Market Towns Report Final

Arsyllfa Wledig Cymru Wales Rural Observatory SMALL AND MARKET TOWNS IN RURAL WALES AND THEIR HINTERLANDS Research Report 13 February 2007 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Small and Market Towns in Wales 1 The Policy Significance of Small and Market Towns 2 Previous Research on Small and Market Towns 5 Methodology and Data Sources 8 Chapter 2 Defining Small and Market Towns 11 Introduction 11 Definition of Small and Market Towns in this Study 12 Definition of Small Town Areas and Scales of Data 13 Chapter 3 Small Towns in the Context of Rural Wales 15 Introduction 15 Population 15 Local Economy 28 Chapter 4 Small Towns as Service and Employment Centres in Rural Wales 35 Introduction 35 Employment 35 Commericial, Public and Community Services 43 Chapter 5 Small Towns as the Centres for Social and Economic Development in Rural Wales 53 Introduction 53 Job Creation in Small and Market Towns 53 European Structural Funds 58 Social Investment: the NLCB Community Fund 64 Conclusion 67 Chapter 6 Case Studies 69 Introduction 69 Llandrindod Wells 69 Llanidloes 74 Caldicot 77 St Asaph 81 Llandeilo 86 Chapter 7 Conclusion 90 References 93 Appendices Appendix A: Small Towns in Rural Wales Identified by Ward-level Data 95 Appendix B: Sub-set of Small Towns for Further Analysis, Defined by Ward and Census Output Area 98 Appendix C: Key Statistics on Population Change and 1 Age for Selected Towns 101 Appendix D: Key Statistics for Selected Towns from the Index of Multiple Deprivation 103 Appendix E: Companies in the Top 300 in Wales by Turnover based in Small Towns 105 Appendix F: Key Employment Statistics for Selected Towns 107 Appendix G: Key Statistics on Commuting to Work 109 Appendix H: Key Statistics on Service Provision in Selected Towns 112 Appendix I: Key Public Services in Selected Towns 116 Appendix J: Jobseeker’s Allowance Claimants in Selected Small Towns, 1998, 2000 and 2003 118 Appendix K: Significant Job Creations and Job Losses in Small Towns, 2000-2005 120 Appendix L: Funding for Projects in Selected Towns From European Structural Funds and the Community Fund 122 Appendix M: Indicative Characteristics of Types of Small Town 124 2 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Small and Market Towns in Rural Wales 1.1 Small towns and market towns are a notable feature in the geography of rural Wales. Their significance is extenuated by the concentration of Wales’s major urban areas along the north and south coasts and by the relatively low population density of rural Wales. From Llanelli and Cwmbran in the south to the Llandudno-Prestatyn urban area along the North Wales coast extends an area of more than 1.5 million hectares in which there is no urban area with a population of over 20,000 people. This marks out rural Wales as significantly different to rural England, where most rural communities are within easy travelling distance of at least a medium-sized town, and places additional demands on the towns within rural Wales. Thus, larger towns such as Aberystwyth, Bangor, Carmarthen and Haverfordwest fulfill a role as regional or sub-regional centres that in other contexts would normally be associated with towns of 50,000 population or more. Similarly, there are within rural Wales a large number of settlements of fewer than 2,000 residents that have historically been regarded as towns and which continue to act as service centres for their surrounding rural areas. 1.2 Small and market towns should be recognized as a distinctive category in the geographical structure of Wales. Although small and market towns are often ‘lost’ within broader-brush categorizations of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ areas (especially when these are defined at local authority level), they differ significantly from both. Small and market towns differ from the more extensive urban areas of North East Wales and South Wales and the Valleys in their relative isolation, their enhanced service function compared to population, the spatial compactness of their territories and their interactions with the surrounding rural areas. Yet, they also differ from rural communities in that they can support a larger number of services and amenities, often have a broader economic base and can be large enough to exhibit typically ‘urban’ physical features and social characteristics. At the same time, small and market towns are inextricably connected to both larger urban areas and rural areas through a tangled web of social and economic flows, networks and interactions. 1.3 However, the small and market towns of rural Wales do not form a homogenous category. As employed in this study, the description ‘small or market town’ is applied to settlements with populations ranging from fewer than a thousand residents to over fifteen thousand residents. The towns vary significantly in the number and type of services they host, and the extent of the surrounding territory that they serve. They have differing economic structures and population structures. Some have experienced rapid population growth and economic growth in recent years, others have experienced decreases in employment and limited population change. The towns are also the product of different historical trajectories. Many towns included in this study can be correctly identified as ‘market towns’ in the historical sense, having developed 1 as the economic trading centres for their district; yet others did not historically play this role, but developed as industrial or port towns. 1.4 The objectives of this study were to examine the distinctive characteristics of small and market towns in rural Wales, compared with larger urban and rural areas within the region; and to explore the social and economic interactions between small towns and their neighbouring communities. The research investigates both the ‘economic footprint’ of small and market towns, examining relations of employment and business transaction to establish degrees of economic integration of towns with surrounding areas; and the ‘social footprint’, examined in terms of the use of social infrastructure in towns by residents of their hinterlands. As such, the project aims to address issues of whether economic and social investment in small and market towns ‘trickles-out’ to surrounding communities, and to identify a typology of different models of town-hinterland interaction that might be employed in developing future strategies for regeneration in rural Wales. 1.5 The research has been driven around five key questions: · How do the social and economic characteristics of small and market towns compare with those of other parts of rural Wales? · How does recent social and economic investment in small and market towns compare with that elsewhere in rural Wales? · To what extent are small and market towns integrated with their hinterlands through economic interactions? · To what extent are small and market towns integrated with their hinterlands through social interactions? · Is it possible to identify different models of small and market town interaction with their hinterland? 1.6 These questions have been addressed through a two-part research process. Part one of the research has focused on the analysis of secondary data, both at an aggregate level for rural Wales and for a sample set of 44 small and market towns. This analysis has primarily addressed questions 1 and 2, but has also partially addressed questions 3, 4 and 5. Part two of the research involved case studies of five towns and combines further detailed analysis of secondary data with collection and analysis of primary data through surveys and interviews. The case study research is primarily aimed at questions 3 and 4, but also extends the analysis of question 2 and will confirm the provisional answer for question 5 produced from the part one research. More details of this research strategy are given in the methodology section below. The Policy Significance of Small and Market Towns 1.7 The importance of small and market towns has long been recognized in policy for rural Wales. The economic development strategy pursued by the 2 Development Board for Rural Wales during the 1970s and 1980s employed a graded hierarchy of market towns to deliver growth pole development across Mid Wales, with Newtown in particular identified as centre for industrial development and expansion and industrial facilities developed in other towns in order to stabilise their local economies (Edwards et al., 2003). Planning policies also tended to identify small and market towns as growth poles – settlements in which economic and residential development was concentrated - although some councils did attempt to encourage more dispersed economic investment and housing growth was often promoted in satellite villages around towns. The rationalisation of public services in rural Wales, particularly following local government re-organisation in 1974, additionally reinforced the service function of small and market towns and acted as a stimulus for growth in those towns that were selected as the administrative centres for the new district and county councils. 1.8 The shift in emphasis in economic development policy during the 1980s and 1990s towards the promotion of endogenous development retreated from the ‘growth pole’ model but nonetheless remained focused on small and market towns. Many of earliest community regeneration initiatives in rural Wales originated in small towns, for example Antur Teifi in Newcastle Emlyn, and the approach was promoted by the Welsh Development Agency through the establishment of several Rural Action Areas, focused on small and market towns, in the late 1980s (Edwards, 1998; Edwards et al., 2003). 1.9 The emphasis on small and market towns as the pivots of community-led regeneration in rural Wales was reiterated in the 1996 Rural White Paper, A Working Countryside for Wales (Welsh Office, 1995), which was followed by the establishment of the Market Town Initiative by the Development Board for Rural Wales in 1996 (Edwards et al., 2000, 2003).

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