Wrexham County Borough Council is looking at the way it provides day and work opportunities and respite services for people with disabilities. There have been changes over the past few years and the Council wants to make sure that people receiving care and support and their carers have a genuine say in how things look in the future. 

WHAT IS THE PLACEMAKING PLAN?

The Placemaking Plan is about improving the centre of Wrexham and encouraging people to re-imagine and influence how it should look, feel, and function. Specifically, we want placemaking to promote better design and development, and help establish more appealing social, cultural, economic uses and activities.

The final version of the Plan will include a comprehensive delivery plan reflecting wider consultation and involvement. It will include agreed priorities for both the Council and its partners, identifying the level and sources of funding and governance structures that will steer the Plan’s delivery.

In June 2022 Wrexham County Borough Council became a signatory of the Placemaking Charter in Wales. We apply the principles of the Charter to the whole County Borough, and they provide a framework for delivering our ambitions of becoming the UK City of Culture and other plans such as the Destination Management Plan, the World Heritage Site Masterplan; the Council Housing Strategy; the Active Travel Plan, and the emerging Digital Plan.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

Wrexham is a place with a unique and proud identity. Currently, it is one of the most talked about places in the UK and has a growing international profile. Our growth and ambition have been raised significantly through the award of City Status for the whole County Borough, advancing to the final stage of the 2025 City of Culture, and there’s also the global spotlight on Wrexham following the Hollywood takeover and recent successes of Wrexham FC. This has resulted in increased opportunities and interest for investment in Wrexham and has boosted local pride in the centre of the city that serves the whole community.

The survey was completed by 229 individuals and 584 comments were received as part of the public engagement exercise, that has enabled us to revise the Placemaking Plan in line with the feedback we received as well as shaping how we will communicate going forward.

We found that comments were very supportive of revitalising Wrexham and the need to create a destination city centre with cultural, heritage and family experiences.

Green Infrastructure and public realm proposals were well received as was the creation of welcoming spaces and positive links between green spaces adjacent to the City Centre.  Parking was referenced regularly in the responses and there is a feeling that there is a lack of parking spaces for shoppers, particularly spaces for parents and babies / young children and people with disabilities. The range of different parking offers and their management regimes was found to be a frustration. Public transport linking the City Centre and wider County Borough was considered poor.  Eagles Meadow was also mentioned on a number of occasions and comments indicated support for a focus on family entertainment and good quality restaurants

160 of the 584 comments received have resulted in material changes/additions to the final place making plan. All comments and demographic data from your voice were published for consideration by scrutiny committee and executive board.

A number of comments received also highlighted the ease of use to feedback on the Your Voice platform regarding the Place making plan

This short survey will help us understand what services are needed from our electoral services department to ensure that residents of Wrexham understand where and how to take part in our democracy by registering to vote, and voting, in elections.

The survey results were very encouraging, with consistently above 80% awareness of local, national and UK elections and nearly 93% of participants already being registered to vote.

Areas to focus on are raising awareness among young people and foreign nationals.

The results of the survey have given us focal points for future promotional work.

While we will continue to promote our services to all residents, the questionnaire shows that there is work to be done in raising awareness among young people and foreign nationals. As a result, we will be focussing on these various relevant groups on social media as well as working with third-sector organisations.

The results have also informed HOW we will do this. Respondents told us (overwhelmingly) that they prefer to access information via our website (76%) so we will be ensuring that information is sent out when the website it updated.

65% of respondents use social media with 88% using Facebook. We now know that this is an excellent platform to reach people with relevant messages.

Wrexham County Borough Council provides many services to you, whether you live here, work here or are just visiting, such as: schools, waste collection, social care, council housing, planning services, roads, museums, country parks, trading standards. The council also  supports local community and economic development.

Our vision for the future is that all the people that live here are supported to fulfil their potential, prosper and achieve a high standard of well-being.  We will be a strong and inclusive community leader to help make this happen. 

Our Council Plan 2023-2028

Our new Council Plan will outline our priorities for the next five years to help us achieve our vision, to contribute to Wales’ well-being goals, and to ensure that everybody is treated fairly.  We want to identify specific outcomes on which we can focus and against which we can measure progress.  These are the outcomes which we believe will be of most benefit to our communities.

Our Council Plan is our key strategic document for the next five years and will inform decisions about how we allocate financial and other resources.  Our other important services will still be delivered and details about those will be included within our internal business and service plans.

The purpose of this consultation was to obtain feedback from people living and working in Wrexham County Borough on our draft council plan for 2023-2028; in order to shape our Council Plan into a meaningful plan for everyone in our communities. 

During the six week consultation period, a range of methods were used to engage with people, including an online and printed survey,  in-person engagement sessions in the community and opportunities to contact us by email or by phone.  The consultation was widely promoted, using a variety of ways to communicate with people.

Feedback from our consultation was analysed in detail and the findings used to inform and shape our Council Plan for 2023-2028.

The findings identified a number of cross cutting themes, which we have embedded into our Council Plan priorities and outcome statements.  Feedback has enabled us to define our priorities, refine outcome statements under each priority and take into account the needs and aspirations of different groups of people and geographical areas in our County Borough.  Feedback from this consultation will also help us to shape the ways in which we will measure progress against our new Council Plan over the coming five years.

We would like to thank everyone who helped us to arrange and promote community engagement opportunities, distributed leaflets and posters and helped us to promote the consultation. Most of all, we would like to thank everyone for their thoughts, ideas, insight and for sharing their lived experiences in their communities with us, helping us shape our plan so that it is something that can belong to us all.

Our Council Plan 2023-2028 was agreed by full Council in December 2023 and has now been published on the council’s website.

The full feedback report on our consultation is now available to download and read.

Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) are intended to deal with nuisance or problems in an area that cause harm to the quality of life of the local community. The power to make a Public Spaces Protection Order was given to Councils by the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.

An ‘order’ places restrictions and requirements on certain behaviour in an area. The order can last up to three years. The Council can – after further consultation – extend it for another three-year period.

It will be a criminal offence not to stick to the order, and you can either get a fixed penalty notice of £100 or be prosecuted, which could lead to a fine of up to £1,000.

Why is a PSPO put in place?

A PSPO can be introduced if the relevant behaviour is having, or is likely to have, a detrimental effect on the quality of life of people in the area. The behaviour has to be ongoing or happening regularly, be unreasonable, and its impact must be such that the restrictions and requirements should be put in place.

Background to consultation  

In October 2014 the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime  and Policing Act 2014 (the Act) introduced new powers relevant to tackling Anti-Social Behaviour. In January 2020 the Executive Board approved the implementation of a 3 year Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) in Wrexham, identified by the area within the orange boundary on the map (from now on referred to as the relevant area).

The legislation states that the maximum time a PSPO can be implemented for is three years, before requiring a review. There are no restrictions on the number of times the PSPO can be reviewed and re-implemented.

The Public Space Protection Order to date, has supported the Council and its partners in our approach to address a number of specific concerns related to anti-social behaviour in the relevant area and to encourage vulnerable people to access support and services, seeking to break the cycle of behaviour and vulnerability they can be locked into.

By not addressing concerns effectively it is clear that there is risk to the quality of life of residents, a risk to the reputation of Wrexham, including loss of trade and attractiveness to new businesses, and subsequently a reduction in visitors/tourists to the area.  

We found that a high proportion of respondents agreed with the proposals that were consulted on. 

The results of the consultation were reported to the Executive board for members determination on the final PSPO, which was made as proposed but for the omission of one condition, around the carrying of paraphanalia, due to Public Health considerations.

The final report and decisions can be found via the following link.

 https://moderngov.wrexham.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=129&MID=8671&LLL=0#AI15801

Wrexham County Borough Council has a responsibility to assess the community’s toilet provision needs and to put a plan in place to address the findings.  For the purpose of this survey and strategy, the term toilet includes changing facilities for babies and changing places facilities for people with disabilities. These can be located in public buildings such as libraries and community centres, private buildings such as cafes and shops as well as public toilets maintained by the council. The council is seeking the views of residents, visitors to the County Borough and private enterprises.

In Wales we have ambitious plans for the public sector to be carbon neutral by 2030 and in response to our declaration of a Climate and Ecological Crisis in 2019, we have developed a plan for the decarbonisation of council services. As part of our plan, we want to work with people who live and work in Wrexham to increase awareness and understanding of the changes we all have to make and to support people with those changes, in especially in light of the current energy and cost of living crisis.

Towards the end of 2022 we developed an online survey to find out some key information from people that live and work in Wrexham around climate change and decarbonisation. The survey attracted a response from 581 people and the results will support us in our decarbonisation planning and communication going forward. The result of the survey are contained in this report and we have used this data to form some initial conclusions and identify some trends.

We also asked people to provide us with the email contact if they were willing to engage further to support our climate change and decarbonisation planning and activity in the future.  In response to this request we received 322 positive responses.

We last consulted with you and revisited our involvement strategy in 2018. It’s time to revisit the strategy and give it a refresh to reflect where we are now and we’d really like you to get involved in helping us shape this piece of work.

Wrexham Council has made significant progress in improving Involvement with the public in recent years, and have been commended by Audit Wales for work in this area. Some improvements and achievements include:  

• Developing a more seamless approach to our involvement activities, including improvements to our Your Voice Wrexham consultation portal to make it easier to use, and improving the quality and timeliness of feedback to yourselves on consultation and engagement activities
• Maintaining engagement with our communities over the period of the Covid-19 pandemic and re-energising engagement as we have emerged from the pandemic.  (e.g. in 2019/20 WCBC carried out 42 consultations on ‘Your Voice Wrexham’ – with around 12,241 responses received.  In 2020/21 we carried out 38 online consultations, with around 6,859 responses received. In 2021/22 we carried out 54 online consultations with around 10,203 responses received)
• Improving engagement with people who have protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, in line with our commitment to ‘reduce inequalities in representation and voice’.

We know that we’ve made significant progress in this area, however there is more we can do, to do ‘involvement’ well, together, and we want to work with you to develop these plans. 

If you would like to download a full copy of our draft strategy, please click on the link: Download draft Involvement Strategy 2022-2027.

Wrexham Council is committed to listening and working together with the people of Wrexham. Good Involvement means that everyone in our community feels they can join the discussion about the services we design and deliver; and can help shape the future of Wrexham County Borough. We hope by taking this approach the future of services in Wrexham will be focussed on what matters most to the people of Wrexham and that people will feel they can have their say and to work with us to make things happen together.

Having drafted our Involvement Strategy; public consultation has been undertaken, in order to present our new Involvement Strategy to members of our community and our partners and to seek their feedback.

This has enabled us to revise our strategy in line with the feedback we have received, so that we can be confident our new Involvement Strategy reflects the views of our stakeholders, who we hope will work with us in the future on our involvement journey to shape services together.

The Welsh Government passed a law which means all councils in Wales must carry out an investigation into the time and space children have for playing or hanging out in their local area.

By filling in the survey below you will be helping us to build a picture of what its like for children playing in Wrexham. We will then use the information to find ways of protecting and improving the time and space children have for playing or hanging out

Wrexham’s Play Sufficiency Assessment 2022 recognises the progress made since 2012 with many examples included that illustrate a strategic response to the Play Sufficiency Duty. Notably, in June 2018 Wrexham’s Executive Board agreed to support the authority’s Play Pledge which commits departments and service areas to value the importance of children’s play.

Whilst significant progress has been made, the Play Sufficiency Assessment 2022 identifies thirteen priorities which underpin Wrexham’s approach for securing play sufficiency for children in Wrexham for the next 3 years

• Priority 1: Increase time for playing during term-time
• Priority 2: Enhance opportunities for playing in Winter
• Priority 3: Secure safer streets for play
• Priority 4: Secure a wider range of spaces for play
• Priority 5: Secure spaces for play in close proximity to children’s homes
• Priority 6: Secure and maintain quality play provision
• Priority 7: Secure a greater range of provision for teenagers
• Priority 8: Improve children’s subjective experience of time and space in adult supervised provision
• Priority 9: Enable parents to identify ways in which they can support children’s play
• Priority 10: Improve support for disabled and marginalised children
• Priority 11: Improve generalised negative attitudes towards teenagers and their play
• Priority 12: Ensure children have easy access to friends
• Priority 13: Enable communities to identify ways in which they can support children’s play

Wrexham County Borough Council is currently consulting for stakeholder opinion on Rear Loading Wheelchair Accessible Vehicles, and their potential suitability for licensing as Hackney Carriages.

Introduction

The licensing authority has a set criteria in terms of hackney carriage vehicle safety certification and any licensed vehicle must meet stringent tests in terms of road safety and fitness for purpose. Rear Loading Wheelchair accessible Vehicles are currently available for licensing as Private Hire Vehicles but not for Hackney Carriage use.

Hackney Carriages

Unlike Private Hire Vehicles, Hackney carriages must be suitable for collecting wheelchair users from a ‘Hackney Carriage Rank’. A rank is collection point, whereby licensed Hackney Vehicles may queue and wait in turn for customers to approach the rank. There are several Hackney Carriage Ranks in the county area and these are all located within Wrexham Town Centre. All customers enter the vehicles via the side of the vehicle, with Wheelchair users using an access ramp.

Hackney Carriages also have the permission to be ‘hailed down, by pedestrians in the street.

We were able to find out the views of stakeholders on the proposal/topic outlined in the consultation

It has enabled the licensing committee to make an informed decision on the proposal/topic outlined in the consultation.