Residents in Cardiff would have a more active role in shaping major political decisions if Liberal Democrats take control of Cardiff council in May.
Controversial decisions on huge housing developments or big changes to the city’s transport network would be shaped by citizen assemblies and thorough public consultations.
Liberal Democrats were in charge of the council from 2004 until 2012 but are now the third largest political group, although that could change after local elections on May 5.
Over coffee in a bakery in Gabalfa, Rhys Taylor put forward his case for how Cardiff would look if he were made council leader, in a detailed interview.
Top priorities for a Liberal Democrat-run council would include making local democracy more accessible, so people have a greater say in major decisions. This could include switching from a first-past-the-post voting system to proportional representation.
“A lot of people in Cardiff don’t feel as though they have a say over the future of their city,” Mr Taylor said. “So what can we do to do politics differently in the city? Is that changing the voting system, which we can do from 2027, is it do with how the cabinet operates, is it having a cabinet system at all?
“Cardiff would have to make a decision by this November, but we could change to have single transferable votes, where you rank preference by candidates. We would need a further boundary review in time for the next election in 2027, as you would have at least three members in every ward, and then people would put in rank order their preferred parties.
“That would mean that Gabalfa, a ward that’s been Lib Dem since 2004, probably wouldn’t have a solid slate of Lib Dems. We would likely have at least one Labour. But the idea is it stops those solid voting bases. There are lots of those in the city where I would argue people work hard as councillors in County Hall, but there’s so not much of that community campaigning work. If you stop those safe seats in the city, of which there are a lot, you’ll make better decisions and have accountable representatives of a whole range of views.”
Public consultations and major policies under a Lib Dem council would have much stronger say, and decisions would be “shaped from the bottom up”. The huge planned redevelopment of Atlantic Wharf in Cardiff Bay, inlcuding building a new indoor arena, was one example Mr Taylor gave of a recent consultation where some residents felt they weren’t getting heard.
“Some of the things that people are most frustrated about are things like transport schemes or large housing developments, these big decisions which have a real material impact on physical communities and their day-to-day lives. How do you get to the point where people understand the rationale, and are involved in shaping those plans from the off, and then what you finally present is something that already commands support?
“What we see at the moment is the council will fire up a consultation and that’s that. You don’t get that more meaningful engagement with people, or that cross section of society participating in consultations. We would propose citizen assemblies on key critical issues that the council deals with over a five-year period.
“Then you would be consulting on ideas that citizens themselves would have shaped. It would be intensive and probably cost more, but if you’re going to get things like house building, transport or social care right, you need to spend the time and make sure they’re grounded on what people actually want to see the council doing. Not a consultation once a year on the budget.
“Take Atlantic Wharf, I’ve had people from Butetown get in touch with me saying how difficult they found engaging with the process and the council. Much more could have been done, to meet with residents and really hear what they’re saying. You can have the best website in the world, but if people don’t feel as if they’re being heard then it’s set to fail from the start.”
Another frustration for Mr Taylor is the often fraught debates held in the council, with tensions rising high particularly ahead of elections.
“Even when you know members of the ruling group agree with you on an issue, you’ll still get in the council chamber and face the same political tit-for-tat that you would have if you were disagreeing over an issue that you fundamentally disagreed on. So do you take a more careful nuanced approach to the argument, support or challenge in a constructive way? Or do you fall into the trap of trying to be the only opposition voice in the story and you’re opposed for the sake of it, you cause a big storm, and you say things for social media or headlines?
“If you take the Punch and Judy out of politics, what does that do for the tone of debate and major decisions? What’s the point of spending seven hours in a council meeting on a Thursday evening when the decisions have already been made, that’s not democracy really.”
Waste collection, transport, and the climate would be key areas where the council should improve, Mr Taylor said. He added the council’s major action plan on reducing carbon emissions, One Planet Cardiff, doesn’t properly address public behaviour change.
“We have the worst recycling rates in Wales, our streets are dirtier, people comment all the time how dirty Cardiff has become. One of the commitments Labour made in their [2017] manifesto was to introduce integrated ticketing, but we’re a million miles away from that, no closer than we were five years ago. The bus station still hasn’t been delivered. We’re still miles away from having a reliable bus network that’s run in the public interest. And the council is still looking at selling off green spaces and is still permitting developers to bulldoze green spaces, which we know will have a negative impact on the environment.
“One Planet looks nice but it only looks at what the council is doing. While the council is trying to coordinate a city network around how to create a One Planet Cardiff, it doesn’t look at the way we use buildings, the role of planning in environmental management, how the budget has an impact on the environment, or how you can change people’s behaviours. You can’t just say we’re going to build a cycle lane and remove parking spaces, or we’re going to introduce a congestion charge or a workplace parking levy, and just expect people to understand what it means for them and how you got there.
“If you’re going to make massive policy changes to protect the future of the planet, just announcing a policy of that scale without doing the legwork behind behaviour change and understanding people’s ambition, involving people in co-producing these ideas and plans, then you’re not going to reach the level of ambition that we need. There’s some good stuff in there, like the solar farm and the heat network, but it’s by no means at the pace we need.”
One problem Cardiff has faced in recent years is music venues closing down or at threat of closure. One venue, Gwdihw on Guildford Crescent, was demolished recently despite a huge public campaign to save it. Developers are now planning to build a giant apartment tower in its place.
“We have been let down on culture, take Guildford Crescent for example. The music strategy doesn’t have any teeth. The Tramshed has been under threat, Porter’s, Flute and Tankard, these places are what makes Cardiff different to Bristol or Manchester. There’s lots of things the council should be doing to protect those assets.
“The council is too close to developers, and doesn’t use the full weight available to it to influence decisions. When the council hasn’t been able to do something about an issue, say Guildford Crescent, it’s because it's somebody else’s responsibility. If you have the ambition, you’ll find a means of doing it.
“Given Labour controls Cardiff council, they have four MPs, four MSs, they run the Welsh Government and have done for 20 years, should Labour have not been in a better position to influence the decisions, legislation and regulation, and funding available to safeguard some of those institutions and the city’s cultural makeup? But it always seems quite easy to pass the buck when something goes wrong, and when something goes right then the council is responsible in its entirety.”
The 29-year-old group leader grew up in Pontypridd, before studying history and social policy in Bangor. He then moved to Cardiff and studied a master’s in politics and public policy, and was first elected in 2017. He took over running the Lib Dem group in 2020. He joined the party aged 16 after his Welsh-language sixth form was threatend with closure.
“My family are all Labour party supporters and always gave me a hard time about being a Lib Dem. But the thing that got me involved was when my school was threatened with closure, and Labour in Rhondda Cynon Taf wanted to close sixth forms in the county and amalgamate them into one college. I went to a Welsh school, so I had real concerns over not just the impact on the sense of community but also what it meant for Welsh language provision. They couldn’t answer questions over STEM in the medium of Welsh. The only party that asked young people what they thought and were campaigning on the issue were the Lib Dems.”
A major criticism the Lib Dems have made in recent months is over the issue of embodied carbon, meaning all the carbon emissions stemming from knocking down buildings and building new ones, with steel and concrete both large emitters. Part of the Atlantic Wharf and arena redevelopment includes replacing the Red Dragon Centre, a recently built shopping complex. Mr Taylor also raised other concenrs around the redevelopment.
“The Red Dragon Centre is about 25 years old, I remember it being built and going to the cinema there as a child. We’re going to demolish that to build something new. You have the construction cost, both financially and environmentally of the arena. I’m not saying Cardiff doesn’t need an arena, but if we desperately needed an arena of that type, would it not have been provided by the private sector already?
“I don’t think it’s going to create that many jobs to tackle the unemployment and poverty issues in the Bay. There’s no transport link yet, and they’re going to build the car park first, so you’re going to embed in from the off a car dominated development. The concern we hear is that it’s further gentrification of Butetown. There are no social homes planned as part of the Atlantic Wharf redevelopment."
Asked why voters in Cardiff had enough of the Liberal Democrats in 2012, an election which saw Labour take back control of the council, Mr Taylor blamed national politics and his party’s unpopular coalition with the Conservatives in Westminster.
“We were in the early years of a coalition and voters punished us for the decisions that were made. Labour always say education was failing in Cardiff when they took over. Education wasn't just failing in Cardiff, education across Wales was in a very bad position 10 years ago.
“To put that at the [Lib Dem] administration’s door is politically convenient. Things were starting to improve in Cardiff as we left office. Labour has had 10 years in power to do something different and on many fronts they haven’t. We did a lot of good, the city centre was regenerated, and we got a lot of new schools, many of which were Welsh medium.”
