Town Centre ‘Wrexham On Sea’ Beach Idea Scrapped After Backlash

Plans to turn Wrexham into a temporary beach have been scrapped following a ‘negative backlash’.

Today the Town Centre Forum (TCF) meeting was told that while the ‘Wrexham On Sea’ beach idea has been scrapped,  events on the dates in August will still go ahead.

Amanda Davies from the Council’s Events and Marketing Team described the beach idea as a ‘hot potato’, saying: “We were quite behind it, and thanks to all involved as there has been lots of great work on the idea.

“The simple issue is that we need money to deliver this but we are below the target by £2000. A lot of work has gone in and we are gutted. If we dont have the money we cant deliver it.

“The council were willing to put their time in to do this. We have had a lot of negative feedback, not from businesses, and we have to be careful what we deliver as this is public money.”

One TCF member asked if £2000 was found it could the original plans be revived. However the meeting was told “Last Friday was the cut off, and £2000 was not forthcoming. ”

Speaking of the negative backlash TCF Chair Mr Critchley said: “It was not the media itself, it was letters to the media”.

Mr Critchley is another who does not read the Leader, as they themselves directly criticised the idea in their ‘Leader Comment’ section:

The Leader wrote a comment piece on the proposed event. The headline for the edition ironically was ‘Town Traders: We Need Help Now’

Back in November the TCF asked for ‘something to be done’ in terms of more markets, town centre attractions and printed promotion of events and the Council came back with some ideas and plans.  One of these plans was the idea to have a beach created in the town centre to attract visitors.

The Council Events team said@ “We have a limited budget, there is a hell of alot done for a tiny tiny budget.”

Wrexham.com has been told just over £1000 was pledged in support of the event by local business, with the remainder of the £2500 requests in matched funding being put forward by Eagles Meadow.

However following negative publicity surrounding the proposed event no public money will now be made available, meaning there is now a 50% funding hole.

The event was due to be held on the 7-10th August and involve local businesses, free fun for children and families and live local bands playing. Events will be held on these dates, however no beach will be there.

The event has had its critics, and incorrect reporting of the true costs of the event has even been debated in previous TCF meetings (report here) between Council staff and a NWN Media ‘Leader’ reporter. Even at today’s meeting specific mention was made to the Leader reporter to ensure that things were correctly reported, and light ribbing from the Chairman about the Leader perhaps putting funds in themselves to cover the shortfall.

During that meeting back in March the Council indicated that concern could drown any beach plan saying “There has been a public backlash. Comments on the council Facebook page are leading me to think we can’t go ahead with this.” Likewise Council Leader Neil Rogers advised caution in light of a number of worrying emails he had received in relation to the proposed event.

In TCF meetings in April and May the feedback was more positive, with the TCF and other stakeholders getting on board the idea, however it seems the concern over public opinion has won the day resulting in the beach element of the events being pulled.

There is an eleven page thread here on the Wrexham.com Forums with several viewpoints on the proposed idea, click here to join in the debate!