Children Must Have Free School Transport if Walking Route is Dangerous

News: Pembrokeshire County Council to pay for transport if walking to school is unsafe

Children faced with unsafe walks to and from school should be offered free transport, even if they do not normally qualify on grounds of long distance, Pembrokeshire County Council’s Cabinet decided on Monday March 9^th.

There is no budget for this, so the annual cost of around £121,000 would have to come from the contingency fund.

Children aged 5 to 7 qualify for free transport if they live more than two miles from their nearest school, as do children from 8 to 16 who live further than three miles away.

The county council has relied on commercial bus services to carry school pupils who live nearer than the qualifying distances for free transport. The Cabinet’s hand was to some extent forced by a proposed charge of £1 each way from September 2020 for pupils travelling on the 302 bus service from Johnston to the senior school in Milford Haven. The charge would amount to £10 a week per child. The current concessionary arrangements end in September, and parents, Johnston Community Council and local county councillors raised the issue of the proposed cost, which would hit the budgets of many families.

Johnston is a long village, mostly between three and four miles from Milford Haven, and so in the free transport zone. But the part of Johnston nearest to Milford is just under three miles distant along the busy A4076 main road.

An unsafe route along a main road is one without a continuous pavement or a verge as a ‘step aside’ from traffic, and even if there is a ‘step aside’, if the road must be crossed, and it is too busy to cross without danger, it is unsafe .

The Welsh Government ’s ‘Learner Travel Statutory Provision and Operational Guidance’,* dated 2014, makes clear that the walking route to the nearest school must be ‘safe’. There is a guide to determining the safety of a walking route in ‘Assessment of Walked Routes to School’ by Road Safety GB and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, published in 2012 and updated 2016.

Chart from guidance in ‘Assessment of Walked Routes to School’, by Road Safety GB and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. Education authorities must provide free transport for pupils to reach their nearest school if the route is unsafe, even if the children do not qualify on grounds of distance from the school.

If a route is unsafe to walk, the presence of a commercial bus service is immaterial.

Cars and lorries are dangerous companions for children walking to school, and arguably a factor which should be taken more into account when an education authority decides to close a school, or indeed to open a new one.

The fact that the costs of providing transport are often excluded from education budgets, but fall into another department like transport or highways, means that transport may not be given sufficient importance when education decisions are made.

 

*See especially sections 1.62 and 1.63.

 

PDR

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News: School Bus Blow to Hundreds in Carmarthenshire

New coach regulations to be applied in Wales, England and Scotland from January 1^st 2020 mean the end of paid-for seats on school transport, unless the vehicle is fully accessible to all passengers, including those with disabilities.

School transport is often in older vehicles which are unsuitable for passengers with limited mobility or in wheelchairs.

The new rules affect those pupils who do not qualify for free travel, whose parents up to now have been able to buy bus passes, which in Carmarthenshire have cost £50.

The parents or carers of about 500 pupils in Carmarthenshire are faced with having to find a different way of travelling to and from school. Walking or cycling may not be feasible along narrow and unlit lanes, or where roads full of fast traffic have to be negotiated.

Pupils aged 5 to 7 qualify for free school transport if they live more than two miles from their nearest or designated school, as do pupils aged 8 to 16 who live more than three miles away. These pupils are not affected by the Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations because it is a legal requirement for them to be transported to school. Children whose disabilities prevent them from getting on school buses are already carried by taxi or specialised vehicles.

Free school transport in the county is forecast to cost £11.195 million in 2019-2020, £214,000 more than expected, the high amount a reflection of the additional costs resulting from the closure, over the past five decades, of the majority of Carmarthenshire’s rural primary schools and consequent long journeys faced by pupils.

Cllr Rob James, leader of the Labour group on Carmarthenshire County Council, said on Facebook on December 18th: “We believe it is the council’s moral duty to ensure that there is public transport available for all pupils for safety reasons.”

At present, though, the council is so short of funds that just meeting legal obligations is a struggle.

PDR

See also

‘Paid-for school bus seats coming to an end’, Carmarthenshire County Council newsroom, September 2019, http://newsroom.carmarthenshire.gov.wales/2019/09/paid-for-school-bus-seats-coming-to-an-end/#.Xf0sE51zzIU

‘School buses: Pupils to miss out after law change’, BBC news Wales, August 30^th 2019, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-49516222

 

News: Carmarthenshire School Transport Costs Exceed £11 Million

The bill for transporting children to and from school in Carmarthenshire is set to exceed £11 million in this financial year, over £200,000 more than expected.

The county council’s Executive Board will be told on Monday (November 18^th) that the cost is forecast to be £11.195 million, £214,000 above the budgeted amount.

For comparison, this is equivalent to 22.6%, between a fifth and a quarter, of the entire £49.501 million delegated budget for the county’s secondary schools, which is itself £1.4 million above the budgeted amount of £48.101 million.

Primary schools’ delegated costs are expected to come to £57.452 million in 2019-20, and special schools’ to £4.264 million. The total including secondary schools is £111.217 million — so school transport at £11.195 million adds another 10% to this substantial sum.

The county council explains the transport overspend as “mainly due to an increase in the number of Additional Learning Needs pupils transported to Special Schools. In addition a number of recent appeals have been successful, as well as increased contractor costs, diminishing market supply and increased minimum wage.”

The explanation suggests that minimum-wage payments are probably common in the business of school transport, and that although wages may be low, fewer businesses are competing for contracts.

Years of closures of local schools have forced more  children to depend on commercial carriers to get them to school, at significant and rising financial cost to the local authority as well as at time cost to the pupils.

PDR

Comment: Over-60s Without Computers Face Struggle to Renew Bus Passes

Over-60s bus pass holders in Wales have to renew their passes by the end of December this year. The new passes will, unlike the old ones, be recognised by electronic readers on public transport.

I applied online to renew mine yesterday and it took about five minutes.

Not so easy, though, for over-60s without a computer, or who are not confident about using a computer. Transport for Wales, the Welsh-Government-owned not-for-profit body that is issuing the new passes, expects applications to be made online. There is an option to complete a paper form, but this has to be downloaded and printed out, it cannot be requested to arrive in the post.

The ‘no computer’ problem is less of an issue for people in their 60s than for the over-70s, especially those over 75. The Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, Helena Herklots, said in her October 2019 report ‘State of the Nation’ that 60% of the over-75s do not use the internet, compared with 37% of those aged 60-74. Yet even 37% is approaching four in every ten of this age group.

Thus six in ten of the over-75s, and nearly four in ten of those aged 60-74, may struggle to replace their bus pass, especially if they do not have younger friends or family members to help them apply.

The passes are valid on some train services as well as on buses, giving them extra value. In West and Mid Wales, for example, pass holders can travel free on the Heart of Wales line, between Swansea and Shrewsbury, during the months October to March.

Nearly 730,000 people, between one in four and one in five of the whole population of Wales, hold the expiring passes, the BBC has reported (‘Free Wales bus passes: Users crash website ahead of card changes’, September 11. When the compulsory renewals were announced, the applications website quickly crashed).

PDR

 

Welsh Government Recruiting Consultants for Llandeilo Bypass

The Welsh Government is recruiting consultants to manage the construction of a bypass for Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire.

The estimated value of the four-and-a-half year management contract is £6 million. The bypass itself is expected to cost about £50 million.

Talk of a Llandeilo bypass began in 1939 when traffic was far lighter than today. The length of the A483 Manchester to Swansea trunk road bisects Llandeilo as Rhosmaen Street, which has illegal levels of air pollution resulting from heavy traffic including super-sized lorries.

The preferred route for the Llandeilo bypass (see below) was agreed before the new comprehensive school Ysgol Bro Dinefwr was constructed, and now there is only a narrow corridor between the school and homes in Ffairfach.

Concerned residents, who delivered a leaflet to local houses early in 2017, worried that traffic on a new bypass would bring air pollution close to the school, and that “heavy, fast-moving traffic will threaten the safety of children travelling to and from the school”.

Pupils walking between the school and town will need a safe way to cross the bypass where it meets the A476, the road on which the school entrance is located.

Given these issues, construction of the bypass is unlikely to be free of controversy, and so the project managers will need more than a shovel-sized capacity for diplomacy.

The preferred route for the Llandeilo bypass, shown above, was agreed before Ysgol Bro Dinefwr was constructed, leaving only a narrow corridor for it between the school and homes in Ffairfach. 

Llandeilo Bypass Route — Unsafely Close To Ysgol Bro Dinefwr?

The Llandeilo bypass could be squeezed between Ysgol Bro Dinefwr and houses in Ffairfach. 

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 13th, 2pm to 7pm in Llandeilo Civic Hall, Crescent Road — there is a public consultation about the construction of a Llandeilo bypass.

If you want to know more, you can contact Llandeilo’s county councillor, Edward Thomas, on 07842 649261, email egthomas@sirgar.gov.uk.

A leaflet delivered locally draws attention to air pollution within about 30 metres of Ysgol Bro Dinefwr, and to fears that “heavy, fast-moving traffic will threaten the safety of children travelling to and from the school”.

Talk of a Llandeilo bypass, which began in 1939, has resurfaced amid rising worry about dangerous numbers of heavy vehicles, and illegal levels of air pollution, along the A483 Manchester to Swansea trunk road where it slices through the centre of the town.

All the possible routes considered so far have drawbacks – and the lately built Ysgol Bro Dinefwr, at Love Lodge Farm, Ffairfach, could cause new and expensive complications.

The Welsh Government’s budget, agreed with the Plaid Cymru opposition in October 2016, includes a commitment to explore ways of bringing forward construction of a Llandeilo bypass.

The bypass project, which would improve air quality and road safety in the town, but would damage historic landscapes regardless of the route selected, has been prepared for dusting off a number of times, but remained shelved. In 2013 Edwina Hart, then the Welsh Government’s Minister for Economics, Science and Transport, gave a start date of 2016. Welcoming the news, Carmarthenshire County Council’s Executive Board member responsible for transport at the time, Pontamman’s Colin Evans, said the bypass would be likely to cost over £40 million.

Several routes have been proposed over the years. The Outer Western Route, not a preferred option, would slice right through the protected landscape of Dinefwr Park and the new £30 million, 1,200-pupil Bro Dinefwr school, and so is off the table.

The Inner Western Route and the Inner Eastern Route would both require a roundabout where the eastern boundary of the school meets the A476 road to Cross Hands, which is used by much traffic bound for the A48 and M4.

The Outer Eastern Route avoids going anywhere near the new school, but it also avoids meeting the A476.

The prospect of a large roundabout in the cramped space between Ysgol Bro Dinefwr and Ffairfach raises issues of risks to pedestrians and of too-close proximity to the vehicle entrance to the school, which is just yards further along the A476.

During construction works, building a roundabout between the school and Ffairfach would impede and slow down access to the school for vehicles and pedestrians.

The Welsh Government, though, said late in 2016 that it had no concerns about fitting in a roundabout between the new school and Ffairfach.

A spokesperson said: “The proposed route of the Eastern Bypass of Llandeilo has been protected for a number of years and pre-dates the construction of Bro Dinefwr comprehensive school. When the local planning authority was developing proposals for the school they consulted with our transport department to ensure that the school was positioned to take into account the proposed bypass route.”

There is less space, though, than that occupied by the A40-A483 roundabout on the eastern side of Llandeilo, and the far larger numbers of pedestrians who would need to cross the bypass roundabout would surely require wide paths, taking up even more room.

PDR

‘Slow Down’ Plea from Porthyrhyd

Porthyrhyd — in this case the country village north of Llanwrda, not the Porthyrhyd near Cross Hands — suffers from excessive speed as traffic taking a short cut from the A482 to Llandovery whizzes through without the hindrance of any limits.

Siloh, on the same route, also has no speed restriction.

This could change in 2017-18, thanks to pressure from local people, led by county councillor Dafydd Tomos and community councillor Arwel Davies. Monday (January 23) served up a lunchtime surprise to John McEvoy, road safety and traffic manager with Carmarthenshire County Council, when he arrived to meet Dafydd Tomos.

Mr McEvoy found himself facing some two dozen residents of Porthyrhyd and Siloh assembled in the Beudy belonging to Dr Brinley and Mrs Stephanie Jones, Drovers Farm, prepared to state their case strongly. Mr McEvoy had good news, though — he agreed that a 30 mph speed limit is necessary, and said he hoped it would be in place before April 2018. He also promised to visit Siloh and look at the need for speed restriction there.

Heavy vehicles, and delivery vans rushing from drop to drop, are an important part of the traffic problems on minor roads, which generally lack pavements and so are shared with walkers. The closure of local services like schools, shops and post offices, and the scarcity of public transport, means that more people have to travel by private vehicle.

If just the financial costs of transport — let alone the road safety and environmental dangers — were included in calculations, the closure of public amenities in rural areas would make a lot less sense.

John McEvoy, road safety and traffic manager with Carmarthenshire County Council, tells Porthyrhyd  residents that speed limits should be introduced in the coming financial year

Dafydd Tomos, the Plaid Cymru county councillor for Cilycwm, who backs the campaign for speed limits 

Arwel Davies, Cilycwm community councillor, who pressed for the meeting

 

Residents of Porthyrhyd and Siloh in the Beudy at Drovers Farm on Monday (January 23) to press for 30 mph speed limits through both villages. Dr Brinley Jones of Drovers Farm is left in the second row 

Llandeilo Provisions Market: Renovation Dream, Parking Nightmare

Where are Llandeilo’s 349 daytime and 508 evening car park spaces? We don’t know.

Carmarthenshire County Council has used these figures to justify planning approval for a major commercial redevelopment of the listed Provisions Market building at the top of Carmarthen Street at the junction with New Road. See also the Carmarthenshire Herald, October 21.

Only 36 spaces would be provided on site, but the apparent availability of hundreds of spaces elsewhere in the town led the planning committee to decide last week (October 13) that the shortage of spaces at the historic building would not be a problem – even though the 16 or so existing informal parking spaces on the New Road and Carmarthen Street sides of the county-council owned building would disappear to allow for tables and chairs.

PM, Provisions Market; R, residents’ parking; 1, Carmarthen Road car park; 2, Crescent Road car park, the main one in Llandeilo; 3, Llandeilo Station car park. The thee car parks have 205 spaces between them

Llandeilo town has three public car parks. Crescent Road, by far the largest, has 165 spaces. There are 25 at Llandeilo Station and 15 in the Carmarthen Road car park next to the Fire Station, according to figures obtained by Llandeilo’s hard-working county councillor Edward Thomas. That’s a total of 205, or 144 less than the daytime figure given to the planning committee.  And scarcely anyone would walk from the station to the Provisions Market, a distance of nearly half a mile via steps and Alan Road. A less steep route via Station Road is three-quarters of a mile.

Cllr Thomas is “very concerned” about the loss of unofficial parking spaces outside the Provisions Market. “I am actively campaigning for more parking spaces in Llandeilo, because there is definitely a need for it,” he said. Flat land suitable for parking is at a premium, though, and so it may become necessary to find land outside the town and run a shuttle bus service.

Residents only parking

Daytime on-street parking in Llandeilo is residents only in New Road, as well as in Crescent Road, Church Street, Abbey Terrace, Bank Terrace and Quay Street. Between 6pm and 8am these residents’ spaces are, in theory, available to anyone including, of course, the residents. In addition, at designated spaces at the top of New Road and opposite the civic offices in Crescent Road, drivers can park for up to two hours if a residents’ bay is vacant. Within a couple of hundred metres of the Provisions Market, there are 23 one-hour parking bays in King Street and five 30-minute bays in George Street, but these are intended for quick shopping stops.

Carmarthen Street is narrow and displays double yellow lines on both sides. Rhosmaen Street, part of the A483 Swansea to Manchester trunk road, is definitely No Parking.

Plans for the Provisions Market include two of the 36 parking spaces to be reserved for the disabled. The parking area would absorb the Carmarthen Street recycling site, which would be moved elsewhere. At present there are about 12 spaces behind the building in addition to the 16 at the front and side, and they are normally full – so the new plan adds only eight spaces.

Additional 175 spaces required

If guidelines for new commercial development were followed, there would be 175 spaces at the refurbished Provisions Market, including 12 for the disabled. Most disabled drivers need to be close to their destination – but within 50 yards or so of the Provisions Market the options, if the two reserved spaces were occupied, would be the 10 spaces outside Pili Pala Nursery opposite, or temporary use of a residents’ parking bay, in both cases limited to two hours.

The council’s highways and transport department appears to have had a change of heart since 2012, when lack of parking was a reason for the Head of Transport’s recommendation to refuse the application, by the housing association Gwalia, to construct four houses and nine flats on the site, and to renovate the Provisions Market building as a shell for future commercial use. Gwalia had proposed 16 parking spaces for the dwellings and five for the market building (two of which have since been taken by a bus stop).

Events venue

The 2012 proposals would have resulted, at least initially, in few people on the site, probably between 20 and 25 residents, but the latest plans, by Dawnus Construction Holdings Ltd, are for an events venue with retailing, catering, and business uses which could employ 80 people full-time and 23 part-time. There would be some parking for customers if all employees walked to work, or came by bus – but that is improbable.

Renovation would mean the end of informal parking around the old Provisions Market. Public transport does not exist for many of the people who need to come into town, which is in sore need of more daytime parking spaces

There is little spare parking space in Llandeilo now in the daytime – so 103 additional employees, and an unknown number of customers, are likely to park on the streets, and the main candidate near the Provisions Market is Carmarthen Road beyond the Police Station and down to Llandeilo Rugby Club, where there are no yellow lines, plus smart residential roads off Carmarthen Road like Diana Road, Lôn Rhys and Parc Pencrug.

The Herald is awaiting replies from Carmarthenshire County Council to questions about the number of car park spaces in Llandeilo, and the source of the figures given to the planning committee.

More cars with internal combustion engines coming into Llandeilo would worsen the already severe air pollution problem. On the other hand, frequent public transport between isolated rural homes and the town centre would not be affordable. Electric cars must be part of the answer — but they still need somewhere to park (and recharge).

PDR

 

Pioneer community hub opens at Llandeilo station

Also see the Carmarthenshire Herald, July 15th 2016, p. 13

From afar it could be a stranded goods wagon. Close up, it’s a highly insulated wooden building by the approach road to Llandeilo station. Nicknamed ‘The Hub’, it is unique in the UK’s rail network, the first of a hoped-for string of similar buildings at rural stations.

Created for the Heart of Wales Line Development Company, costing around £30,000 and grant-aided by the Welsh Government, the building has a water supply from rain falling on the roof, and a compost toilet independent of mains drainage.  LED lighting and low-energy heating tubes also contribute to low running costs.

Hub Quartet: project manager Rachel Francis, line development officer David Edwards, constructor David Bamford, and railway expert Professor Paul Salveson 

“We are linking this building to mains electricity,” said project manager Rachel Francis, “but with the help of solar panels a similar building could have an independent electricity supply. “

Built of Welsh timber by David Bamford of Presteigne, Powys, the Hub will be available for local social enterprises and businesses. The first to book are Sara Tommerup and James Scrivens of the Black Mountain Food Hub – a hub within a hub – who will be there on Friday mornings for food producers to deliver and in the afternoons for customers to collect their orders, received via their website, http://www.blackmountainfoodhub.co.uk.  A local delivery service is offered too, at £2, and there are plans for Llandovery station to also become a collection point.

“We hope to work with more local food producers,” said Sara. “Currently the Popty Patagonia Bakehouse, Organics to Go, Liliwen Herbs, Llandeilo Country Markets and Black Mountain Wholefoods  — all in and around Llandeilo — are our suppliers, and we will also be sourcing butter from the Gwenlas Dairy. At present we are looking especially for more vegetables.”

Using the new building at Llandeilo station: Sara Tommerup and James Scrivens of the Black Mountain Food Hub

The Hub could also become a base for day trip and railway-linked package tour operators. The Heart of Wales Line Development Company and Herefordshire-based travel firm Rural Concierge are working on a programme of mini breaks from stations along the line, which links Swansea with Shrewsbury.

More ideas could come from a Friends of Llandeilo Station group, which Heart of Wales Line development officer David Edwards is keen to see created.

For the Heart of Wales Line Development Company, and high-profile railway enthusiasts including Professor Paul Salveson of Huddersfield University, siting The Hub at Llandeilo is the result of months of planning and negotiations – and of confidence that the Heart of Wales line will continue to grow in importance as a transport artery.

PDR

 

 

Regeneration Route: New Futures for the Heart of Wales Railway

Rural Wales today is a land of loss, of public services gone away, of rural spaces used for the benefit of people elsewhere, as vistas for holiday consumption, as water stores and as electricity farms. Remember the Development Board for Rural Wales, which was supposed to power economic revival? The DBRW was extant for 18 years, 1977 to 1995, and had the job of economic revival in Powys, Ceredigion and Meirionnydd. Job done in 1995? Of course not. So do we need a modern version ?

Buzz words today are ‘city regions’. The Welsh Government sees Wales as two-and-a-half city regions: (1) greater Cardiff including Newport, and (2) Swansea Bay, with north-east Wales as the half, linked to the industrial hinterlands of the river Mersey in England. Investment would be concentrated in these regions, leaving all of Wales outside the urban bubbles even shorter of resources than they are already.

You can argue that city regions are anachronisms in a world pushing up against limits to growth, but ‘sustainability’ did not feature centrally in the City Regions in Wales report presented to the Welsh Government in 2012.[i] Nor did climate change, nor the Welsh Government’s professed aim for the country to use no more resources than our single planet can provide. The concept of a city region as a growth magnet poses all sorts of unanswered questions, such as

• Where will cities’ food come from?
• What sorts of income-earning jobs will the inhabitants do, in a climate-challenged, resource-depleted, environmentally damaged world?

Here in north-west Europe, judging by TV adverts and supermarket shelves, it can seem as though there are limitless supplies of everything, but that’s only because we use far more than our fair share.  Who could live on 85p a day? Some 1.2 billion people – around 19 times more than the population of the UK – have to scrape by on less. There aren’t enough resources to supply everyone with a north-west European standard of materialism.

The very notion of the ‘sustainable city’ is perhaps a triumph of optimism over history, because civilisations collapse when cities can no longer be provisioned. Political instability ensues, and surviving populations melt into the countryside.

In Wales, too many politicians regard ‘the countryside’ as the past, not the future. Fortunately, small groups of people are working for rural revival, and more than a dozen of them met in Llandovery on Friday at the start of a campaign to bring new life to the communities along the Heart of Wales railway, which crosses Wales from Swansea in the south to Shrewsbury in the borderlands of England, and is ‘rural’ within Wales most of the way from Llanelli in Carmarthenshire to Knighton in Powys, a distance of some 80 miles.

Professor Paul Salveson[ii] asks “Could the Heart of Wales Line become a linear ‘Mondragon’ network supporting a network of co-operative enterprises?” The Mondragon federation is the (mostly) successful co-operative economic engine of the Basque Country in Spain, and I think the answer to Prof Salveson’s question is ‘Yes’. Not just along the Heart of Wales corridor, either, but also to the west, either side of a resurrected Carmarthen to Aberystwyth railway.

continues below the map 

Map from Traws Link Cymru, the group campaigning to restore, initially, the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth line. The map shows Wales’ remaining railways in black, including the Heart of Wales line passing through Ammanford, Llandovery and Builth Wells.

Glenn Bowen of the Wales Co-operative Centre  — the largest co-operative development body in the UK, according to Wikipedia – was on hand at the Level Crossing hostel by Llandovery Station yesterday to outline the pros and cons of various types of corporate structures, to representatives from the Heart of Wales Line Development Company, Heart of Wales Line Travellers Association, Friends of Llandovery Station, Llanwrtyd Community Transport & Events Recycling, Transition Tywi Trawsnewid, and the Calon Cymru group which exists to promote sustainable activity along the line. Early days, but there is enthusiasm to create a Heart of Wales Enterprise Network.

Calon Cymru last year devised a plan for a string of ‘garden villages’ along the line, and submitted it for the Wolfson Prize. The Wolfson competition sought ideas for a new garden city, rather than garden villages, and the entry did not win an award, but I think it shows that low-impact developments have much to offer rural Wales, in helping to rejuvenate the population profile, creating land-based enterprises including ‘One Planet’ ventures using only those resources which our planet can continue to provide, and bringing critical mass to support public services including transport. Click on The Linear Garden City: a One Planet vision to read the plan.

Separate campaign groups have been labouring away, often for years, in their own back yards, and as small ventures made only limited political impact. The current move to collaborate could mark the start of a new, more positive phase in the history of the forgotten back-lands of rural Wales.

A new Development Board for Rural Wales? No, that would be planning imposed from the top downwards. The idea now, a much better idea, I think, is to support individuals and community groups as they set about creating their own futures.

PDR

[i] City Regions Final Report, July 2012. ‘Sustainability and Climate Change’ comprised paragraphs 145 to 149, saying sustainable development should become a unique selling point for attracting investment. The climate change issue was summarised in one sentence in paragraph 147: “Studies have found that while cities create many of the problems of climate change they also offer increased scope to maximise resource efficiency”.

 

[ii] Paul Salveson MBE is visiting professor in transport and logistics at the University of Huddersfield. His reference to Mondragon is in ‘Unlocking enterprise and creativity in Mid Wales: a rail-based approach’, which he wrote for the Heart of Wales Line Development Company: click to read Unlocking enterprise and creativity in Mid Wales