Barry Waterfront Plans

The plans for Barry Waterfront were considered by Barry Town Council earlier this week - including plans for around 2,000 housing units.

Recommendations passed by the Town Council included a return to the 30% affordable housing threshold that was removed by the Vale Council a few weeks ago – and which surely makes far more sense regarding housing than the ‘up to 30%’ that was put in its place.

After all, if there is a ‘need’ for housing, then surely that need is greatest amongst people who can’t afford their own place under market circumstances.

The Plaid group on the council managed to push through a change in definition of the new connection with the island, changing it from a ‘street’ to a ‘road’, a subtle change reflecting the need for the road to the Island to be a direct route from Ffordd y Mileniwm, for use by people in Barry and beyond to reach the Island and relieve the Summertime stress on the causeway, and not just a residential area.

Other points made by the Plaid group included the fact that the East Quay is close to an industrial zone and that a light industrial area might be a better proposition than flats, and, of course, the sad fact that the whole development is based around a supermarket and a whole load of commuter housing rather than the facilities – a cinema, museum or all year round family activities – that Barry needs to re-establish itself as a viable tourist location, and was surely the point of the Waterfront re-development in Barry.

As seems to be the norm these days, the Conservatives on the Town Council were non-commital about their party’s development policy for Barry – meaning that we have to wait, once more, until the Vale’s planning committee meet to know what members of the Vale council's majority group are going to say or do.

Biomass Plant: Right Idea, Wrong Place

One of the discussions in Barry in recent weeks has been the proposed Biomass Plant to be located on Woodham Road on the Waterfront.

There are clear advantages to the plant, which will be a 9MW wood-fuelled renewable energy plant, according to the plans laid before the local councils.

Most obviously these include an increase in renewable energy supply to around 22,000 houses on the national grid (effectively every house in Barry), fuelled by reclaimed wood from local recycling operations and that would otherwise go to landfill.

I'm fully in favour of the principle of a biomass plant in Barry, but it's the location that needs to be considered.

Residents facing the Docks already have air and noise pollution from the Metal Recycling Plant near them and the whole northern Waterfront area is due to be the site of a significant number of houses as part of the Barry Waterfront Phase 2 development.

It makes no sense then, to site a 24-hour industrial plant nearby, when there is ample space only a mile or two away on the Atlantic Trading Estate or even on the industrialised southside of the Docks.

I also think that any permission for building a plant of this size should include an Environmental and Traffic assessment from the Vale Council to ensure that quality of life is maintained for local residents.

I look forward to further debate between the council and the developers and hope that Barry can play its part in a more environmentally friendly Wales.

Assembly Enterprise Committee to meet in Barry

I was pleased to hear at the weekend that the Assembly's Enterprise and Learning Committee will be meeting in Barry's Memorial Hall tomorrow (Wednesday).

For one thing, it's always good for politicians to get away from the bubble, whether that be in Westminster or Cardiff Bay, and see different locations from the same committee room week-in, week-out - it's a freshening up of the political scene in which politicians go to them, rather than expecting the public to come to 'us'.

On the agenda for the meeting are the Pride in Barry petitioners, who are concerned that monies that the Welsh Assembly has made from the sale of land on Barry Waterfront will not be re-invested into the town.

This is a crucial amount of monies that must be re-invested into Barry, and into the town's Waterfront area, to prevent Barry from becoming just a Cardiff dormitory town.

The last thing I, or anyone else in Barry, wants is to find out that the dithering of Conservative and Labour councils over the last 15 years will leave us with a big housing estate on the Waterfront where we could have had a thriving new part of the town - for both year-round residents and tourists to Barry.