Conwy’s finance and resources scrutiny committee was this week presented with a quarterly report on progress of the North Wales Growth Deal.
But an outspoken Colwyn councillor questioned whether residents in Conwy are seeing any value from the hundreds of millions of pounds spent.
The Growth Deal is an agreement that promises to generate a total investment of over £1 billion for North Wales and generate over 4,000 new jobs and increase “Gross Added Value” by £2.4 billion in the region.
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Signed in December 2020, the agreement secured funding of £120m from Welsh Government and £120m from the UK Government to invest in the Growth Deal’s ‘project portfolio’ up until 2036.
The deal is based upon the idea that private and public sector will work collaboratively to attract additional funding totalling £1 billion.
The quarterly report presented to Conwy councillors detailed progress on a wide range of growth deal projects.
These included the full business case for the former North Wales Hospital project being agreed, which will see new housing, businesses, and community space at the site.
Other progress listed in the report included ‘BIC Innovation’ – a project providing advice and guidance to small businesses on how they can adopt the latest digital communication technologies.
Another was the Annog Cyf company being appointed to deliver a programme to support communities to improve broadband.
Is it delivering?
But Cllr David Carr questioned if the deal was delivering in Conwy, citing both poor internet connectivity and a lack of high-quality jobs in the county as reasons for his concerns.
He said: “There is a lot of money being spent, and it is all public money, and there doesn’t seem to be that many private companies involved.
“There is Zip World, who over the years have had quite substantial grants and funding from the Welsh Government.
“The first question is about the super-fast broadband. I seem to remember all those years ago when the Welsh Assembly building was built, as it then was, in the (Llandudno) Junction. We were promised that then, and it has never materialised. If you are in Llandudno, you can’t even get a signal on a mobile phone in certain parts of Llandudno. So I’m a bit sceptical about that.”
He added: “The other question I’m going to ask you is how does it (the growth deal) actually give sustainable jobs for people in my ward. In my ward, the majority, an awful lot, are in jobs that are just above minimum wage. We want real sustainable jobs. How does that (the deal) deliver that?”
Speaking on behalf of the Growth Deal was Hedd Vaughan-Evans, head of operations at Ambition North Wales, who claimed his organisation was working closely with private-sector companies, naming Zip World, Jones Brothers, and Stenner as three.
Mr Vaughan-Evans added that private-sector businesses had to ‘justify’ receiving public grants with evidence in compliance with the subsidy control regime.
Mr Vaughan-Evans then claimed the growth deal had a digital programme because it recognised that investment in North Wales in broadband and telecoms was lagging behind other areas of the UK.
He added the hope was that funding would target the gaps and aimed to accelerate funding.
He said: “There is progress in terms of fibre, but there is real positive work being done, particularly around 4G in terms of identifying those areas where we have not-spots across the region.
“We’ve done a lot of surveys but not just where there are not-spots but where there is bandwidth but not enough, so you will quite often be in a number of town centres, and you can pick up a 4G signal, but actually nothing happens because the bandwidth isn’t large enough to cope with the demand from users, so we are working to improve the situation there, and that is why you know we have this dedicated investment to do more than the Government investment will do.”
High value jobs
Responding to Cllr Carr’s question about sustainable jobs, Mr Vaughan-Evans outlined plans but didn’t elaborate on where the jobs were.
He said “our remit is to create long-standing sustainable high-value jobs in the region”.
“Now the growth deal is obviously only one form of investment, and it will only make a contribution across the whole region, but our remit is to create 4,200 new jobs in the region over this period that are sustainable, that build on the strengths in North Wales.
The finance and overview and scrutiny committee considered and noted the report.
