Posted: Thu 21st Oct 2021

A view from Clwyd South’s Member of the Senedd

Wrexham.com for people living in or visiting the Wrexham area
This article is old - Published: Thursday, Oct 21st, 2021

Wrexham.com has invited Wrexham & Clwyd South constituency Members of Parliament and Members of the Senedd to write a monthly article with updates on their work in Parliament and the Senedd, and closer to home. (You can view an archive here).

Clwyd South MS Ken Skates writes…

 

It was an honour to represent Clwyd South at the official opening of the sixth Senedd last week and stand alongside my North Wales colleagues Lesley Griffiths, Hannah Blythyn, Jack Sargeant and Carolyn Thomas.

After the most difficult period most of us will ever experience, I will continue working as hard as possible to make our area an even better place to live, work and visit. The foundations to help us recover are already being laid at a national level, and there is much to be optimistic about here in Clwyd South too. I would love to hear constituents’ ideas about how we can work together to improve our local communities and move Clwyd South forward.

I am pleased we finally appear to be seeing progress on improvements at Ruabon Station.

I have worked alongside the fantastic Friends of Ruabon on the campaign for step-free access at Ruabon for a number of years, and the Welsh Government has twice offered to pay half of the costs of installing lifts on both platforms.

While transport is devolved to Wales, responsibility for track, station infrastructure and signalling remains with Westminster. After the project was derailed twice in recent years by the UK Government choosing not to match the Welsh Government’s contribution, First Minister Mark Drakeford called on the UK Department for Transport to prioritise these long-awaited improvements earlier this year. It’s encouraging that progress has been made since.

I know the people who use the station will welcome this step forward too. I look forward to seeing the project move forward, and will continue to work with all stakeholders to help ensure it finally comes to fruition.

It was brilliant to visit Rhos Community Café last week and see first-hand the amazing support it is providing with the help of funding from The National Lottery Community Fund.

The café works as a community hub and well-being centre to house projects which help to tackle social isolation. These include mental health awareness, mindfulness and meditation sessions, international groups and bereavement support.

During the pandemic, they have adapted and developed new projects to help address the difficulties arising from Covid-19. The café now supports 200 people a week with their foodbank and works with organisations that support minority groups by providing them with food parcels to support their families.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Grace Lockhart and her team for such a warm welcome. They do a wonderful job, and the comfortable, supportive atmosphere they have created is testament to their vision and a great deal of hard work and passion.

Over the past five years alone, Clwyd South has been awarded £5.3m through The National Lottery Community Fund to support more than 60 projects. These include The Land at Plas Madoc; Brymbo Heritage Trust; Ysgol Gymraeg y Gwernant in Llangollen; Froncysyllte After School Kids’ Club and South Denbighshire Community Partnership.

In the Senedd earlier this month, I raised the issue of broadband connectivity in North Wales.

I share my constituents’ frustration about areas of Clwyd South which struggle to get a decent broadband connection. Broadband should be seen as a key piece of modern infrastructure, and everyone should be able to access it.

The UK Government is responsible for telecommunications, including broadband, but in recent years the Welsh Government has had to use funds set aside for areas it is responsible for to step in where the market and the UK Government have failed to act.

The Welsh Government has helped connect around 95% of properties in Wales but has to comply with competition law, so cannot stipulate which properties should be connected. OpenReach determines which premises it connects based on multiple factors including value for public money.

I believe OpenReach should have to connect all homes as a cost of doing business, and I know the Minister, Lee Waters, will continue to press the UK Government to class broadband as a universal service.

You can watch here and read the full transcript here.

If you need advice or support, please email [email protected] and include your home address and a contact number. You can also find regular coronavirus updates on my Facebook page and sign up to my weekly newsletters here.


 

 

 

Wrexham.com has invited Wrexham & Clwyd South constituency Members of Parliament and Members of the Senedd to write a monthly article with updates on their work in Parliament and the Senedd, and closer to home. (You can view an archive here).



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