Turnaround our town

A plan to improve Wrexham town centre

For too long, our town centre has been in decline. It's not unique in that respect - towns across the UK have suffered from a decade of cuts and hardship, changes in shopping habits and the rise in homelessness and drug misuse. 

It is a profoundly worrying decline and impacts on many businesses and jobs in the town centre. The problem is clear - too many empty shops, not enough to attract people into town, poor public transport, anti-social behaviour from a small minority and a visible homelessness issue that makes many people worry about their safety.

Every year, various agencies spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to manage the situation. To what extent can we use existing funding more effectively and access new funding to transform our town centre.

Plaid Cymru locally does not pretend it has a magic wand to remedy the situation overnight but we want to turnaround our town.

This starts with a series of practical measures:

1. Cutting business rates for small businesses

In its annual conference in October, Plaid Cymru passed a motion proposed by Cllr Carrie Harper to introduce far-reaching changes to the business rates system. It would enable us to alter business rates to provide better support for small businesses while expecting out-of-town shopping malls and large supermarkets to pay a differential rate. This is already the case in Scotland and is one practical way to reduce costs for local businesses.

2. Better bus services

Wrexham has lost half its bus services in the past three years. De-regulation of bus services has been a disaster with private companies picking and choosing the profitable routes while the council has a reducing budget to subsidise the rest. Welsh Government has not increased the Bus Service Support Grant for the past seven years and this has meant a reducation in services. Wrexham urgently needs more funding for improved bus services to bring people into town

3. Trial free parking

The council already offers free parking in the run-up to Christmas and on special occasions. It needs to be more radical. While we seek to improve public transport, a more immediate impact would be to trial free or reduced parking in council car parks for six months. This would also have the knock-on effect of reducing parking on residential streets around the town centre.

4. Dealing with drugs

Hundreds of thousands of pounds each year is spent in Wrexham to maintain the current services for drug and alcohol misuse. It does not address the root cause of addiction and we believe prohibition of drugs has been a failure. The ease with which drugs can be purchased in any part of the UK demonstrates that. We support the work done by Police and Crime Commission Arfon Jones to tackle the drugs issue by making it a medical rather than a criminal problem. We would use the money saved by doing this to improve drug and alcohol rehabilitation and detox programmes to enable people to instantly access these services rather than go on a waiting list. 

5. Safer streets

Plaid Cymru is committed to the devolution of criminal justice, as is the case in Scotland and Northern Ireland. A Plaid Cymru government would increase police numbers and ensure an extra two police officers per community - a significant and visible presence for areas such as our town centre. We will turnaround our town by making it a safer place to enjoy shopping, leisure facilities and food and drink outlets.

6. Shelter the homeless

Tackling homelessness needs to be two-fold. In the short-term, Wrexham has a night shelter but it also needs a day shelter for people without homes. This could be used to store clothes and personal possessions safely as well as providing cover from bad weather and accessing services more effectively. In the longer term we need to provide housing for all our residents and that means increasing the number of council houses we build as well as ensuring that all new housing developments have an element of affordable housing. All too often, developers have opted for maximum profit rather than community benefit.

7. Pride in our town

Wrexham people want to be proud of our town. We've had a few knocks over the years but we will fight back because we want to turnaround our town. We have a proud history and heritage, we have some stunning architecture and real characters, we have a thriving music and cultural scene as well as a sporting heritage second to none. 

 We have worked with others to ensure Wrexham's place as the spiritual home of Welsh football has been recognised - our plan for a national football museum is coming to fruition after a long campaign. We can also be proud of the recognition that Focus Wales gives the town as well as numerous unique venues such as Ty Pawb, Undegun and Saith Seren. 

 We will continue to work with anyone who wants to turnaround the town and make it somewhere to shout about.