Rural Towns Economic Sustainability Plans (Cross Hands and Kidwelly)

Following on from other recently commissioned growth and Covid-19 recovery plans, Carmarthenshire County Council is seeking to appoint a consultant to undertake recovery and sustainability plans focusing on two of its rural towns – namely Kidwelly and Cross Hands. The work is being delivered on behalf of the Carmarthenshire Local Action Group (LAG), as part of its Local Development Strategy and follows on from growth plans currently being developed for eight other rural Carmarthenshire towns.These “ten towns” were selected based on a number of factors including poverty levels; classification within top 30% of most deprived wards in Wales in relation to access to services and a lack of focus on these areas in previous programmes.With rural areas accounting for more than 60% of Carmarthenshire’s population, the rural economy has a crucial part to play in achieving the goals of the County’s wider regeneration which is strategically aligned to the Local Development Strategy.As such, The Carmarthenshire LAG took the decision to focus its attention on supporting the development and growth of its strategic, rural towns and by doing so, identifying and delivering actions to tackle key challenges that are hindering employment and prosperity. The LAG would like to develop a comprehensive growth/ sustainability plan for each town/business centre, driven by the businesses and communities that exist there.The duration for completing Stages 1 and 2 will be from the 9th November 2020 until 31st March 2021. Stages 3-5 will be completed by end of May 2021. Assessments will be carried out on the whole submission, however the initial appointment will only be made to deliver Stages 1 and 2 with the appointment to continue to Stages 3-5 being subject to a review of the relevance of the brief for stages 3-5 following completion of stages 1 and 2. The Authority will give advanced notification whether the subsequent stages will be implemented.