The Future.

The usual challenges of poor public transport links and a lack of quality employment opportunities coupled with the social scarring associated with former mining communities makes our situation difficult to understand and navigate. That said, we believe in our place and that by harnessing the heritage, cultural, social and natural assets that the valley boasts there remains great potential and the opportunity to improve the village as a place to work, visit and play.

A Community Action Plan was created in 2016 to identify community priorities and direct investment to priority community projects. The level of windfarm development in the surrounding area has meant that the community finds itself in the enviable position of having available to it increasingly large sums of community benefit funds.

It is important that such funds are harnessed for appropriate investment, legacy-type projects to ensure that the community can sustain itself beyond the lifetime of the windfarms and the resulting funds. The scale and scope of projects must increase as the funds increase and the opportunity to address critical issues such as housing, job creation and skills development must be realised.

That is not to say that this isn’t without its challenges but we must remind ourselves to look to our own positive examples of this in the form of successful projects such as the delivery of St. Bride’s Centre.