Many will have read the news about the Mon and Menai Action Plan, where £15 million is being given by the Assembly Government to support the regeneration of this part of North Wales.
In stark contrast to this largesse, administrators at Dolgarrog Aluminium announced, a few days later, that the much trumpeted potential sale of the business to a Russian firm had come to nothing.
This is the last sad chapter in what has become a shameful story of a company and its employees being let down badly by an Assembly Government which had pledged, in its manifesto, to help Welsh firms.
Six months ago, there was a systematic failure by civil servants within the Department of Economy and Transport to secure the future of Dolgarrog Aluminium. To suggest now, after the final nail has been firmly hammered into the coffin of this viable business, that ‘no effort will be spared’ in regenerating the area, is too late for 170 local people who have lost their jobs and is nothing more than an exercise in offering pointless political platitudes.
With some imagination, the outcome could have been so much different, especially as the company had already taken a decision to focus its strategy on providing aluminium to high technology companies before its bank got cold feet over rising energy prices.
Instead of working alongside the management and customers of the business to secure its future, Assembly officials advised the Minister to place his trust in the faint possibility of an overseas company taking over the site.
More shockingly, Government ‘spokespersons’ consistently rubbished the management team’s business plan when, at the same time, some of those making the decisions on potential support couldn’t even be bothered to travel from Cardiff to Conwy to discuss the future funding of the business. I have also been made aware, only yesterday, that the Assembly Government may well regret its decision not to keep the plant open, but that is a story for another day.
Whilst the Conwy Valley gets virtually nothing apart from an Assembly-led "local action group" to look into the site's future, the £15 million for the Mon and Menai project comes on top of tens of millions of European funding already given to the area for regenerating its communities during the last seven years.
Indeed, one organisation on the Menai Straits - Bangor University - has already received £27 million of grant funding from Europe, which is as much as the whole county of Conwy was awarded.
The Conwy Valley is not alone in being ignored, and areas like the Llyn Peninsula, South Gwynedd, as well as market towns such as Ruthin and Denbigh, have been largely forgotten by Cardiff Bay.
Compared to the press machine surrounding the Mon and Menai launch, the silence from Assembly politicians regarding the marina developments at Pwllheli or the regeneration priorities desperately needed within Blaenau Ffestiniog has been deafening.
One of the key aims of the Assembly’s economic development policy is to spread prosperity across all parts of Wales, and yet policymakers seem content to pour millions into one area in the hope that trickle-down Reagonomics, which many thought had disappeared in the 1980s, will work its dubious magic.
If we are to avoid the spectre of other Dolgarrogs in the future, then our politicians need to wake up to the fact that there is an economy outside the A55 corridor that also needs to be revitalised and supported to reach its full potential.
In stark contrast to this largesse, administrators at Dolgarrog Aluminium announced, a few days later, that the much trumpeted potential sale of the business to a Russian firm had come to nothing.
This is the last sad chapter in what has become a shameful story of a company and its employees being let down badly by an Assembly Government which had pledged, in its manifesto, to help Welsh firms.
Six months ago, there was a systematic failure by civil servants within the Department of Economy and Transport to secure the future of Dolgarrog Aluminium. To suggest now, after the final nail has been firmly hammered into the coffin of this viable business, that ‘no effort will be spared’ in regenerating the area, is too late for 170 local people who have lost their jobs and is nothing more than an exercise in offering pointless political platitudes.
With some imagination, the outcome could have been so much different, especially as the company had already taken a decision to focus its strategy on providing aluminium to high technology companies before its bank got cold feet over rising energy prices.
Instead of working alongside the management and customers of the business to secure its future, Assembly officials advised the Minister to place his trust in the faint possibility of an overseas company taking over the site.
More shockingly, Government ‘spokespersons’ consistently rubbished the management team’s business plan when, at the same time, some of those making the decisions on potential support couldn’t even be bothered to travel from Cardiff to Conwy to discuss the future funding of the business. I have also been made aware, only yesterday, that the Assembly Government may well regret its decision not to keep the plant open, but that is a story for another day.
Whilst the Conwy Valley gets virtually nothing apart from an Assembly-led "local action group" to look into the site's future, the £15 million for the Mon and Menai project comes on top of tens of millions of European funding already given to the area for regenerating its communities during the last seven years.
Indeed, one organisation on the Menai Straits - Bangor University - has already received £27 million of grant funding from Europe, which is as much as the whole county of Conwy was awarded.
The Conwy Valley is not alone in being ignored, and areas like the Llyn Peninsula, South Gwynedd, as well as market towns such as Ruthin and Denbigh, have been largely forgotten by Cardiff Bay.
Compared to the press machine surrounding the Mon and Menai launch, the silence from Assembly politicians regarding the marina developments at Pwllheli or the regeneration priorities desperately needed within Blaenau Ffestiniog has been deafening.
One of the key aims of the Assembly’s economic development policy is to spread prosperity across all parts of Wales, and yet policymakers seem content to pour millions into one area in the hope that trickle-down Reagonomics, which many thought had disappeared in the 1980s, will work its dubious magic.
If we are to avoid the spectre of other Dolgarrogs in the future, then our politicians need to wake up to the fact that there is an economy outside the A55 corridor that also needs to be revitalised and supported to reach its full potential.
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