Carmarthenshire County Council makes it into Private Eye magazine once again


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The Swansea Bay City Deal: Opportunities

The city deal is a hugely complicated project that will require a lot of work by officials to make it a success. There are a long list of concerns, although who would expect any differently from such a multifaceted proposal. Truthfully, the levels of investment in the region are phenomenal and are potentially transformational. As the world transitions away from industry because of automation, the economy is moving towards being a knowledge or a smart economy. Success in the future will be about developing the next big idea, turning it into a useful product or service and marketing it as such. It is clear to me that this is exactly what the project team have in mind. I can see that the city deal proposal has also benefitted from the input of the private sector. The involvement of multinational firms such as Fujitsu and Cisco show that the proposals are built on strong foundations. If the city region can be made a success, it could trigger a new industrial revolution in out bit of South ...
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Circuit Breakers

So, last week the Welsh Government finally decided that they were unwilling to guarantee any losses culminating from the proposed Circuit of Wales up to a value of £200 million. The ground for refusal was based around two main factors; That HM Treasury would add the figure to the Welsh Government's debt and subsequently make adjustments to the block grant, reducing capital funding for projects such as new hospitals, schools and houses.  That the promise of 6,000 jobs was vastly overstated and that the likely number of direct jobs culminating from the project would be as little as 100. I think it is fair to say that the Welsh Government made the right decision. There is no reasonable way that the Welsh Government could have agreed to taking on such a large liability without being able to leverage it against an asset. Anyone who says differently just does not understand public finance (or any other kind of finance for that matter). However, the Welsh Government have also announced a ...
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The Swansea Bay City Deal: Concerns

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As a good cynic, I will start by looking at some of the concerns I have with the city region deal as currently proposed. The deal will bring together a significant amount of public sector investment, but it will also involve massive amounts of private sector investment - £673m according to the proposals. This represents a huge amount of money and I'm not entirely sure how this will be delivered at the moment. Businesses will need to see something very special in the Swansea Bay region to make the kind of investments we are talking about. However, early indications suggest that there is a lot of private sector interest in some of the projects. In Carmarthenshire, officials have stated their surprise at the amount interest in the Life Sciences and Wellness Centre in Llanelli. However, showing an interest and investing hard cash represent very different levels of commitment. Already, we have seen that not all projects are going to plan. Yr Egin, which is at an advanced stage came into...
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