I've often said that half the business of Hay is carried out by people meeting and chatting on the street - and I've certainly been talking a lot today as I trundled Islay round in her trolley to do the shopping.
One shopkeeper told me that he'd known Michael Jones, the leader of the Council, for many years. In 1985, he was chairman of the local Conservatives, and he put himself forward to be the parliamentary candidate. Jonathan Evans was selected instead, at which point Michael Jones left the Conservative party and went into the County Council as an Independent. As the Independent group is the largest 'party' in the County Council, he is now leader. I'm not sure how the 'cabinet-style' government of the Council's business started, but I was told that Mr Jones appoints all the members of the cabinet, where all the important decisions of the Council are taken - which we could see in action on the subject of the schools re-organisation recently, when Gareth Ratcliffe challenged the cabinet to bring the decision about school closures and re-organisation before the full council - and narrowly lost the vote. (It's all in the B&R, for those who want the details).
The chap I was talking to said he had stayed behind for a bit after the meeting to chat (I went off to have tea with some other people who were at the meeting - I think a lot of people there broke up into little groups to carry on talking). He said that the Council had declared there is no Plan B - well, in about half an hour, he and the people he was talking to had found one. Llanigon school is a good quality building, with the community hall beside it, and it was built to cater for 100 children. There are only about 15 there now, which is one reason the Council want to close it. Then there's Clyro School across the river, which would be staying open under the Council's new proposals. Between the two, they would be able to cater for all the local children who presently go to Hay School. That scheme may not appeal to everybody, but it is a Plan B, which could be achieved with very little cost (and no supermarket), and a bunch of people came up with it in about half an hour. So why can't the professionals at the Council come up with a Plan B?
While we were chatting, another local resident came up with a sheaf of papers printed off the internet. They were the names and addresses of all the companies under the Gaufron umbrella, taken from the Companies House website.
The man named under all these companies is Paul Anthony Rowlands, of Lower Gaufron Farm, Howey, Llandrindod Wells. The earliest of these companies to be formed, back in 1991, names him as a builder and farmer. Not one of these companies seems to have any money at all, and three of them seem to be completely inactive.
When we'd read, marked and inwardly digested, the papers were taken away to be shown to others.
On the way back from the Launderette, where I'd been talking to two other people about the meeting (one was there; the other hadn't been able to attend), I met a man who was concerned about the care home plans in the proposal. "If it is six to eight beds, not 60 to 80," he said, "then it's not economically viable."
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One thought occurred to me which we should also have in mind. What if these developers are hell bent, for their own reasons, to build a supermarket, whatever? And what if they offer some struggling farmer a very tempting amount for his land? And what if the farmer sells up and then this company, with this land, say on the road out to Brecon outside of Hay, but near enough aswell, decides to build a supermarket there? The effect would be just as devastating. It is possible.We certainly have to keep vigilant that NO supermarket gets built. Tesco have some extremely insidious practices. They could also buy the co op without anyone knowing and hey presto,there's your tesco. All this could happen and has happened in other towns. We need to be aware.
I attended a very crowded meeting at Booths Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye last night (Thursday 27th inst.) regarding the proposal to sell Hay Primary School site to property developers with the inference that a large supermarket will be the future occupant of the site. The overriding impression was the absolute abhorrence of the proposal by the vast majority of the audience.
The arrival of a supermarket in the centre of Hay-on-Wye would prove disastrous especially for our local shops and traders, many of whom would go out of business. This has happened in so many more small towns up and down the country and would detrimentally affect the character of our small historic market town. The town would rapidly become rundown with the consequent loss of tourism. Visitors will not want to come to Hay if it becomes full of empty shops. The loss to hotels and guest houses will be formidable.
The increase of traffic and noise in the road serving the site would surely contravene all that is recommended by Brecon Beacons National Park Authority in this context. We already have a Co-operative supermarket within easy reach of town and this is quite sufficient for people’s needs in this area.
As I understood it, the care home would be ~60 beds, with 6-8 of them being GP beds.
Any Plan B that involves there being no new primary school in Hay itself, ie moved to Llanigon or Clyro, would be a disaster for the town.
We need to encourage people into the town, and improve facilities for the residents of Hay not move them elsewhere, surely?
I would have thought that any development that encourages people to shop in Hay rather than having to go to Brecon or Hereford, would be a good thing. If Amazon were planning to open a large multistorey second-hand bookstore in Hay, I could see why you would be worried!
With regard to the transport issue, you are going to have to be very careful. It might have escaped your notice, but every year, there is a large literature festival that increases traffic through the town by many orders of magnitude greater than any supermarket development would do.
The current location of the Co-op means that I rarely shop in Hay itself, at least for general groceries. If the Co-op were located in the centre of Hay, I would use the town a lot more. If the Co-op doesn't have what I need, I tend to do without, and then go to Sainsbury's in Hereford or Waitrose in Abergavenny next time. I'm sure I'm not alone in this behaviour.
My feeling is that Hay is too small a town for a large concern like any of the Big Four to be remotely interested in opening a new supermarket. The site in the centre of Hay doesn't seem in anyway large enough, and given that Llandod only got a scout hut and community centre (on paper) out of their Tesco deal, I cannot believe that Hay would really get as much as a new £5 million school, community centre and 60-bed care home.
Increased traffic is always a non-starter when protesting about a new development - the developers always have all the answers. And as a lady said at the meeting on Thursday, in Malvern the volume of traffic increased by 300 cars an hour, and that was allowed.
I think the real issue here is the suitability, or otherwise of Gaufron Developers, and the lack of democracy in Powys County Council, where even Hay's own County Councillor can't get any information about the deal.
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