Campaigners call on NRW to reconsider visitor centre closures

Emily Price

Campaigners have called on Natural Resources Wales (NRW) to reconsider plans to close all three of its visitor centres in a bid to save money.

Staff at NRW’s sites in Bwlch Nant yr Arian near Aberystwyth, Ynyslas and Coed y Brenin near Dolgellau were informed in July to prepare for redundancies as the Welsh Government sponsored body looked to plug a £13 million budget gap.

The three centres offer outdoor activities for families and attract over 750,000 visitors to Wales every year.

NRW will close the three sites over the short-term until it finds interested parties to take over running them as long-term partners.

In total 265 jobs are being put at risk with an internal consultation running for 45 days with staff and Trade Unions.

NRW says its aim is to “mitigate job losses as much as possible”.

‘Honest conversation’

Staff working at the retail and catering facilities at the Ynyslas Visitor Centre are at risk of losing they jobs.

The site, sandwiched between Cardigan Bay and the beach in the Dyfi Estuary includes the Ynyslas sand dunes which are part of the Dyfi National Nature Reserve.

Campaigners say that staff at the centre are involved in tasks such as litter collections, clearing large scale fly tipping, opening and closing the toilets and working with the Coast Guard and RNLI when tourists get into danger.

The site has one land manager – whose job is not under threat – but campaigners say it is unlikely all of these tasks can be undertaken up by one person who already has a full-time workload.

Polly Ernest from Save Our Centre – Ynyslas – Achubwch Ein Canolfan campaign said: “It is not the desire to stop running the centres which is the problem, but the way in which NRW have gone about it.

“If they had started with an honest conversation and put out appeals for interest, local and national organisations could have put together proposals and the functioning centres could have been transitioned with their highly trained staff to new management and ownership.

“Ynyslas is an important site for recreation, conservation and education; there are some things that you cannot put a price on. Wales has a Future Generations Act, what is the point of it if we close off access to nature and education for future generations?”

Red Kites

In Ceredigion, the local authority held a public meeting to discuss concerns about the closure of NRW’s Bwlch Nant Yr Arian visitor centre.

The site is well-known for its long-established tradition of daily feeding of red kites and boasts a wide range of waymarked trails for walkers, mountain bikers and runners.

Ceredigion County Councillor Rhodi Davies said: “Nant Yr Arian is one of the best tourist attractions we have in Ceredigion and losing this centre will have a great effect on the economy.

“Nant Yr Arian is known throughout Europe and beyond with figures showing roughly 400,000 visitors a year.

“From my understanding NRW are looking for the centre to be run by a community group but nothing has been clarified and hopefully further discussions will take place.”

Joe Hayward owns a cycle shop based at NRW’s Coed y Brenin site which features eight purpose-built mountain bike trails.

He said: “A well organised Community Interest Company with a solid proposition would be very hard for NRW to ignore. I’m not a fan of privatisation generally, look at rail and water, but certainly in the case of cycling, not having the NRW tangle of bureaucracy to navigate makes provision to the public an awful lot better.”

Public assets

Plaid Cymru’s Mabon ap Gwynfor says that NRW has failed to “look after what are public assets and ensure that they serve the public interest”.

He said: “Coed y Benin, for example, was a pioneering centre which helped develop mountain biking as a competitive sport in its own right. However, NRW failed to appreciate the full value and potential of the site and the consequence is the proposal today to close the visitor centre.

“It should be a bustling centre, and in the right hands it could be one of the world class centres making Wales the outdoor pursuits destination of choice, attracting visitors from far and wide.

“A group of local, knowledgeable people, Caru Coed y Benin, who have experience in the sector, have come together and offered to run the visitor centre.

“I encourage NRW to work with them and find a way of ensuring that they work together to ensure the visitor centres continued operation for the long term.”

Redundancies

There will not be any public consultation on site closures and final decisions on structural changes will be taken by NRW’s Board in late September.

Campaigners and unions will then be updated on the proposed redundancies.

Elsie Grace, NRW’s Head of Sustainable Commercial Development said: “NRW is currently consulting with staff and Trade Unions on proposals for changes to its staffing structure, to reach the savings target of £13m needed.

“We are look across all of our remit and critically review what we can and must continue to do, what we stop, and what we slow or do differently to fulfil our Corporate Plan ambitions.

“One element that is in our current proposal to staff is that we no longer operate catering and retail provision at visitor centres. Should these proposals be agreed, we will be able to work with partners to look for future solutions and actively seek out partners to run these services.

“There are no proposals for other changes. The sites themselves will remain open for walking and biking as they are currently, and services such as play areas, car parking and toilet provision will also continue to be available.”