CONWY Harbour Advisory Committee’s chairwoman has accused the county council of making “all sorts of excuses” to insist committee members travel to Colwyn Bay rather than meet within Conwy town, labelling the situation “nonsense”.
Conwy Town Council councillor Joan Vaughan is the chair of the committee and commented on the issue after it was raised by Harbour Master Matt Forbes.
Mr Forbes asked if it was possible to attend “solely online”, as it “was a lot of resources now it’s not in Conwy”, adding: “We have to travel.”
The Harbour Advisory Committee was based at the county council’s Bodlondeb HQ in Conwy for many years, but the authority has now moved all its meetings to its £58m “state-of-the-art” Coed Pella HQ in Colwyn Bay.
The move follows Bodlondeb being leased out to Glamorgan-based Ideas Forum long-term as a business centre for entrepreneurs.
This means, currently, the six committee members would have to make a 12-mile round trip from Conwy to Colwyn Bay if attending in person.
But some members attend the hybrid meeting online, as well as members of the press and public, who can view the meetings either live or retrospectively.
But Cllr Vaughan criticised the move to Colwyn Bay, proposing meetings were instead held at Conwy Guildhall, where the town council is based.
“I was extremely disappointed when obviously we couldn’t hold our meetings at Bodlondeb, and I did ask committees and cabinet members at the time if we could use the Guildhall in Conwy,” she said.
“It has microphones and conference facilities. It doesn’t have translation facilities. But I’m sure we could overcome that.
“But I was assured it was a no-goer – ‘No, no, we can’t do it.’ Now, there were all sorts of excuses. I’d certainly like to look at that again because we are all Conwy members, and it’s Conwy Harbour Advisory Board. It seems nonsense, as you say, to be coming here using these resources when we’ve got the same ones on our doorstep.”
Council officers, though, said the council needed to make the meetings as “accessible as possible” for committee members and the public, with hybrid online meetings “offering that facility”.
Cllr Vaughan then said the Guildhall already hosted hybrid meetings and vowed to work with officers to see if a move back to Conwy was possible.
