TrawsCambria to TrawsCymru

This story in the Western Mail today highlights some of the problems of the TrawsCambria network of long distance bus routes across Wales:

     Cross-Wales bus service snubbed by long distance passengers

We can get a sense of the history of the service from this article in Wiki. But the significant recent development came five years ago with the stated aim of transforming it into a "network of high-quality services". Yet, as the story very clearly shows, the previous Welsh Government singularly failed to do that. The network is fair enough, but the services that operate on that network are well below anything that could be described as high-quality.

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The previous minister responsible for transport (and economic development) was Andrew Davies, and what he failed to do was to see the distinction between long distance and short distance travel. This was reflected in two major ways:

•  First, that the service was operated by ordinary short-distance buses which were simply not suitable for journeys of more than about an hour because the seats weren't comfortable enough and there were no toilet facilities

•  Second, that the service made far too many intermediate stops, thus increasing journey times.

In essence, we were left with something that was closer to a local bus service travelling a very long route than an express coach service that could provide a viable alternative to travelling from one part of Wales to another by car.

Roughly 12% of passengers travelling on the existing TrawsCambria network are travelling between principal towns. Around 60% are travelling between administrative centres and their hinterland. The majority are traditional short-distance users, travelling to the nearest town for post offices, libraries or shopping.

It fell between two stools precisely because insufficient thought had been given to what the service was meant to do. But the good news is that this is finally set to change. The starting point is what Plaid set out in the 2007 manifesto:

We will create a fast, convenient national long distance express coach service, well-integrated with feeder rail and local bus services.

In contrast, Labour's manifesto was still thinking in terms of buses. But with Ieuan Wyn Jones now in charge of the portfolio it seems that things are at last moving forward, in particular with the appointment of David Hall. To give some idea of what's in store, this is a PowerPoint presentation he gave last month:

     

The presentation speaks for itself (well, apart from slide 16) but there is one point that I would particularly want to highlight.

•  A coherent and readily identifiable network of longer distance services, linking centres not directly served by the rail network in Wales.

In essence, this network is primarily meant to do what a rail service would do if Wales had a complete rail network. That's why, to take three examples, the route map does not have any service running along the north Wales coast, nor does it link Machynlleth with Newtown, nor extend from Carmarthen into Pembrokeshire. That's because rail already does that job ... although if we developed our rail services that job could be done even better.

     

For that reason I would seriously question whether extending the service into Ynys Môn is at all necessary because a properly integrated interchange at Bangor would serve the same purpose. I would instead make a far stronger case for extending the X50 service south from Aberteifi (Cardigan on the map) to Haverfordwest and Milford Haven. But those things can be worked out in the business plan. And uniting the X43 and 704 route is a no-brainer.

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Yet the one thing I would stress is that any long distance coach service can never be as good as the rail service would be. One of the core elements of the network is to link Carmarthen and Aberystwyth, but the railway that used to run between the two can be fairly easily reinstated. The same is true for the line between Porthmadog and Bangor. Reinstating the rail route between Newtown and Cardiff is part of Tad Deiniol's proposal.

So I think we should regard the new TrawsCymru network as something temporary rather than a permanent solution. We should be looking to establish a new north-south rail route, but even if we started work on it tomorrow I doubt that it could be completed within ten years. Yet in the long term that is what we must do ... and we should start now by working out the route so as to protecting it against future developments, particularly in towns that the railway used to pass through.

This is a video showing the north-south rail route I would like to see developed:

     

Some more information about it is here and there is more detail on the Ffestiniog/Cambrian Coast link here.

But there is a difference between long-term planning and what we can achieve in the short term. A network of fast, frequent and comfortable coach services between all parts of Wales is something we can achieve in the next year or so.

Wrexham fails a hundred children a year

On Monday, the Daily Post carried this story about Welsh-medium education in Wrexham:

Wrexham council accused of dragging feet over Welsh language education

Education consultant John Morris, who has worked in schools and colleges across the country, fears Wrexham is leaving many families out in the cold who want their children to be educated in Welsh.

He said he had been contacted by a number of parents who had tried to get their youngsters into Welsh schools only to be turned away. And he claimed the local authority was not doing enough to ensure there would be adequate provision to meet demands for Welsh language education in the future.

Mr Morris said: “I have had families come up to me and tell me they haven’t been able to get their children into schools with education provision in Welsh language. People have seen the success of schools in Wrexham which provide Welsh language provision such as Ysgol Plas Coch, Bodhyfryd and Morgan Llwyd. But schools are completely under resourced to cope and at Plas Coch they have put up two mobiles because of the extra demand."

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The authority’s Chief Learning and Achievement Officer John Davies, said: "The authority is still in the midst of carrying out a feasibility study on a range of possible sites and locations for a new primary welsh-medium language school in Wrexham. This should be completed within the next few weeks. Once this is completed a report will be submitted to the executive board in late April, where members will agree on a preferred option. The authority will then carry out a full consultation, which will seek the views of a wide range of stakeholders about that preferred option.

"There is sufficient accommodation in our Welsh medium schools to meet the current demand. All pupils who have applied for places at Welsh medium schools in Wrexham next September have been allocated places and two of our Welsh medium primary schools still have some places available."

Daily Post, 29 March 2010

This sounds suspiciously like a case of "he said, she said". Whenever anyone makes an allegation there'll always be someone available to deny it, and the average reader is then left with no means of being able to judge who is telling the truth. Happily, the facts become clear with a little research.

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The current situation is that Wrexham has five Welsh-medium primary schools, although there are also two very small rural schools which teach in Welsh. Wrexham publishes the admission number for each school in this document, together with the number of applications for places in September 2009:

Plas Coch ... Admission number 27 ... Requests 57
Bodhyfryd ... Admission number 46 ... Requests 49
Bryn Tabor ... Admission number 42 ... Requests 31
I D Hooson ... Admission number 29 ... Requests 39
Cynddelw ... Admission number 18 ... Requests 6

Total admission number 162
Total requests 182

This shows that the number of requests for places exceeds the number of places normally available. However it should be noted that the Ysgol Bodhyfryd website says that the school now has an admission number of 60, to refect the fact that temporary space has been found from somewhere. As mentioned in the story, Ysgol Plas Coch also has two temporary classrooms.

So Wrexham have just—but only just—managed to find places for those who have made formal admission requests. However they are very obviously heading directly for another crisis since three of the Council's WM schools are already full for this coming September, and it is almost certain that one of the two remaining schools with places mentioned by Mr Davies is Cynddelw which is in Glyn Ceiriog, some 25km away from Wrexham itself. Therefore only one of the four schools in or anywhere near Wrexham has any space left ... a full six months before the start of term.

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But this is only a part of the picture. Back in December I wrote this post about Wrexham's belated proposals for increasing the number of WM places available. In it, I mentioned that Wrexham had conducted a survey of parental preferences of parents of very young children in October 2007, and the headline percentages were given in this news story from RhAG. I did try to find a copy of that survey at the time but it wasn't anywhere on Wrexham's website. But I've checked again and am pleased to say it now is. Click the cover to read it:

     

The survey is particularly relevant now because the children in question are those born between September 2005 and August 2006, those starting formal education this year. The main figure is that the parents of 269 children would be very or fairly likely to send them to a Welsh medium primary school if there was one within 2 miles. This is not an extrapolated figure, it is the actual number of responses. The response rate was only 32% and it would be inconceivable that all of the remaining 68% would not want to do so. So that 269 is a minimum figure.

But the sustainable admission number of all WM schools in Wrexham is only 162, for although the temporary accommodation might allow for the figure to be increased for a year or so in the short term, there are seven year groups in total. So at a minimum there are at least a hundred children whose parents want them to have WM education, but for whom there are no spare spaces. That is solid proof that John Morris is right to say that parents are being turned away.

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So what is happening? I think the main reason for the difference is that parents usually make informal enquiries in the first instance. If they are told that the WM schools near them are full (and Wrexham have confirmed that three of the four in or near Wrexham already are for next September) they will simply not bother making an official application.

Another important factor is that if parents have been unsuccessful in getting their children into WM nursery education they might well feel that their children have already fallen behind, so that even though they might have wanted WM education a couple of years ago they now feel it is too late to catch up. This is very well illustrated in the diagram below, which shows that only 4% were able to get their child into a WM nursery or playgroup, which is very low even though about half of the parents thought their children too young to send to a nursery/playgroup at the time. To my mind this shows that we must make Parent and Toddler groups, called Ti a Fi (you and me) in Welsh, and nursery provision a priority.

     

But what surprised me most from the survey was the almost total lack of information given to parents by the Local Authority to enable them to make an informed choice. This is from the report:

Information for choosing a Primary School

2.12   Respondents were asked if they felt they had received enough information to make a decision about primary education for their children. The majority (64%) did not feel they had enough information to make this decision (Figure 14).

2.13   89% of respondents did not feel they had received enough information about the schools in their area. Only 74 respondents (11%) felt they had enough information regarding schools in their area (Figure 15).

2.14   An even higher percentage of respondents (94%) felt they had not received enough information regarding the application process for primary education. Only 40 respondents (6%) felt they had enough information on the application process (Figure 16).

2.15   Furthermore, 93% (579) respondents had not received information on Welsh medium schools (figure 17).

To my mind this borders on wanton negligence by Wrexham Council. It makes the figure of 44% who did respond positively all the more remarkable, and this lack of information might well be why the overall response rate only reached 32%.

 
All these factors act to reduce the numbers that make official applications for WM places, and I think it is reasonable to say that local authorities take advantage of this as an excuse for not supplying the number of WM places they should.

 
Now in Wrexham's case, the local authority do realize that they need to act, even though they have been leaving it rather late. They are currently consulting on these three options:

• building a new 1FE (210 place) school at Gwersyllt

• increasing capacity at Ysgol Plas Coch from 1FE to 2FE (420 places)

• building a new 1FE school at Gwersyllt and increasing capacity at Ysgol Plas Coch from 1FE to 1.5FE (315 places)

Consultation Document

I think that the third option is clearly the best, because it provides more WM places than the other two. However, even if it is approved, it adds only 45 places per year to the 162 places currently available. It would still leave a shortfall of at least 60 places each year.

That means at least one more two form entry, or perhaps two one form entry, WM schools are required in Wrexham simply to meet the demand that was surveyed back in 2007. One small amendment that would go some way to help would be to add this as fourth option:

• building a new 1FE (210 place) school at Gwersyllt and increasing capacity at Ysgol Plas Coch from 1FE to 2FE (420 places)

If people in Wrexham want this, you must keep campaigning for it. I hope this analysis will help.

Still playing politics with the Housing LCO

The pre-election antics of Peter Hain would be amusing if they were not so pathetic, or if the issue wasn't so important to Wales.

Although it doesn't give me much satisfaction, what I said about the Housing LCO in this post in February has proved to be accurate. Following the vote in the Assembly, Peter Hain had little choice but to lay the LCO before Parliament. But since then, the Labour Government has done nothing to prioritize it in order to get it through Parliament in the normal course of business, therefore it now looks inevitable that it will be included in the wash up negotiations, as reported by Tomos Livingstone in today's Western Mail:

     Which party will blink first over new housing powers?

As I said back in February, the Tories had sent the strongest signal that they would not agree to pass the LCO and David Jones simply repeated that position again yesterday ... although he did hold out the compromise that the Tories would allow the LCO through as part of the washing up process if the clauses on the right to buy and traveller sites were removed. It goes without saying that I disagree with the Tories' policy position on these two issues, but they have been quite consistent in their opposition. The problem has been that Labour were so pig-headed that they chose to ignore those warning signs.

And so now we get to the stand-off.

Peter Hain wants to portray the situation as one in which the Tories are being two-faced. But, as is so often true, that description fits himself and his government much better. For if, as he claims

"This is an absolutely critical piece of legislation to tackle homelessness and to deal with the housing shortage, to make sure the key housing problems in Wales are comprehensively tackled. It's backed by all the principal housing organisations in Wales."

... then why has he and his government spent the past two years obstructing it? He's just trying to be cute. If Labour wanted the LCO to be passed, Labour would have used the majority they have in Westminster to vote it through. So the only logical conclusion is that Peter Hain does not want it to be passed. But rather than stand up and oppose it in an honest and straightforward way, he prefers to twist things in order to try and make it appear as if the Tories are the ones to blame instead.

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I don't quite know how things will pan out in the next few weeks. The wash up is a period of horse trading between, as Alex Salmond put it this week, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It is possible that the Tories will let the LCO through as it stands but, if they do that, it will be because they get their way on another matter that they consider to be of greater importance to them than anything to do with Wales. That would of course be great for us, and it would be exquisite to see Peter Hain and Wayne David saying through gritted teeth that this is what they wanted all along. Who knows, if David Cameron were really smart, he could spin it as an example of the Tories respecting Wales so much that he over-rode the wishes of his three MPs in Wales in favour of the democratic wishes of the majority of people in Wales.

However I think it more likely that Peter Hain will concede the two clauses in order to allow the LCO through in some form. After all, if the LCO is dumped now, it will simply come before the new Secretary of State for Wales after the election ... and will just go round the same roundabout once or twice more. Despite what Peter Hain says now, his track record clearly shows that he doesn't want the Assembly to have the power to suspend the right to buy, so if he concedes that to the Tories now he ends up with exactly what he always wanted. But with the added luxury of being able to point a finger of blame at the Tories ... which, given his inability to see anything except through the lens of Labour-vs-Tory tribalism, probably matters more to him and his career than anything to do with what is right for Wales.

Unfortunately for him, this election offers Wales a greater choice of options than Labour's Tweedle Dumb and the Tories' Tweedle Twee.

... and a camera!

Sorry, it wasn't just a carton of orange juice that brave Sergeant Delroy Smellie felt so threatened by in the video in my previous post ... Nicola Fisher was holding a carton of orange juice and a camera!

That makes much more sense. The police have good reason to be afraid of cameras, as last night's report on Newsnight shows:

     

What sort of society is the UK becoming? Protesters treated as if they were terrorists. A prosecution service that wants to make an example of protesters and seems to be to be stacked in favour of the police ... which enables them to act with carte blanche, knowing they can get away with things that would not normally be tolerated.

For example, look again at the video in yesterday's post of Sergeant Smellie repeatedly beating a protester. Sure she was shouting and swearing at him, and was certainly "in his face" ... but she didn't attack him physically. I can't see that she even touched him. Now I can imagine that happens fairly regularly in domestic confrontations. So is it now an allowable defence for a man to say that he felt in genuine fear that the bottle of baby milk in his partner's hand was an offensive weapon? And if he then beats her, claiming he was acting in self-defence, can we imagine the judge saying:

"It was for the prosecution to prove this defendant was not acting in lawful self-defence. I have found the prosecution has failed in this respect and the defendant has raised the issue of lawful self-defence and as such is entitled to be acquitted."

... as if the mere mention of the words "self-defence" can shift the burden of proof?

It appears that things are moving bit-by-bit towards a situation where the legal system can apply different standards both in favour of its own, and against those who it doesn't approve of. This should make us angry ... the cool, hard anger that demands we work to change things.

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So let me ask this question: If police and criminal justice were devolved to Wales, what would we do? Can we imagine a Welsh Home Office allowing this sort of policing? Can we imagine a Welsh Ministry of Justice adopting the same sort of shabby practices and policies in the prosecution service and courts as were all too clear in the second video?

I can't see that we ever would. Is that being hopelessly optimistic about Wales and England having different standards? Or should we simply look north to see that Scotland, where policing and justice are devolved, seems to have remarkably better standards than England in this respect?

A Carton of Orange Juice

As the video so clearly shows, this policeman had genuine reason to fear for his own safety when he was isolated from his fellow officers and threatened by a woman carrying a carton of orange juice as a weapon:

     

"Not one photograph or piece of footage comes close to reflecting the fear as I turned around to see this crowd and its proximity, both to myself and my officers," he told the court. "At the time I thought, this is it. She is deliberately coming from a blind spot. The reason she is coming from a blind spot is to hide her intention so she can approach and attack her target – me."

Guardian, 31 March 2010

Quite.

Wales Live

Earlier today it was announced that a UTV and NWN Media consortium has been chosen as the preferred bidder for the new Wales news service to occupy the current ITV local news slot. The aim is to finalize this and the other two contracts within the next month or so, just before the Westminster election in May. It's important that the Westminster government does this quickly, because the Tories are firmly against the idea and would scrap it if the contracts were not already finalized.

The service will be called Wales Live and this promotional video should give us an idea of what to expect if it lives up to its promise:

     

I have mixed feelings about it. The biggest plus seems to be UTV's track record of providing news in Northern Ireland. It is certainly impressive that it has a higher audience share than the BBC's news service in NI, and if they managed to do the same in Wales it would strengthen the plurality of our news sources ... something we badly need.

However UTV are currently providing their service in NI on the same basis as ITV are meant to be providing the service in Wales. It is ITV's inability (or failure, to put it more bluntly) to do so which has prompted this experiment. They claim that the economics of providing a regional news service no longer stack up in a multi-channel environment ... yet it obviously works very well in NI.

To my mind, this is more a failure of structure and regulatory process than one of economics. Over the years the ITV network has shifted from something with strong regional variations to an essentially uniform service. There is in fact one licence which covers England and Wales, held by ITV, with separate licences for Scotland and Northern Ireland. I believe the problem could be solved better by having a separate licence for Wales ... and for the terms of that licence to set out the obligations the holder must fulfil in terms of percentages of distinctively Welsh broadcasting, not just news and current affairs but other programming as well. ITV would claim that they were unable to afford to provide that service, but insisting upon it at a statutory level would give them no choice but to do so, and this might have positive implications for the content mix of programming to change the "diet" of what is available to watch on television, for despite the multiplicity of channels its overall quality seems to have gone down. But the UK Government hasn't chosen to do that. It has accepted ITV's plea that it can't afford to provide regional news for much longer, and these pilot schemes are the alternative.

Fair enough. In the absence of broadcasting being a devolved issue, it's Westminster's call. So let's see if this new model can deliver what we need in a different way. But the future of this service is, to say the least, shaky on a number of counts: the Tories want to scrap it, the future funding arrangements are uncertain, and to top it all ITV now appear to be changing their minds about whether they can afford the old service after all, as this story shows. It seems they were crying wolf and now regret it. But if it falls back into their hands, there's no guarantee that the service won't continue to deteriorate.

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Anyway, what really matters is the news service that we get. Northern Ireland is unique because its politics is very different from the politics of the UK. The political parties are different, the issues are different; so there is no way the people of NI would put up with the sort of news that gets broadcast elsewhere in the UK. If that same way of thinking is transferred to Wales Live we will get news with a much stronger Welsh emphasis. That's not to say that the BBC do a bad job, but we need two eyes to see things in three dimensions. So now that Wales Live have been chosen, I wish them well. It will be a challenging task, and I'm sure they know that their best chance of seeing the service continue past 2012 is to make good on the promise of high quality, multi-input, multi-platform Welsh news.

The wrong end of the stick

The Western Mail carried this story yesterday:

     True Wales’ complaint about official funding for pot plants
     but nothing for pamphlets

Several things about it seemed rather strange, so I contacted the Electoral Commission to clarify some points. First, the document in question is this, dated 11 March 2010:

     Key Principles for Referendums

It sets out key principles for all referendums, it is not specific to our referendum on primary lawmaking powers for the National Assembly.

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The second thing that struck me as odd in the story was this:

Meanwhile the Electoral Commission is considering the wording of the question that will be put to voters in Wales when the referendum is called.

This isn't quite true. The EC will only advise on the wording of a referendum question when it has actually been put to them. As yet, the Secretary of State for Wales has not submitted the question to them ... and indeed he himself has said that he intends to do nothing before the Westminster election. I had half hoped that he might at least have got someone on the staff of the Wales Office working on it, and perhaps he has. But the EC have confirmed that no question has been put to them as yet. As I mentioned before in this post, the EC will require two weeks notice of an intended question and then eight weeks to consider it, a process that involves testing its understandability with focus groups.

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Then things got even stranger with this statement by Rachel Banner of True Wales:

We understand that four individuals are to be appointed to act as commissioners specifically for the referendum.

We believe it would be wrong if all four were essentially people from the political parties who back a Yes vote. We think the right thing to do would be to appoint two commissioners from each side of the argument.

This is something that True Wales has got completely wrong. At present the EC has six commissioners, but as a result of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 four additional commissioners are shortly to be appointed, nominated by political parties. All ten are general commissioners with responsibilities for all aspects of the EC's work as outlined here, not this referendum in particular.

It's impossible for me to know for sure whether True Wales have simply misunderstood this or whether they are deliberately misrepresenting the facts. I was told that the EC had explained this to them, and I believe that if they were in any doubt they could easily have checked the facts for themselves. But they and their supporters have an unfortunate track record of getting things wrong, so I'm inclined to believe they just want to made a few headlines, and hope that the false impression created by them remains in people's minds even after the real facts are made clear.

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As to the rest, John Dixon has made some good points on Borthlas. True Wales have every right to apply to be considered as the designated organization to lead the No campaign. The procedure is that once the referendum period begins, all groups that intend to spend money on campaigning one way or the other can apply to be "permitted participants" and will become subject to the rules, in particular the spending rules, set out in the PPERA. There will be many of these, including political parties and other groups.

Any of these groups can also apply to be the "designated organization" for either the Yes on No campaigns in the first 28 days of the referendum period. The EC will then have 14 days to consider their applications and may, if appropriate, designate one such organization on each side. They may also give these two organizations money, but it must be an equal amount. After those 14 days, there must be a minimum of 28 days before the actual referendum is held. Therefore the minimum referendum period will be 10 weeks, but this is only a minimum and the final period up to the vote itself may well be longer.

I'm in no position to know what the EC will decide but, as I said before, I think they'll almost certainly follow the precedent set by the referendum for an elected North East England Regional Assembly in 2004. In that campaign each side got £100,000. This time round, given inflation and the slightly larger size of Wales compared with NE England I think the figure will be between £120,000 and £150,000. Personally, I'd go for the higher figure in order to give the No campaign no grounds on which to complain.

However it is quite clear from the story in the Western Mail that True Wales want to jump the gun to become the designated No organization. It won't get them anywhere. The EC are scrupulously neutral and transparent, and won't even consider it until all applications have been submitted. They will then publish the reasons for their decision in an equally transparent way.