Ty Pawb summary reports
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Posts
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Permanent staff costs of £258k how many staff have they got and who’s having a laugh at our expense oh its the councillors past and present who pushed this project through.
Council tax payers will have to suck it up and continue to go with the flow as we all know it makes sense and as this council built/refurbished the premises the crowds flocked in and continue to do so if we listen to our learned councillors and officers who have their fingers on the pulse.
I can think of one councillor who should stand at the main entrance in his finery ringing a bell and providing commentary as to why a visit to this attraction is so worthwhile.A very swift response to my email to the Council late last night has been recieved and copied below. If “There is nothing removed from the data.” then were have all the Ty Pawb expenditure lines been allocated. I will await a more specifc response next week whuch I shall post here on Wrexham.com as it is vital that all ratepayers in Wrexham know what is going tio subsidise this project rather than Social Services and Education in the forthcoming budget. I would urge every Council Member in the ruling Groups to start asking questions on behalf of their electorte in their Wards. Remember the more subsidy into this project the more chance that your local school will lose a teacher or teaching assistants or a relative will not get their Social Care hours.
Dear MrJackson,
Further to your email on the above subject.
You raise a number of points relation to the transactional information provided on the Council’s website. The law in England Eric Pickles (when he was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government) introduced a law that required information to be available for transactions over £500. This law was not introduced in Wales and generally there were a small number of authorities that introduced to go further than the law demanded in terms of transparency and openness.
The £500 limit was included in the legislation to make it more paractical for public and Authorities as from a IT perspective the file sizes would become difficult to prepare / hold / interrogate.
In my role of Head of Finance, then I oversee the publication of this information. There is nothing removed from the data. There are some redactions of names and details where there are sensitive payments in terms of the recipients. As it states on the Site and your extract then this is service user / social services client information mainly around fostering and adoptions. This is to comply with the Data Protection Act.
I hope that this reassures you that the Council is endeavouring to be more transparent than is required in Wales and the specific legal reasons why I can’t publish client details.
In terms of the specific questions posted on Wrexham.com then I will liaise with my colleagues in the Housing and Economy Department and endeavour to respond early next week.
Mark Owen
Head of Finance
Wrexham County Borough CouncilTy Pawb has had some teething troubles, but compared to what was there before – it has got off to a good start and has succeeded in encouraging people to visit Wrexham. the old People’s Market was a depressing dive that was attracting fewer and fewer people. Anyone who thinks that Wrexham can swim against the tide and somehow ignore the changes in people’s shopping habits is deluding themselves. It is fascinating that while locally a few individuals masquerade as ‘experts’ criticizing this new endeavour; in the national media, Ty Pawb is not seen as an unaffordable luxury, but rather part of a movement to recreate our town centres as communal spaces that aren’t a monoculture of shopping (where most of the profit instantly leaves the area), but a place for many different activities, of which shopping is one. It isn’t the case that we are spending too much on establishing Ty Pawb; it’s the opposite, some additional investment would have made it possible to improve the entrances off Chester Street, and even better to have linked in with the nearby empty sites on Henblas Street and Lambpit Street for something truly transformational.
Ioan y Ffin—You say Ty Pawb has succeeded in encouraging people to visit Wrexham.
I list some of the activities from the Ty Pawb website:–Learn Welsh for Free, Community Choir, Bumps & Babies, Knit & Natter, Youth Theatre, Free Lunchtime Concerts, Craft Workshops, Wreath Making, Dance Classes.
All of these activities could have been carried out within the Memorial Hall, without a spend of 4.4 million. However, you now advocate possibly spending more money on the Chester Street entrance and links to Henblas Street.
You say Ty Pawb is not seen as a unaffordable luxury, I tend to disagree.Well I’m glad I only stayed for part of the Scrutiny meeting this afternnon- it felt like the Councilors asking questions would have had more success pulling teeth. There is clearly some elementst that may be working but overall there was not a full explanation to all of the costs and certainly nothing that gave confidence that the projected income was going to be reached..
Sureley one of the things the Full Council have got to do is to put a maximum cap on the level of subsidy that is going in.
Still lots of unprovided information – waiting till the end of the year and a report in May could see the £200k subsidy level be hit.
I was disappointed in the Scrutiny of the figures. If you use an occupation figure of 70% based on the rent quoted by the Council for Ty Pawb, rental income comes in at around £36,375.The Council figure of £36,177 is more or less spot on, however there are figures for staffing quoted as £288,536 which should be recovered through a Service Charge along with security, water, electric and various other overheads. There does not seem any provision to recoup this expenditure.
The Service Charge paid by traders on top of their rent in the Butchers Market for 2018/19 is £47,000 and probably around £20,000 for the General Market. How have Scrutiny not picked up on these figures?Further too previous items from me about lack of financial information I have been informed by Mark Owen the Chief Finance Officer that all expenses are now categorised as Creative Industries – a title that does not seem to have ever been used before.
It’s quite extraordinary that it has taken 5 days to find out where information is available – so much for the Council being transparent.Is this something to come in Wrexham — https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/46661554
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