To wonder what can be done about ex mining towns in Wales?

[WelshDragon999]

I'm welsh, lived in Wales since I was born. Have lived in a variety of areas from Swansea to Cardiff and also abertillery, aberdare, Pontypridd, Blaina...
The cities do OK, and some of the small towns and parts of the valleys do ok if they're on a certain travel route, commutable or near a uni. But large areas of ex mining towns are suffering...
mental health issues, addiction issues, unemployment and a lack of amenities.
In one area (cwmbach, outskirts of aberdare) I was one of the only people in my block of flats that had a job - not for the lack of trying but there weren't many going. The local asda had over 1500 applicants for a temporary position and there wasn't much else going in the area. There still doesn't seem to be but I dearly hope things have improved.
I don't know if other areas are like this but Everyone seems wrapped up in London and the south of England because of how expensive it is
Aibu to wonder if anything can be done and if anyone ever really cares? Sadly I don't see many politicians giving much of a shit.

I think it's honestly unrealistic to imagine regeneration of these areas on any large scale. It has been decades since the demise of the mining industry and I think people need to move to new areas where there are jobs available. We aren't talking of laid off miners now but their children and grandchildren who really need to put in the effort.

My great grandparents lived in such a village which I visited as a child - all of their numerous children chose to leave the area to find a better life for themselves.

Hopeless.....you'll easily get a place in Pontypridd for your budget, I live in Ponty, depending on which part of Ponty you choose its an easy commute to Cardiff.

For those saying about the DWP hub in Pontypridd, its for backroom staff/processing, claimants will not be required to travel there, the Job centres will remain open

For me, this post smacks of ignorance, insularity and petty nationalism. Why are you only bothered about these communities in Wales? Anyone with half a brain knows that there are abandoned post-industrial communities across all part of the UK.

“DWP is creating a new hub in Ponty. However there are no jobs being created, people who work in job centres in the valleys will have to travel there to work at extra cost.“

They’re doing that with all their offices and call centres, closing them all down, opening central hubs and laying off the staff who aren’t going to commute to the new locations.

Even in the most deprived towns mos people of working age are working, but often in low paid insecure jobs. You have areas with low aspiration, because for several generations people with get up and go have got up and went. Plus a history of poor health which means that there are lots of people unable to work, schools full of kids whose parents aren't that bothered about education and whose teachers don't expect much of them, and a low income economy which means that people on benefits have until recently been as well off and more secure than lots of local working people. There has been loads of investment, there has been improvement, but since 2010 its been dwarfed by what welfare reform and public sector pay cuts have taken out of the economy. If the best paid people in your town are nurses and council workers and their wages have less buying power, then they don't pay (for instance) a builder to do ther extension. So the builder doesn't take on an apprentice, and that's a school leaver with no job. If you have a business like a local shop that depends on people spending benefit and tax credits, you're struggling at the moment and have been for years. Plus the predatory businesses like Brighthouse and the bookies and the drug issues.

But these are still great communities.

What's the answer? well the current welsh gov plan of supporting business start-ups, enabling people to get into university and FE at all ages, improving transport links, sorting the broadband out and trying to improve health seems reasonable, but they are wading against the tide of crap coming from westminster.

I really don't know. I guess in the past when there were big industrial changes & a shift in where there were job opportunities (like agricultural revolution & the industrial revolution) over time people relocated to where the opportunities were - because there was no option other than maybe the workhouse.
I know it's not that simple now

Small towns, which are far from large cities, have a difficult future, I think.

Without easy transport connections to bigger cities, they are stuck.

With an increasing amount of menial/repetitive labour (working on a production line etc) automised and distribution firms like Amazon making rapid steps towards automation and robots in warehouses, there are very few industries that will need large numbers of low skilled workers.

Highly skilled workers tend to congregate around big cities because they will move jobs over their careers as they seek progression. Therefore they live around cities, where there are a concentration in different firms. Small towns can't offer this.

And with more households consisting of two people with careers, this is even more pressing. If you are both keen to progress in your careers, which are likely in different industries, it is going to be very hard to find a small time which offers attractive opportunities for one person, let alone two.

I spoke to a engineering firm owner (high tech, high value niche products) and they were opening a site in Leeds because they couldn't attract good engineering graduates to their original site in a small town which he said was largely due to there being no other jobs for partners beyond working in retail.
In Leeds, they were able to attract the right staff who either lived there or able to get there easily given the good transport links.

I agree transport is key- without good links to the rest of the country, most businesses don't want to move to an area. It also helps if buildings are there ready for them to move into and obviously these days a good internet connection is a must.

But I do agree for ambitious young people with a partner who also works, one employer towns do not look like great options and I'm not sure that creating one big employer to "save" each town is a long term viable answer. What happens if that one company goes under?

If we want to save small towns, I think part of the answer will be companies allowing a lot more working from home with perhaps coming to a central office one or twice a week. But obviously there are many jobs this would not work for.

However, it's not that easy to just up and leave- I say this as someone who has re-located across the UK for work on more than one occasion, and many of my friends have too. When you rent, it is bloody hard getting together a deposit + first months rent +agency fees +moving costs. For a 1 bed flat costing £500 a month, you are looking at at least £1500 in many cases (£750 deposit, first month's rent up front, £250 agency and referencing fees, plus £250 moving costs or to furnish the place). If you are unemployed and on benefits, that is out of reach.

If you wanted to improve prospects of young people, you would offer them this as a grant if they had a job lined up in another area of the country, or maybe a loan to be payed back on similar terms to student loans. You'd also offer help with costs of traveling to interviews. This would ultimately kill some towns, but it would help the people, which are surely more important than the place?

Also, I do think seasonal and temporary work has to be a better option than staying on benefits, and benefits should be flexible to support employment on a more "as and when" basis. Right now, if I was reliant on universal credit, I would think taking a low paid seasonal job (for example) was a big risk.

There is no "conventional wisdom" that jobs have to be moved to people rather than vice versa. I don't know where such an idea has come from, to be honest.

Of course relocating costs money, but so does paying tax breaks and incentives to companies.

how would you force people to leave an area? would you lay on trains for them and ship them out in some sort of journey of shame?

Well, no. What you would do is take the money that would have been spent on tax incentives and payouts to companies, and instead spend it on grants to be paid out to individual households to help them relocate elsewhere.

I'm not saying that this is the answer to every failing pit village, only that it may be a solution to some of them. Each of these communities need to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. If a community has decent potential for developing into something else, by all means spend money on doing so. If this is really unlikely to succeed, then you are better off closing the place down.

"For me, this post smacks of ignorance, insularity and petty nationalism. Why are you only bothered about these communities in Wales?"

What an odd comment! Do you go on threads talking about London and say that? As someone who's lived in Ponty* previously, I thought this was an interesting and saddening read.

*Whoever said about public transport was right, not sure if it's changed, but when I was there, there were no trains to Cardiff on a Sunday before 2 pm and relationships between "town and gown" were very poor (with fault on bot sides, tbh).

EastMidsMummy
Every other day I see posts about how hard it is to live in the SE because of how expensive it is (and I sympathise. It must be absolutely shite) As well as some similar to mine (what can be done to reduce rents, increase wages, reduce dependency on in work benefits etc etc) I've never ever seen a comment accusing the OP of petty nationalism or ignorance? Wonder if it's because I'm posting about something other than the south east of England?

Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm expected to know about every ex mining town in the uk, but I've been nothing but sympathetic and receptive to discussing other areas and whether we're talking about communities like these in England, Wales, Scotland or Northen Ireland I think something has to be done and urgently.

I don't think it's fair to tell people to just move either there are areas in the valleys where flats and homes lay empty for weeks if not months and you can buy a home in a (just about) liveable condition for less than 50k (because nobody wants to live there and you'd be lucky to ever get a tenant, but nobody local has the money to buy it). It's overall underpopulated with the (lack of) infrastructure to match.

But then you have areas in the UK where you couldn't rent a garage for £350 a month let alone a house, you risk creating more of these areas if 80% of the population tries to squeeze in on 10% of the countries land (London style).

I don't think "just move" is an economically sustainable solution...

It’s difficult isn’t it

I also moved across the world as a young adult, as did many of my friends. It’s a different sense of risk taking and motivation.

What’s interesting is with the tiny rural town I grew up most leave. In other rural towns in Aus there’s a sense of community which overrides this impetus to leave, not enough jobs and generations where drugs etc embeds. I can’t think of many but I’ve got a couple of places in NSW in mind. There may be others, loads or a few not sure

So there is something in community overriding impetus to move on and something to do with a despondency that settles in.

I’m interested in how companies would thrive there (with tax breaks) I’m not convinced it is the answer.

Also once the differences become too marked moving as a young adult becomes harder

You have to be fairly sure that the place you move to will accept you and it also requires motivation and optimism. Much of which will be modelled by parents and others

One last one, out of all the businesses that could move there call centres and online customer service is a good option. So some of that could help

London has unique problems. The problems of post-industrial towns in Wales are common to poor communities across the UK. Singling our Wales as if it’s something special is one of the reasons powerful people are able to divide and rule, breeding nationalistic resentment to ‘others’ and leading to outcomes like austerity and Brexit which make us all poorer.

You shouldn’t be proud that you don’t have a better understanding of the world outside your own narrow confines. Read a book.

What a bizarre response to this thread EastMidsMummy.

Why do you sat that Larlarland? Do you think the problems of ex-mining towns in Wales are systematically different to the problems of ex-mining towns in Cornwall, South Yorkshire or central Scotland?

EastMidsMummy

ODFOD

@Eastmidsmummy The problems might be similar to the other places you mention, but some of the causes and solutions different because there is a different government in Wales.
It's a perfectly valid topic and hardly demonstrates petty nationalism.
I am from the valleys originally and think infrastructure and education are the biggest challenges and so far the Welsh Government has failed on these, especially education.

EastMidsMummy makes a very valid point so I can't imagine why people are being so rude!

Then she should probably start her own thread instead of trying to derail this one

Pontipines - plenty of trains to Cardiff on Sunday now, every half hour. Buses are ok too, occasionally free ones. That said, we want to move to Cardiff or Penarth in the near future.

EastMidsMummy I grew up in a mining town which is not in Wales or any of the other places you mentioned. There will be challenges that are common to all these places and challenges which are unique to each place. I know that some of the things discussed in relation to towns in Wales don’t apply to my hometown. I think you are really fucking rude to come on here and criticise the OP for wanting to discuss the place she knows and cares about.

I have been visiting the Aberdare/ Cwmbach area for 25 years. It is a strange mix of beautiful and run down. The country park in Aberdare is lovely and seems to attract visitors, the town has had some investment in schools and infrastructure. The public transport has improved, Sunday morning trains to Cardiff! My mum lives in mid Glamorgan on a tiny fixed income, she has a great flat, free bus pass for services across Wales. In my part of England, if she could find a landlord that accepted tenants on benefits (pensioner with housing benefit), it will be a poky and ugly flat, no valley views and friendly neighborhours, a Bus pass covering the county only, more expensive to live generally. Her quality of life is better in South Wales. It can be a good place for the economically inactive/ low income. But the flip side is that it has no opportunities for the young and ambitious. It is a fact of life that if you want to study, gain experience, progress in a career, you have to leave. That is the same for most small towns, the difference is there is little financial incentive to come back unless you are on benefits or retired. But there are plenty of young people who are not in a position to leave in the first place, not going to University, never travelled before, fear of the unknown and no safety net.

It is all very well putting all the responsibility onto the individuals living in the 'Valleys' - they have to leave, get jobs - but this is a community, family ties, history, interdependence knit the individual members together. Is it ok to let communities splinter? Are the people unable to leave for work just supposed to fade away as they aren't economically active? There needs to be a mix of opportunities, public sector, leisure and tourism, local small business, co-operative business. One big employer is not going to be the answer anymore. Investment from Europe has been hugely important, it does concern me that this is at risk in the future.

EastMidsMummy has form for being completely obnoxious wherever she pops up, I've noticed. What a bizarre thing to be rude about. I'm sure she could start a thread about the socio-economics of the East Midlands if she wanted and no one would accuse her of nationalism and xenophobia.

I have no idea what can be done about the Valleys. People have become so hopeless that they forget what brought people to the Valleys in the first place - migration from all over the country, Ireland and Europe in the quest for work. Can this be seen as a sad but inevitable consequence of the Welfare State, even though its aims so were so noble and it has done so much good?

I had a friend who did one of his placements in Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr. A woman came in after having had a heart attack - she was 29. Her family were crowded round her bedside laughing and joking that she had beaten all their ages for their first heart attacks.

Clearly this does not apply to everyone in the Valleys etc and it was very easy for us young privileged Cardiff folk to be shocked at it and so on.