The following leaflet is being circulated in the village offering various kinds of assistance at this difficult time:

Cymuned – Llanbedr – Community

Hello neighbour. Are you unable to leave your home because of Covid19/Coronavirus?

We are a group of Llanbedr people who have come together to try and ensure that nobody is left isolated or without support. We can only offer help within reason, in ways where we can also stay safe.

If you need medical advice, check the online coronavirus information at:

https://phw.nhs.wales/topics/latest-information-on-novel-coronaviruscovid-19/#publicor

If you have no internet access, call NHS 111 from your phone. In a medical emergency, dial 999.

NEED SUPPORT?

If you would like to speak to us, or want to ask for help, please e-mail: post@llanbedr.com, or message https://www.facebook.com/llanbedr/ or telephone:

01341 241853      or        01341 241224,

01341 241391      or         01341 241218

And you will be put in touch with someone who will see what help we can give

GIVE SUPPORT

If you would like to support the community and join in, please contact us on the above e-mail address or contact us through our Facebook page.

HOW CAN WE HELP?

If you need help and cannot reach anyone.

Attach a white ribbon, white sock or white tea-towel to your front door.

Congratulations and thanks to those involved in this excellent initiative.

If you have been watching the Llanbedr Bypass planning application page on the Snowdonia National Park Authority (SNPA) web site very carefully, you just might have noticed that the 136 documents listed there when Gwynedd Council’s application was registered a couple of weeks ago has now swollen to one-hundred-and -forty. Among the new arrivals is Llanbedr Community Council’s comments on the bypass, which are of course, likely to influence the final decision. Community council comments can be pretty important on these occasions.

Now one might have expected that our council would have posted a copy of this rather important document on their web site. After all they do have a page misleadingly called ‘New Road’ when everyone knows that what they are really talking about is actually a bypass that will change Llanbedr forever, but they dare not say so. If they had done that, everyone would be able to see what is being said on their behalf without rummaging through 140 documents on an obscure website.

A community council is required to represent all shades of opinion in the area they cover. So many people might be rather surprised that such a document has been drawn up and submitted to the planners without a series of public meetings to establish what people think. That would also have been a useful exercise because the council would have been able to benefit from the varied views, experience, and expertise in the community which extends beyond that of the elected members. Or perhaps it might have been a good idea to publish the comment on the website in draft form before it was sent to the planners, just to see what people thought of it and whether it could be improved.

In fact a request for a public meeting before the council’s comments were sent to the planners was made by a householder who is concerned about the bypass. This was refused:  something else that people might find very, very strange.

So it is rather sad that, Continue reading “Llanbedr Community Council on the Fence” →

When the clerk to a small rural local council elsewhere — one not unlike Llanbedr Community Council — saw the plan of the proposed Llanbedr bypass, her first reaction was, “I suppose they are going to infill”. She had immediately noticed that if the bypass is built, it will cut off quite a large triangle of land between the new embankments on which the will run and the village.

Now everyone knows that the UK has an acute housing shortage. Local authorities are under enormous pressure from central government to find more and more land that new homes can be built on. So once a road scheme encloses land on the edge of an existing community it is quite usual to revise the local plan so that, even if the area is green field land, development can take place in future.

The other morning Chris Grayling, the Secretary of State for Transport, was interviewed on the BBC Radio4 Today programme. Continue reading “Unforeseen Consequences?” →

The following rather strange announcement has turned up on the Llanbedr Community Council website, but without any explanation as to what has brought on such a bizarre outburst:

CONTACT US: post@llanbedr.com

When submitting your contribution to www.llanbedr.com please make sure that it:

• is not defamatory
• is not vexatious
• does not promote material from anonymous sources
• does not infringe any law
  

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www.llanbedr.com , cyngorllanbedr@gmail.com , post@llanbedr.com  are the official property of Llanbedr Community Council / Cyngor Cymuned Llanbedr.

 

Please be wary of notices and publications referring unofficially to or purporting to represent the agreed business of the Community Council.

Even stranger, this only appears on the English language version of the New Road web page (that’s what Llanbedr Community Council insist calling the bypass). Presumably it doesn’t apply to Welsh speakers or ‘contributions’ about anything else. Obviously the council has a problem of some kind, but it’s all very puzzling.  Perhaps they don’t really mind receiving defamatory, vexatious, anonymous, or illegal representations, or people impersonating them, just as long are not about the ‘new road’  or  in English. Or could it be that it is unthinkable that any Welsh speaker would behave so heinously? Perhaps the council’s onslaught is only directed at one or two individuals who are known not to speak Welsh, but surely that isn’t possible because it would be rather silly and possibly discriminatory.

Of course Protect Llanbedr is always very happy to do whatever it can to assist the community council. As we understand that their website receives very few visitors, we’ve reproduced the announcement here in the hope that it will reach as many members to the community as possible.

In the past, quarrying, mining, heavy industry, farming, textiles, and fishing have all played an important role in the economic life of Meirionnydd, and then they have faded. Now the one enduring industry that we can count on not only to survive, but if properly managed to provide growth in the years to come, is tourism.

Tourism has long since overtaken farming in the size of its contribution it makes to the Welsh economy. Even if Brexit marks the end of the long-standing EU vendetta against hill farmers, and future UK governments give this sector of agriculture the support it so desperately needs and deserves, recovery will take decades.

Arguably, the only exploitable major natural resource that rural Wales still posses is its landscape, Continue reading “Future Landscapes” →