Plans advance for Welsh medium school in Porthcawl
Lewis Smith, local democracy reporter
Plans for a new Welsh medium school in Porthcawl have moved one step closer this week after a councillors approved £370,000 worth of funding for design and survey costs at a cabinet meeting.
Here council bosses approved a capital budget for the proposed Porthcawl Welsh-medium school’s design and survey costs up to tender stage to be included in the council’s capital programme.
The council will now have to pay these costs, currently estimated to be around £370,000 for the upfront designs and survey needed in order to develop the scheme to tender stage to meet the Welsh Government business justification.
However this would be done on the basis that the costs will be fully recovered once Welsh Government has approved the business justification case.
Despite a business justification case being submitted to Welsh Government for approval in May, the local authority has recently been advised that it needs to be re-submitted once tenders relating to the scheme have been returned.
The Welsh-medium capital grant commits Welsh Government to 100% of the funding upon approval of the business case.
Risk
It means however that in the meantime the council would have to accept the risk that should Welsh Government fail to approve the business case, the design and survey costs up to tender stage would need to be funded by the council.
This latest approval from the council means the Welsh medium seedling school can now move one step closer in the Porthcawl area with Council Leader Huw David saying it had been the dream of many Welsh speaking people who live there.
He said: “As a Welsh language champion I certainly welcome this proposal. I know that it has been -and I think this is no exaggeration to say for many in the Welsh language community in Porthcawl- a dream of theirs, and an ambition that we open our first ever Welsh medium primary school within that town, and of course this is a huge step forward in achieving that dream.
“We are very very grateful that the Welsh Government are commited to providing 100% funding for this scheme.
“We are confident that we will secure that funding back and make progress on this project.”
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As someone who lives in Porthcawl, I have to say that this is great news for the town. Currently, the closest Welsh-medium school is Ysgol y Ferch o’r Sger, which is five miles away in North Cornelly. While Sger is a great school (I should know — I sent all three of my kids there), it would be great to see more Porthcawl children learning through the medium of Welsh.
With lots of regeneration plans in the pipeline, it’s an exciting time to be a Porthcawl resident.
Expect a lot of indignation from elderly Tories
Too busy coughing, wheezing and moaning about immigrants (who seldom make it to the ‘Cawl). It’s a relative minority, that kind of Tory, around here. Many have small ‘c’ values underpinning our mix of views and attitudes but the pro-Johnson/Truss/ Sunak brigade is most likely down to platoon strength or less in the area. The rump of traditional Labour support is the main obstacle to progress around the area and indeed across the whole of Penybont.
Nice to her that another Welsh medium school is proposed but I stil do not undestand why the Sededd has not decreed that all nursery and primary schools in Wales must be Welsh medium. It is the only way that we are going to get the language fully embedded in the population.