‘Regeneration isn’t working’
Serious flaws with key Valleys project, says think tank: Pages 8&9
THERE are serious problems at the heart of the Welsh Government’s big project to help the South Wales Valleys, the director of the Bevan Foundation has warned.
Victoria Winckler has sounded the alarm bell about the Valleys Taskforce, saying it “means well” but fails to address the real problems facing a region that has struggled for decades to overcome the collapse of heavy industry.
She argues the Valleys economy has been “ravaged” and needs to be rebuilt – but she doesn’t think the Welsh Government’s programme can deliver such a transformation.
The Taskforce is the Welsh Government’s flagship effort to bring “lasting change” to the South Wales Valleys. Its three priorities are jobs, better public services and strengthening local communities. It brings together some of the most senior figures in the Welsh Government with people from a business, academic, trade union and public services background.
A detailed progress report has just been published but Ms Winckler fears what the Taskforce is proposing is “simply too small to make a difference”.
She is concerned that “the number of people who are unemployed in the local authorities that cover the Valleys is at best static and at worst going up” and points out that in some areas around “one in four young men is out of work”.
She criticised a lack of focus, saying the area covered by the Taskforce is too big and includes “greater Cardiff ” and parts of South Wales “where there isn’t an economic problem and where people almost certainly do not think they are from ‘the Valleys’.”
And she said the plan fails to address the deeprooted problems facing the Valleys – “the weakness of the local economy and labour market and the shocking lack of skills and qualifications”.
Kevin Morgan, Professor of Governance and Development at Cardiff University and the chairman of the Yes campaign in the 1997 referendum, strongly agreed with Ms Winckler, saying: “The model of development will not deliver even if the targets are rendered more ambitious because Government cannot possibly deliver.”
The Welsh Government insists it is making progress on jobs, and highlighted:
“More than 1,000 economically inactive people living in the Valleys Taskforce areas have started work through Welsh Government-led employment programmes since September 2016.”
“Nearly 1,000 people and small businesses have been helped through advice and business support and more than 100 new enterprises have been created within the Valleys Taskforce area during 2017-18.”
“More than 5,000 apprenticeship programme starts by those living within the Valleys in the 201617 academic year.”
Alun Davies, the AM for Blaenau Gwent and Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services, rejected any suggestion the Welsh Government was “not being ambitious enough” – but he welcomed the comments from the Bevan Foundation.
He said: “I think it’s right and proper that that sense of impatience underpins a lot of our debate and much of what we say.
“Because I don’t be-
lieve for one moment, and I don’t seek to make any claims, that all in the garden is rosy, and I don’t seek to make any claims that we have, in a little more than 18 months, turned around nearly a century of decline.
“I think it would be absurd were I to come to the chamber and make those claims, and I think it would be absurd were the Government to seek to make those claims on our behalf. That’s not what we are saying.
“In my statement, I said we were planting the seeds for sustainable transformation, and that is what we are seeking to do.”