FOLLOWING an article in the Western Telegraph (March 11), we thought it prudent to respond to a number of questions it raised.

Solva community council has run the lower Solva car park in a partnership with the PCNPA and Trust established in 2013, following the redevelopment of the site from European Development funds.

During our tenure as the management the site has gone from strength to strength, no doubt due to the ethos we have brought with our unique management style.

We employ our clerk as an overall line manager who is accountable entirely to the council and PCNPA and we also employ two local men to work as parking attendants, something which allows us to offer a personal and very ‘local’ approach. This has been commented on by visitors, businesses and local people as being very much key to the parking needs of Solva, allowing us to operate an effective car park and to offer tourism information.

All funds that we have received to date have been invested in local community groups and initiatives – to further develop our memorial hall, which operates as a local community hub, also helping to fund our local football club, public access defibrillators, toddlers group, youth club, Solva Festival and Solva Care. We were therefore saddened and dismayed to hear comments made by members of the PCNPA board about, ‘bringing it back to basics and installing ticket machines’ and that the function of the car park was viewed as simply a money making exercise.

We should perhaps remind PCNPA members that part of the Park’s very nature is to foster economic and social enterprise in those communities it serves and moreover as a recent review of car parking nationwide states: ‘Car parking charges should not be viewed one dimensionally as a simple revenue source. Car parking should be viewed more holistically as part of an accessible strategy for communities, which take into account the need to promote business viability within communities’. Clearly this is something that has been forgotten by members in their short sighted approach as it seems to be nothing more than a cash cow. It flies in the face of the Welsh Assembly Government white paper on local community devolution, going against the desire to encourage greater community sustainability through community enterprise. It also goes against the aims of the Welsh Secretary of State Stephen Crabb, who states that ‘Devolution should be about empowering communities not institutions’. It undermines these principles entirely, taking control away from a democratically elected body whose members are unpaid representatives of their local community, and keeping it firmly within the control of an unelected quango.

We were also alarmed by comments made by the chief executive Tegryn Jones about our management, stating that he was ‘unsure what they were paying for, it seems we have been paying the clerk’. This not only questioned the moral and ethical practices endorsed by SCC but that of our clerk, who throughout this process has worked faultlessly with PCNPA to not only establish the working agreement but throughout the year providing an independent examination of accounts and clear and well documented evidence for those accounts.

The suggestion of some financial impropriety once again demonstrates the lack of evidenced research by the officers, who were surprised to see the inclusion of insurance premiums and an independent examination of the financial account included in the management costs – (Isn’t that good fiscal practice?) – demonstrating a lack of understating of the current management structure, and of current or future operating costs.

The inclusion of financial details outlining that SCC were to receive £24,000 precosts is misleading. Once you take out the monthly attendant salaries, administration and banking (which is done by the clerk in his capacity as a line manager and not on SCC business), public liability insurance and also maintenance and grass cutting of the picnic area, our yearly operating costs run to some £20,000. This is to be covered by a £15,000 management fee paid in instalments, which falls short of our monthly operating costs for wages alone. The final net income for SCC would therefore be circa £4,500. Following professional advice it was felt that to use any funds already held by SCC through the precept to bolster the venture and reimburse them at a later stage would not be a financially sound option and could be viewed as a misappropriation of funds.

It has been felt by our members that the relationship has taken significant strain and that PCNPA had not conducted their correspondence or their engagement with SCC in a professional or business-like manner.

The tone of correspondence and the conduct of PCNPA has been at best unfavourable and at its worst adversarial if not confrontational.

It is the opinion of members that PCNPA has been ill advised, failing to produce any sound evidence re ‘Pay and Display’. To be spoonfed by the chief executive and officers without any sound documentation or proof is a lesson in ignorance not of sound governance.

SOLVA COMMUNITY COUNCIL

Jenny Davies (Chair),

Joshua Phillips (Vice Chair),

Jean Reed,

Joe Griffin,

John Price,

Jono Voyce,

Mollie Roach,

Sandra Young