PEOPLE have been urged to stop “talking Rhyl down” as millions of pounds are invested into the regeneration of the town.
Denbighshire Council’s corporate director Tony Ward said the council must change the “narrative in the media” if Rhyl was to succeed in its regeneration.
Speaking at a Denbighshire Council communities scrutiny meeting at Ruthin ’s County Hall HQ, Mr Ward was responding to Cllr Merfyn Parry, who told the chamber that Rhyl wasn’t the place it had once been.
The debate was part of a discussion on Rhyl’s Regeneration Programme and Waterfront Masterplan, which outlined how grants of £13m and £20m had been used and were being used to improve the town.
Mr Ward said the council faced a challenge of trying to change the perception of Rhyl.
Cllr Parry said Rhyl had changed since his younger days and claimed it was important the council considered public opinion due to the millions already invested in the town.
“You walk right up and down the high street again, and my memories of Rhyl aren’t certainly like what it is like now,”
Cllr Parry said. “It’s a huge task to try and bring it around. I would like to see that (the town) coming back as it is. But it’s for people to understand that we are spending money in Rhyl.
“And people say, ‘God, they are not spending more money on Rhyl’.
“It is a challenge of how that is monitored and how that is shown to the people that, whatever has been done to Rhyl, what benefits the residents of the whole of Denbighshire are getting from it.”
Mr Ward said: “I think it is one of the biggest challenges we have with Rhyl is the reputation and the media coverage that it attracts, which predominantly has been negative over recent years, which we’re trying really hard to address that narrative in the media.
“We’ve seen a couple of more positive stories recently, but we need everybody, including the media, to start talking Rhyl up instead of talking it down because the impact that has cannot be underestimated.”
Mr Ward then claimed an interested party looking at the empty Vue Cinema had been impressed with the town’s regeneration.
He added: “I think if people are continually talking the town down it has an impact. Why would anybody come if everybody’s just talking it down all the time? So there’s a media campaign.
“There is a communications campaign around this as well, which is really important to get right.
“Because, you know, with the person we were talking to about the Rhyl cinema, they were amazed with what they saw when they came there.
“Because they hadn’t come for years, and they said this is a story you need to be shouting more about because there is a lot of good stuff going on. There is still more to do, but there is a lot of good work going on.”
Leader Cllr Jason McLellan then pointed to favourable reports in The Mirror and another on a national social media platform.
Cllr McLellan added: “You can’t talk Rhyl down.”
