Natural Resources Wales took over the running of Newborough Forest and the Cefni forest areas about a year ago, following a revamp of authorities across Wales.
In 2013, NRW, against what I understand were clear warnings, constructed a timber boardwalk and viewing platform amongst the sand dunes at Newborough Beach.
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| After the storm. £153,643 worth of platform lies in ruin after the 2014 storms. |
Those who care about the area raised an eyebrow at the destruction of localised areas of the dunes, which are in a protected area. Nevertheless, once completed, the structures were very well received and popular.
A few months later, following winter storms, the viewing platform lay in ruins, washed away by rough seas and winds. Timbers from the site were apparently turning up at Aberffraw, where people were only too willing to use them for their own designs!
The platform was removed with remarkable rapidity that suggested not only a risk to the public safety, but also considerable embarrassment.
Whilst the boardwalk remains, it is steadily being smothered by this winter's wind borne sand, and it's clear it will become a natural part of the dunes in no time.
Those who understand sand dunes will not, of course, be surprised. What is surprising is that NRW pressed on, regardless.
In doing so, they spent a total to date of £153,643.44, where the larger part of that would seem to have been, from the materials and engineering involved, on the defunct viewing platform.
At the entrance, things haven't been much better. Folk pay to go in, at £3 a shot. Other pay £15 a year if they are local. Very local people get in for free. So expenditure on income generators is to be expected.
However, NRW spent £17,221 on a new 'hydrokerb' barrier in August 2013, only to abandon it when it proved unreliable a year later. To cover this problem, which apparently had no contractual fallback, NRW paid £13,280 to build a manned kiosk at the entrance. At £3 a car, it won't take too long to regain this lost money. But, it has to be asked why a brand new hydrokerb that didn't work could not have been the installer's liability, and not the public purse's. Why such a much larger, non income-generating amount was spent on something that almost immediately became driftwood, is less clear.
This isn't the only waste at Newborough. Whilst the figures weren't requested for this item, some glitzy timber banner frames and colourful fabric banners were put up in around 2012. These had already begun to fade after one summer, before being entirely ripped away by the winter gales. Nobody seemed to have thought about gales on Anglesey. The local council also had no record of planning permission for these structures, nor any idea whether planning was necessary. It seemed it was, and hadn't been sought.
Meanwhile, at the Cefni reservoir, £23,000 has been spent last summer on creating wildlife wetlands on a mini-scale, which involved the building of earthen-rimmed ponds. Again, surprisingly for a bunch of supposed environmental 'experts', the earth was washed away on at least one pond, prompting the NRW to temporarily abandon them.
When asked for evidence of applications and granting of consents for the diversion of watercourses to create these ponds, the FoIA release stated the information wasn't held. That means that the consents weren't sought. NRW says that they are "investigating the situation", which appears to mean consents weren't even considered.
Ah well. Now you know...
Update:
A NRW response to a FoIA request on the 'Mawndir Mon' project at the Cefni revealed expenditure of about £23,000 at this one site alone. NRW was the body approving and administering the money for this work which, it is very keen to point out, was actually carried out on the ground by none other than Anglesey County Council. The Council, wouldn't you know it, is the body responsible for approving abstraction consents from watercourses, but didn't bother for its own work.
Little wonder, then, that there was a clear scramble in mid-winter 2014/15 to remove all traces of the diversion engineering. The remaining earthworks and channels, however, are a bit of a giveaway, still...
