Powys County Council has made ‘regeneration’ one of their top priorities. Through this blog (written by independent regeneration consultants) we will be exploring: what it will mean to have ‘regeneration’ as such a high priority and how this might affect communities, businesses, town centres and the County Council itself.
‘Regeneration’ is a term loaded with metropolitan connotations, many of which do not apply in Powys. More specifically, in Wales, ‘regeneration’ conjures up images of places like the Valleys where entire communities were left cruelly exposed as the industrial tide went out and left them behind with aging infrastructure, too few jobs and declining populations.
Powys, however, appears bounteous. It has an embarrassment of natural riches and some of the most handsome market towns in the UK. It also has small, traditionally resilient communities, where creative and micro-businesses can flourish. Yet, there are problems, often hidden by the County’s embarrassment of natural riches.
Powys’ population is growing, but only because the large amount of older people who retire here every year are more numerous than the significant number of young people who decide to leave. This silent demographic shift is weakening the County in a way which is far more insidious than the closure of a steelworks, but it is a problem that has potentially far reaching implications.
Powys, like most of Wales, has become hugely dependent upon the public sector as a source of employment and this is going make it extremely vulnerable to the repercussions that are bound to ripple from Westminster, via the Welsh Assembly.
Deprivation in Powys even stems from different causes, for instance from under-employment rather than unemployment. In a rural County like Powys it is simply not possible to draw a line around a neighbourhood and mark it out as a ‘regeneration area’ where resources can be prioritised, like in urban situations.
By giving ‘regeneration’ such a high priority the Council are recognising the needs within the County’s communities. However, they also realise that the way that they respond to these challenges needs to change too.
Managing complex problems, in a dispersed population, with diminishing resources is going to require a change of thinking and a an approach to ‘regeneration’ that is very different to the Strategic Regeneration Area model established by the Assembly Government to deal with similar problems in places like The Valleys, Swansea, Aberystwyth and Rhyl.
We are in the early stages of working out how these problems can be addressed and how a sustainable future can be built upon the things that we know that Powys does very well, like: renewable energy, the arts, food and agriculture and the County’s high quality environment. We know that there is huge willingness within the County Council to embrace change, adapt and build on what Powys does well to address the risks that threaten to weaken it.
Our first major component of the regeneration strategy will be completed tomorrow. We have already held a symposium with a cross section of senior managers and Councillors of the County Council. Tomorrow, we meet representatives of the voluntary and private sectors. These workshops, alongside the many hours of research, will enable us to commence the process of devising the first drafts of the regeneration strategy. For it to be successful it will need to be very different from every other regeneration strategy in Wales.
