Business owners in Carmarthen have been left seething because roadworks that were meant to take 12 weeks have taken 10 months and are still ongoing - resulting in simple access to their shops being blocked off. Work began on Blue Street, in Carmarthen town centre, last April. The idea behind the project was to revamp the town’s bus stop, located opposite a number of local and independent shops and businesses.
The work, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, will ultimately see the introduction of two new shelters, the widening of a central reserve and enhanced landscaping in an attempt by Carmarthenshire Council to attract people to the area and make it more welcoming to shoppers. However, the work itself has thus far had the exact opposite effect, with angry shop owners saying they have taken a massive hit financially because of the inconvenience caused by a project that was meant to be concluded last July but is still ongoing in mid-January.
As part of the work being carried out, new road surfacing and underground work has seen the pavement outside shops on Blue Street cordoned off for long periods at a time, making many of them inaccessible to some shoppers. For those trying to make a living in already difficult times, they have reached the end of their tether. You can keep up to date with the latest Carmarthenshire news by signing up to the local newsletter here.
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“Just before Christmas in 2021 we had a letter from the council to say they were going to be doing some work on the bus stop,” explained Justin John, who co-owns The Flower Studio alongside his wife Sandi. “We were quite excited to begin with because they were developing this area of town. They were meant to be working outside for 12 weeks but they’ve been there ever since. In September we were told it would be done by the start of November, but it’s going on and on.”
The work being carried out has resulted in The Flower Studio - as well as others on the same street - appearing closed to would-be customers when in fact they have been open for business as usual. At times, barriers have been placed outside the shop which make it impossible to access the front door for anyone with a pushchair, or people with certain disabilities.
“People struggle to even walk past,” said Sandi John. “I spoke to the site manager last week and told him there is no pushchair or disabled access at all. They said to give them a shout and they can come over and move the barriers out of the way when needed, but that’s not the point. A lot of our customers are elderly, and they just haven’t been able to come in, while some have messaged us asking if we’re even open. I keep telling them we are open but I understand why we might not look open. It’s so frustrating, and the workmen are not sympathetic at all, they will ‘eff and jeff’ when you try to raise any concerns with them.”
The Flower Studio only opened at the end of 2019 and within the first few months of trading it was forced to close its doors due to the coronavirus pandemic, which affected businesses over the remainder of 2020, 2021 and into 2022. With that disruption still fresh in their minds, the last thing Justin and Sandi needed was another huge dent in their hopes of running a successful and profitable town centre business. There are potential health and safety issues afoot, too, as well as the inconvenience and the loss of revenue. One day, when a barrier was blocking the shop’s front and only door, Justin’s main concern was that the premises didn’t actually have an exit in the event of a fire or other major issue. The whole situation has caused untold distress and, he says, has just not been handled well enough for a prolonged period of time.
“We made a decision to open a shop in the town centre,” he added. “We could run this business from home really but we wanted to be present and have a shop in town, we wanted to have customers who could come into the store itself. But from the top of Blue Street looking down all you can see is barriers and it’s just not very appealing to anyone. A lot of businesses were closed over the Christmas break so that would have been the perfect opportunity for the council to finish the work, but they weren’t working over Christmas, and they don’t work overnight.
“I have pointed out that there are several health and safety issues but I was told to just ‘let them get on with their work’. We have asked the council many, many times about a possible business rates reduction or some form of compensation because we have been losing business. I was told by someone at the council that that isn’t their department and they would pass it on. People say the right things and say they will work with you but there’s just no substance to it. I haven’t heard anything about any help at all.
“I’m disappointed with what the local councillors have done. There’s been positive support in terms of words but nothing else. There is a lot of talk but no action. After the initial help with business rates during Covid, we’re having to pay now as normal and it’s typical that it’s during a time when the council is doing this to our business. The council has been sympathetic and we have been assured that things will improve but then all of a sudden the barriers go up again and there’s another delay. I made a bit of a cry for help last week, I e-mailed a lot of people, but again, I haven’t heard anything, not so much as an acknowledgement.
“It’s hard to quantify how much we’ve lost out on in financial terms because we are quite a new business which is still bouncing back from Covid. It’s more about a missed opportunity - we were looking to really grow our business in 2022 but this has happened and it’s scuppered those plans. We just want to know when this is all going to end, and we would like the council to consider us in their plans, but they’re just working on their terms.”
For Sandi, it’s clear that the ongoing issue has left her exasperated, because this should be the time when her and her husband’s business can really take off after a challenging couple of years, and seeing potential customers walk away before they’ve even set foot in the shop leaves her heartbroken. “Last week people were coming towards the door and then leaving again,” she said. “I’ve even had to help people who have fallen outside in the roadworks area, and there’ve been accidents on the road as well.
"I just don’t understand. To start with, the workers brought floodlights with them, so we assumed they were going to be doing most of the work at night, but they haven’t been. We get a lot of deliveries but we don’t really know what’s happening from one day to the next. Will the barriers be up when they arrive? Will there actually be a clear path to the entrance of the shop for the deliveries to be made? We don’t know how long it’s going to go on for and the last we heard properly was back last March, when we were told the work would take 12 weeks.”
In response, Carmarthenshire Council has stressed that it has communicated with affected businesses and "listened to the concerns" raised with letter drops, visits to businesses and drop-in sessions.
Another shop owner who has lost business and been left fuming with Carmarthenshire Council is Nia Maynard, who owns One of a Find, a furniture and vintage goods shop next door to The Flower Studio. One day recently, a large red plastic barrier was placed directly in front of her shop door, making it mostly impossible for customers to access.
“The barriers were taken down two weeks before Christmas and our trade went up massively,” said Nia, who contemplated closing her shop completely for two weeks because the damage caused to her business made her question whether it was worth remaining open. “The barriers were back up at the start of January and the way they were placed was a joke. One day I had two customers all day and one of them had to ring me to ask if we were actually open. The barriers were meant to be like that (directly outside the door) only for a couple of hours, but they were like that for three days.
“I asked the project manager how am I expected to get furniture into my shop and make money to support my family? She replied by saying that she needs to support her family too. Well she will still get a pay packet at the end of the month. I won’t - I need my shop to make a living. I only moved into this shop in March last year after relocating from another premises in Mansel Street. Had I known this was going to happen and that it would take this long I would never have taken on the lease here. We have lost out massively on trade and we will not see any compensation for the loss in earnings. A councillor has come out when we’ve asked but I think maybe he’s facing a brick wall himself. It takes us to threaten to go to the press before anything is done.”
Nia, Justin and Sandi said that, following a string of e-mails sent in the past few days to complain about the situation, the speed of the work outside their shops has accelerated and the barriers have been removed, only to be moved further up the street. Nevertheless, even if their problems appear to be coming to an end, the scars left and the damage caused will linger for a long time.
“The amount of abuse my father has had is disgusting,” said Nia. She claims one of the workmen swore at her father and told him in no uncertain terms, and very impolitely, to go away and back into the shop. Her father is Mike Maynard, who has helped his daughter set up a successful business in the centre of Carmarthen. She claims the abuse came about when Mike has approached workmen to enquire about the work being carried out and the timescales around it. He said the management of the whole project has been “totally incompetent”.
“I have tried to phone up the highways team (at the council) and it is impossible - they don’t answer the phone," he said. "But they have realised that we are not taking this lying down. The attitude we get from them (some of the workmen) is terrible. Their attitude to begin with was insulting, now it’s just obtuse. The issue is there’s two things going on at once: work on the bus stop itself and work on the drains. But why have they carried out two separate projects in the same place at the same time? Why didn’t they sort one side out and then start on the other?
“If this was affecting Tesco or M&S, would they have encountered these problems? As far as they (the council) are concerned we are just independent small-fry that don’t matter to them. They are a bunch of ostriches because all they do is stick their heads in the sand, and, actually, they have done a lot of work this week after we told them we were going to speak to the press. All of a sudden, work is being done quicker.” Summing up his and his daughter’s frustration, Mike claimed that, throughout the prolonged works, those in charge have shown “no engagement and no accountability”.
Carmarthenshire Council has stressed that it has communicated with affected businesses and "listened to the concerns" raised. However, it admitted that the project has been delayed and that disruption has been caused. “The works that are ongoing at Blue Street represent a significant investment in the bus station and surrounding area which upgrades passenger facilities, improves access for pedestrians and slows traffic," said councillor Edward Thomas, cabinet member for transport, waste and infrastructure services.
"We first communicated the intent to carry out this project with businesses in the surrounding area in December 2021 and communication has been maintained throughout the development and delivery of the project with letter drops, visits to businesses and drop-in sessions. Whilst we acknowledge that there has been a delay to the project due to the need to divert utility apparatus, we have communicated this to those businesses affected. We have listened to the concerns of businesses in the area and, at their request, our contractor was instructed to suspend works from mid-November until after Christmas to allow uninterrupted trading over the busy Christmas period. During the project development stage, businesses also requested that the footway in front of the shops be resurfaced, and I’m delighted to say that this work was undertaken after the Christmas break and is now complete.
"Inevitably, this caused some disruption for a short period, while the contractor was working in front of the shops, but the resurfacing was split into phases to keep this to a minimum and barriers were put in place to keep the public safe and access to premises was maintained as far as possible with a supervisor continually on site. Over the next few weeks, works will focus on installing a new canopy for bus passengers and in February the road will also be resurfaced. This will cause some disruption for a short period of time, while the new surface is laid, but should then provide a good quality road surface for many years."
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