Ryan Thomas

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 ...

The city deal presents a unique opportunity to bring investment into the Swansea Bay region. It will take a massive amount of organisation - I hope that our local authorities will be able to deliver. If the project delivers good quality employment for locals and somehow finds a way to retain and reinvest financial and intellectual capital locally it will be a success. Anything else will simply be another piecemeal regeneration project will no real long-term benefit.

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 ...

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...

The growth in the city deal's four main sectors will be delivered through eleven initial projects; Digital Infrastructure  - Gigabit fibre, 4G, 5G and Wi-Fi - Total Project Value of £55m Swansea City and Waterfront Digital District  - incubation space and co-working areas for start-ups and small businesses, alongside global enterprise; a new City Centre Business District and a Digital Square and Arena - Total Project Value of £168.2m Creative Digital Cluster, Yr Egin, Carmarthen  - a digital and creative industry cluster joined by S4C as the key anchor tenant and approximately 28 other digital and creative media SMEs as tenants. Will also contain business accelerator facilities, incubation, as well as shared spaces for interaction between each of the tenants, driving entrepreneurial development - Total Project Value of £24.3m Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Services  - provide a data analytics capability to turn world class ...

Swansea Bay City Region Logo On Wednesday 25 January Carmarthenshire County Council agreed to delegate authority to the Leader of the Council to sign the Swansea Bay City Region deal based on a  'Heads of Terms' document presented to the meeting . The city region proposal presents what can only be described as a very exciting vision for the future of the region, which includes Carmarthen, Pembroke, Swansea and Neath Port Talbot counties. It's fair to say that a while ago the city deal was waning until it was picked up again by Cllr. Rob Stewart, Leader of Swansea City Council and Mark James, Chief Executive of Carmarthenshire County Council. At the moment, these two figures seem to be driving the project forward, supported by the other partner authorities. There is also a 'with Brexit, the city deal is the only game in town' attitude towards the proposal. The Swansea Bay City Deal focuses on four main sectors for both urban and rural areas across the region; digital...

Some information below about a Syria Sir Gâr meeting in Kidwelly area.

Following a difficult period for Meddygfa Minafon over the past 18 or so months it was decided that a patient participation group (PPG) be established to act as a forum for the views of patients to the surgery management and health board. I attended the first formal meeting of the PPG on Tuesday (24 January) in Trimsaran. There had been an initial, although informal, meeting of the group last year in Ferryside. The PPG hopes to become a joint venture between patients, the practice and the Community Health Council (CHC) that will meet the following aims: Work with the practice to give a patient perspective; Communicate the ‘view on the street’ to the practice; Test new ideas for services; and To increase awareness of health services, share information and communicate with the community. The PPG will not be a forum to raise individual complaints or to pursue personal vendettas. Any such complaints should, in the first instance, be directed to the practice manager. However, general concer...

A request has been received for the temporary road closure of U2226 Outside Cottage, Mynyddygarreg from a point 410 metres south-west of its junction with the C2068 for a total distance of 80 metres in a south-westerly direction. The closure is necessary for Welsh Water to repair a water service from 0800 hours to 1800 hours Sunday 29th January 2017. The alternative route for south- west bound traffic will be to proceed in a north-easterly direction along the U2226 to its junction with the C2068. At the junction, turn right and continue in a north-easterly direction along the C2068 to its junction with the C2057 (Four Roads). At the junction, turn right and continue in a south-westerly direction along the C2057 to its junction with the U2241. At the junction, turn right and continue in a north-westerly direction along the U2241 to its junction with the U2226. At the junction, turn right and continue in a north-easterly direction to return to a point south-west of the closure. Vice Vers...

Yesterday, Carwyn Jones and Leanne Wood made a joint appearance in London to launch the Welsh Government's white paper on Brexit, 'Securing Wales' Future' . Rather unorthodoxly, the white paper was developed jointly by the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru. Presumably, the Liberal Democrat Minister of Education would have had at least some input into the document as well. The document is 63 pages long and has been praised as being somewhat longer than the UK Government's vision for Brexit . The document has prefaces by both the First Minister and the Leader of Plaid Cymru. Carwyn echoes Theresa May's message from last week's announcement, that while the UK and Wales will be leaving the European Union the country will very much remain a European country and will want to actively engage with its European neighbours. Leanne Wood takes a stronger position in her forward, expressing Plaid Cymru's desire to remain a member of several European mechanisms includi...

It was with a sense of trepidation that I entered the chamber in county hall last Wednesday. There were several items on the agenda. However, the important decision that day would be whether we county councillors would agree to discontinue the dual-stream Llangennech Infant and Junior Schools and replace with them with a Welsh medium community primary school. This would in effect end dual-stream education in Llangennech (where parents can choose whether their children receive either English-medium or Welsh-medium education) in favour of Welsh-medium only. The first important thing to remember is that the names English-medium and Welsh-medium are extremely misleading. Both streams teach the English and Welsh language, although the degree and quality vary considerably from school to school. Those in Welsh-medium education receive excellent tuition in both English and Welsh languages. There are concerns that English-medium education is not achieving the outcomes expected in the standard o...

The latest meeting in the series of meetings between the Health Board and the Labour Party team representing Kidwelly was held on 22 nd December 2016. The Labour Team representing Kidwelly of Nia Griffith MP, (accompanied by Suzy Curry, her Senior Parliamentary Assistant), Cllr. Ryan Thomas (the County Councillor for Kidwelly), Cllr. Mike Thomas and Cllr. Philip Thompson (both Kidwelly Town Councillors). The Health Board was again represented at a senior level team of Rachel Pompa, Head of General Medicine and Anne Jenkins, the Practice Manager of Meddygfa Minafon. Following the meeting Nia Griffith MP and Councillors Ryan Thomas, Mike Thomas and Philip Thompson in consultation with Lee Waters AM, who has been actively pursuing the surgery’s issues in the Senedd, released the following statement: “At this meeting we had further positive discussions on amongst other things: 1: Recruitment : The Surgery has been able to recruit a further three part time GPs including one woman doctor to...