Council’s multi-million-pound plans look like they were ‘drawn on a fag packet’

Richard Evans – Local Democracy Reporter

A council has agreed to progress millions of pounds of levelling-up funds, despite one councillor insisting a report was not detailed enough and likening plans to those “drawn on a fag packet”.

At a cabinet meeting at Ruthin’s County Hall HQ, the cabinet agreed to progress the plans for Ruthin’s St Peter’s Square, Market Street and Cae Ddol Park to the concept design stage after a public consultation.

St Peter’s Square will be upgraded with public realm improvements. The square is set to be improved with natural stone paving, ‘hot rolled’ asphalt on the road, new kerb lines, ramp entry points, and a flexible event space.

Market Street is also set to be improved with similar features, including natural stone paving and hot-rolled asphalt roads.

Upgrade

The UK Government funds will also be used for Cae Ddol Park, which will include the toilets being refurbished, wildflower meadow planting, the skate park being retained, a new bike and scooter track, new bridges, an active travel route, and outdoor gym equipment.

The upgrade follows a public consultation in the town in which the council had 400 responses, with 67% of respondents believing the plans would make the square safer for pedestrians and 69.2% believing the upgrade would make the town more attractive to shoppers.

At the same meeting, the cabinet also agreed to accept the levelling-up grant award offer from UK Government of £19,973,282 for Rhyl.

The fund is intended to support investment where it can make the biggest difference to everyday life, including ex-industrial areas, deprived towns, and coastal communities.

Denbighshire plan on spending the money in Rhyl on improving ‘active travel’ by widening paths, improving lighting, and providing cycle parking as well as green infrastructure and green spaces.

The project will also seek to reconnect the town centre with the promenade and beach with the Rhyl Gateway scheme as well as demolishing derelict buildings on the town’s High Street and replacing them with green spaces.

The new Queens Market building is also set to open as a mix of retail, food and beverage, and market space once an operator is found for the building – with several other projects also in the mix for the town.

But the cabinet heard how projects under discussion will need to be adjusted because of the cost of inflation affecting how far the money will go.

But Rhyl councillor Brian Jones threw doubt on the funding, questioning whether plans were advanced enough to be delivered by the deadline of March 2026, citing that there weren’t in-depth costings provided in the report.

‘No chance’

Cllr Jones said there was no way the project would be complete in 20 months before leader Cllr Jason McLellan said he had been speaking to MPs about timescales, hoping for a ‘sympathetic ear’.

“In my opinion, we have got no chance whatsoever of delivering these projects within that timescale, 20 months, no chance whatsoever,” said Cllr Jones.

“Coming back to Rhyl, consultation has already been mentioned and how important that is, and when you look at the current perception that we have got from big sections of the public, we are at a pretty low ebb to put it mildly,” he said.

Cllr Jones then claimed he had been asked difficult questions by a business owner who had been in Rhyl for 50 years. The business owner had asked why Queens Market was not open yet – with the council still looking for a contractor.

“How can you answer and defend a question like that? Because you can’t, can you?” said Cllr Jones.

Cllr Jones then turned to the demolition of the former William Roberts’ building and the council’s plans to create a green space in its place at the bottom of Rhyl high street.

“Now we haven’t been out on public consultation on that,” he said.

“When we do go out on public consultation, and I did say this in a meeting behind closed doors, we will get absolutely hammered on putting forward a scheme like this to put a green space at the bottom of Rhyl High Street.

“It is the wrong project in the wrong place, and we haven’t consulted on it whatsoever, and we are going to do a consultation on it, but the problem is we are not going to do the consultation until we’ve finalised the design, until we’ve sorted the planning. Then we are doing procurement, and then when we’ve done all that, we are going out to consultation.

“I asked the question, what happens if the public consultation on this particular project, the Gateway to Rhyl, comes back as ‘no, we don’t like it’ – what are we going to do? Are we going to do what we did with the libraries? Four thousand people responding to the libraries, and we just ignored it.

“Unless you get an extension (on the deadline), if you haven’t got something pretty concrete here this morning, on schemes and detailed costings, you are never going to meet March 2026, and you’ll probably need March 2027 to do it, and then on the cost for the Rhyl segment, £12m, I believe they are just fag-packet figures that have been put together because there is no detailed costs. You’ve said inflation has increased the cost, but you’ve got no substance, no detail, fag-packet stuff.”

Leader Cllr Jason McLellan responded: “I’m glad you’ve finished because I’m not really happy with the back-of-cigarette-packet analogy. Lots of work has gone into this, and in fairness to you, Brian (Cllr Jones) lots of work that you put in when you were lead member when you were putting this together.”

Corporate director Tony Ward also responded to Cllr Jones, insisting the report was not meant to detail each project funded by the scheme but an agreement that the cabinet accept the £19m.

“I think generally this report is about the process of accepting the funding, so I wasn’t intending it to be a detailed discussion or analysis of the individual projects. So it is about the process, accepting the funding, but I’m happy to have a conversation offline about any of these projects, the Gateway scheme for example,” he said.

“A lot of work has gone on in terms of what we could do with that area and that building. There was no other option but to demolish because of the condition of that building. So something has to go back into its place. A lot of engagement has gone on already with businesses and local members, but as I say, this report is about accepting the funding and the process of doing it.”