a note of desperation may begin to creep into Westminster’s attempts to boost stabilise the economy.

These sounds good; it seems very reasonable save for the fact that somewhere amongst the smoke and mirrors the plan will reduce developer’s obligations to build proportional amounts of affordable housing and avoiding flood risk will go out the window. Not that long ago the previous Westminster government rewrote the entire planning framework (for England) despite some fierce resistance from countryside campaigners. No doubt Westminster ministers will want further changes to planning rules (in England) in an attempt to boost house building and revive the economy.

Not wanting to be left out (and bereft of any fresh ideas), a few years ago the previous Labour in Wales Government in Cardiff also pursued major changes to planning rules in Wales aiming to ‘tilt the balance in favour of economic growth over the environment and social factors’. This decision was in my opinion aimed quite specifically at overturning those few occasions when our Local Authorities have rejected developments (often at the behest of local residents) rather than putting economic needs ahead of economic and environmental benefits and will do little for sustainable, flood free development to deal with local housing needs let alone preserve our green spaces.

PLAID CYMRU SPRING CONFERENCE SPEECH

Being a Plaid member opens your eyes to the fact that we are indisputably one nation, undivided, north; south; east and west are simply compass bearings.

The map simply goes up and down... even if the A470 can feel like it goes on forever.

Plaid Cymru – The Party of Wales, is the only party that puts Wales first all the time, we are not answerable to any Westminster based political masters, we are not running a branch office.

"Labour are indifferent to the interest of the people in Newport and the nation. It's time for Plaid."

Our communities face similar problems, the loss of green space, over development, a shortage of affordable housing and sustainable long-term jobs and opportunities.

In Newport we have a self-serving ruling clique that locally mirrors the Welsh Labour government’s indifference to our national and local interests...

Save for public opinion, the Newport ship would be matchwood, the transporter bridge scrap iron, Tredegar House a ruin, and there would be an inner city ring road.

We need to make politics work again, and that starts with making people’s day-to-day lives better. 

Plaid does not, cannot and never will write people and communities off, we can think and act for all of Cymru / Wales, all of the time.

We have always wanted our country back, we have not lost our way or an Empire, nor struggled to find a role.

Our focus has always been Wales and the people who live here.

Most of us do not wish to live in some nostalgia drenched fantasy island bedecked with ermine, baubles, gongs and trinkets.

We look forwards to living in a prosperous outward looking nation, one that has much to offer the world.

We recognize that we have to start from the bottom up and that it will be hard work, even the work of years…

Our communities are the literal fabric of our nation - they are the safety net that supports our most vulnerable and give us a sense of place and belonging.

Our planning system and our local government, remains largely nineteenth century in structure and outlook, it does not recognise for our national interests, and with a few exceptions does not recognise the realities of devolution.

Here in SE Gwent, much of the proposed housing in various UDPs (in Newport, Torfaen and Monmouthshire) remains focused on the projected housing shortfall in Bristol.

No offence intended, but that is not our problem.

The Severn Bridge tolls, remain a tax on jobs, on businesses and long suffering commuters.

The failure to invest in infrastructure, stalling over the metro, and the often-dreadful rolling stock used by ArrivaTrainsWales can make the M4 the longest linear car park in Western Europe.

The problems of the M4 are actually a symptom of economic weakness!

Successive Welsh governments (and the Welsh office) been content to live with a Welsh economy that is so weak that many thousands of our compatriots make daily treks across the Severn Bridges to earn their daily bread - and pay for the privilege.

Our focus should be on developing small to medium size local enterprises. SMEs create wealth, employment opportunities and trade with each other. They are unlikely to leave for fresh development grants elsewhere.

If we are serious about changing our country for the better, it starts at a local level. Simply replacing the Labour Party with some sort of Labour Party lite is not acceptable.

We have to show people we are different, we will listen, we will be accountable; we will deliver on our commitments. Only then can change our communities and our nation for the better.

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If not now? Then when? If not us? Then who?