Rural communities in North East Wales will receive a massive £7 million cash injection over the next two and a half years.
The money has been secured by rural development agency Cadwyn Clwyd for a raft of projects aimed at revitalising the rural economies of the two counties.
It is also a powerful vote of confidence in the agency which had pumped £5.8 million into the area in the previous three years in Business Plan One of the Rural Development Plan.
In all Cadwyn Clwyd has £3.4 milion to spend in Flintshire and £3.6 million to spend in Denbighshire in Business Plan Two which runs until December 2013.
Cadwyn Clwyd Chairman Andrew Jedwell said: “This is really good news for rural North East Wales at just the right time and it means that we can continue to help the economy of the area develop.
“It’s a vote of confidence because the Welsh Government has seen that we have been successful in the past and that we have the capacity to deliver even more in future.”
The money is coming from the Rural Development Fund for Wales 2007-2013, which is funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) and the Welsh Government and public and private funding.
The cash injection comes as the two counties’ share of a £50 million plus pot of European money distributed throughout 18 of Wales’s local authorities and represents the culmination of a successful bidding process by Cadwyn Clwyd.
It will be used to run a raft of innovative and exciting regeneration projects aimed at developing and diversifying the rural economies of Denbighshire and Flintshire.
Cadwyn Clwyd Manager Allan Forrest said: “We have six separate projects supporting a wide range of activities that Cadwyn Clwyd are running in the area from tourism to energy and from food production to festivals.
“It adds up to a big pot of money committed to the counties and it increases the resource that is available to help local communities in the area.
“In the current economic climate, the timing is very opportune and the level of funding that we have been able to achieve is a tribute to the huge amount of work that has been done by Cadwyn Clwyd going back several years.”
Key projects begun by Cadwyn Clwyd over the past three years will now be rolled out to a wider area and this could include taking Wales’s first ever Pub Is The Hub scheme, run in Denbighshire, to seven other areas of Wales, Flintshire, Conwy, Gwynedd, Anglesey, Ceredigion, Bridgend and Vale of Glamorgan.
This is a pet project of Prince Charles and one that he has been monitoring closely since it began in rural Denbighshire while an Enterprise Bursary Project run in Flintshire has now been increased and extended to Denbighshire as well.
This is aimed at encouraging entrepreneurship, particularly among those aged 16 to 30, and will include start-up bursaries of up to £2,000, business advice and mentoring.
Other projects will encourage the extension of use and the improvement of facilities like rural schools and village halls.
Sustainability is also a theme with support for green, heritage and cultural tourism within rural Denbighshire as well as projects which pilot the use of alternative energy and green power generation from renewable sources.
Other initiatives are aimed at encouraging collaborative working and co-operative approaches to packaging, marketing and selling local produce as well as work to conserve, protect and interpret natural and cultural assets.
Allan Forrest added: “The experience we have gained in working with rural communities over several years has enabled us to pinpoint what works well and which areas need support.
“That was evident in the submissions we made and our ability to accurately define what is needed helped us gain the funding we have.
“The projects we have identified have been developed in consultation with the local community and are strongly grounded in demand at a grass roots level.
“We will also work closely with our partners in the county councils and also with other local organisations to help deliver these projects to local communities across both counties.
“We would encourage local people with ideas to come to speak to Cadwyn Clwyd to find out if we can help because we will do all we can to see whether there is an opportunity to provide assistance.”
Anyone interested in Cadwyn Clwyd’s new round of projects can contact them on 01824 705802 or e-mail [email protected]
