The leader of the independents group wants to see a more Rhondda Cynon Taf wide approach to decision making. Mike Powell who has led the RCT independents group and represented Trallwn ward on the council has said he hopes to see more fairness in how decisions are made.
Council elections are due to be held on May 5 this year and Mr Powell said the cost of living is going to be a monumental issue for lots of families in RCT. He said: “The answer to it obviously lies with the Westminster Government to a great extent and then likewise with the Senedd and then down to RCT itself.
“I suppose you could argue that RCT’s done its bit by only increasing council tax by 1% this year but again there are things the council could be doing with its budget which would greatly assist people in Rhondda Cynon Taf.”
Full-time nursery provision for three-year-olds
He said one of the things that the RCT independents group is going to be advocating for depending on the number of independents who get elected is to re-introduce full time nursery provision for three year olds. Mr Powell said this would allow people to go out and work to earn money to pay the bills because at the moment there’s a provision until 9am until 12pm so parents don’t have sufficient time to get a fulfilling and reasonably well paid job.
He said: “It’s a huge problem. It really is. And we should be doing more.” Mr Powell said: “We’ve got to look at how the council does expend its budget and obviously there are people who are in greater need in certain areas than others.
“But by the same token you’ve got to have a fair expenditure of that budget.”
The need to take a whole RCT approach to spending
He mentioned Pontypridd which pays the highest council tax in the whole of the borough and when there is spending there in places like Ynysangharad Park it’s always grant funded. He said they do need to get a fairer spend and he highlighted the fact that the council is not planning a BMX track in Ynysangharad Park while one has been built in Aberdare with grant and council funding.
He said the borough is still run as if it’s three separate county councils; Rhondda, Cynon and the Taff-Ely area. Mr Powell said: “We do need to be more cohesive in our approach to the whole of the borough especially with service provision.”
He said they want to see more BMX tracks, more skate parks and more facilities for youngster to burn off excess energy and get them outside of their house and not on their computers. He said: “It’s been a bugbear of mine since I’ve been elected. We do need to have that all in it together approach rather than this sort of piecemeal approach which unfortunately we see on too numerous occasions.
Mr Powell said elected representatives are county borough councillors. He said you’re obviously a ward councillor dealing with pot holes and street cleaning and things like that but you have to take a “more proactive and a more broader approach” to the running of the authority as a whole.
What extra things the council could be doing
He said: “There’s no end of things which we as a borough could be doing for the residents but we tend not to.” He said they could look at using the Pontypridd Lido all year round instead of only six or seven months of the year as it’s still being heated.
Mr Powell said one of the ideas that the independent group has is to issue season tickets so all residents can use it throughout the year subject to costings as long as they cover staffing costs. He said it’s about using facilities smarter including schools which he said could be used for community activities.
He said they need councillors who can drive the authority forward so it is a leading authority in Wales. One example Mr Powell gave of a thing that the council could do differently is disabled parking bays.
He said the council only puts 12 in every year although there are hundreds of people applying for them who meet the criteria. He said when they do the residents’ parking bays they can put the disabled parking bays in at no extra cost to the authority because the road traffic order can encompass them in it which would reduce the waiting list of people applying for them.
He said: “You’re probably not going to save money doing it but what you will do is provide a better service and a bigger service by doing it differently to what they do now. “They’re all little things. To my mind they’re just little things which we can do and actually provide a better service to the people who we are elected to represent and for the same buck get a bigger bang.”
The prospects and aims of the independents
On the prospects for the independents going into the election, Mr Powell said they’ve got more than 20 candidates standing at the moment who are already delivering leaflets and having a good response on the doorstep. He said: “I think people are getting a bit fed up of party politics and to a degree rightly so.
“You will get that better more inclusive membership of the authority the more independents you get.” He said independents will look at not just their ward but actually the whole borough.
“We need to be looking at the whole borough rather than these piecemeal little parochial things.” Speaking about being chair of the finance and performance scrutiny committee, he said they look at the whole of the expenditure of the council and trying to get decisions which benefit everybody.
He said they need joined up thinking and a game plan. Mr Powell said: “One thing that irritates me is when you get some areas treated differently to other areas.”
Education concerns
He made reference to Pontypridd losing both its sixth forms with Pontypridd High and Hawthorn High set to become 3-16 schools although there are 3-19 schools in other areas. He said it would be difficult for people to go to Coleg y Cymoedd for their A-levels because if there’s only a couple of people wanting to do Physics then they won’t run the course.
But he said that Coleg y Cymoedd is closer to Aberdare Community School and they’re not shutting the sixth form there and asked “why are the children and the residents of Aberdare and the Cynon Valley being treated differently to the children and the residents of Pontypridd. We need more independents elected to make sure that the policies which are implemented in Rhondda Cynon Taf are borough wide policies” not just cherry picking one area saying it’s “totally unfair.”
He said the transition from year six to year seven will see pupils from other primary schools going to Pontypridd High for example that will have less broad an education than those children who’ve been there from the age of three as they won’t have had the same specialist education. He said: “If you want a plan for a year grow rice, if you want a plan for 10 years grow trees. If you want a plan for education plan for 100 years.”
He said the start needs to be fair and equal for everybody to make sure people get the best education they possibly can to reach their full attainment so they can actively participate to the best of their abilities in the world we are in.
The other candidates in Trallwn are Anne Davies (Labour), Adam Porter (Conservative) and Tom Rowan (Plaid Cymru).
