Vote Nick Venti . com

My work with L.L.A.N.I. Ltd

My work with L.L.A.N.I. Ltd includes the following:

The development of Llanidloes.com was one of L.L.A.N.I. Ltd's first projects and is a major marketing tool for the area. Originally funded by grants from the WDA, the website is now entirely self funding from client pages hosted on the site. I was originally responsible for the specification of the site and wrote the majority of the original content. The website has subsequently been entirely redeveloped as part of the Enhancing the Tourism Product Offer project. It enjoys high search engine rankings across a number of search terms and is the shop window for Llanidloes and the surrounding area.

This was the major community project arising from the Llanidloes Regeneration Plan, developed after the closure of KTH. This two year project, which draws to a close in May, set out to raise the profile of the Llanidloes area through the development of joint marketing initiatives. The project was made possible by grants secured from the Welsh European Funding Office, the Welsh Assembly Government, Powys County Council and Tourism Partnership Mid Wales totalling £189,000. In addition we have generated further income in excess of £30,000 from the local businesses participating in the marketing activity generated by the project.

The project has seen the development of Llanidloes' first brochure in over 20 years; 50,000 copies having been printed and distributed all around the country. The profile of the area has also been boosted by the production of the Llanidloes DVD, the trailer for which appears on Llanidloes.com. 2007 was a bad year for tourism generally in the UK – it rained continually from May through to August – if the brochure questionnaire responses we have received back are anything to go by, Llanidloes can look forward to a busier year in 2008.

Hand in hand with the marketing of the area, we have been developing the tourism infrastructure of Llanidloes. This project secured some £40,000 from Powys County Council's Community Tourism Grant Scheme to develop a network of trails using the public footpaths in the area. The money, supplemented by an additional £10,000 secured from the PAVO administered Spirit2 grant scheme that enabled the part time employment of a Countryside Access Officer, paid for new gates, stiles and way-marking, etc. over some forty different paths. In total, in excess of 150 miles of paths have been improved, described and mapped.

The project saw the development of the 20 Routes Around Llanidloes walking booklet published by Kittiwake, and also led to the development of the 25 mile Sarn Sabrina trail from Llanidloes to the Source of the Severn and back; now the basis for a walking event that takes place in May each year. Not content with just developing walking routes, the project has also developed a number of cycle trails around the area, which like all the walks, continue to appear on Llanidloes.com.

Another challenge in the Llanidloes Regeneration Plan was to develop improvements to the look and feel of the Llanidloes streetscape. Whilst assisting Powys County Council in the development of a rolling plan of maintenance and improvement to the built landscape of the town (new paving on Longbridge Street, new railings on the Long Bridge, realignment of traffic around the Old Market Hall, etc.) we were able to secure £25,000 of a total budget of £150,000 to develop public art in the town. Artwork, commissioned from local artists, will be appearing at the Severn Porte and in other areas of the town very soon. We have also developed new interpretive signage at the car parks in the town, and a system of finger posting will soon be seen around the town's central cross of streets.

The closure of the Tourist Information Centre and the downgrading of tourist information provision undertaken by Powys County Council, which resulted from the setting up of the Customer Services Point at the Library, did not come at a good time in relation to our drive to boost visitor numbers to the town.

In order to supplement the provision at the Library and keep a presence on the high street, we sought funding to open up our own Information Centre in Longbridge Street. Supplementing £8,000 of grant funding with an equal amount of income generated from sub leasing space and offering various marketing services and merchandising, we were able to sustain the Information Centre through the summer months. Unfortunately, our tenancy of the Longbridge premises had to end at the beginning of September, as the marketing we had contracted to deliver for the log cabin development at Pen y Banc could not go ahead due to a decision to hold a public enquiry into objections over the ‘stopping up' of the access road to the site.

We therefore transferred the Centre to the Library under a co-occupancy deal negotiated with the Customer Services team at Powys County Council. The present shortage of grant funding has not allowed us to continue the venture beyond February.

Another casualty of cost cutting by the local authority was the closure of the toilet blocks to the rear of the Town Hall and at Bwlch y Gle (Llyn Clywedog) in late 2006. We had hoped that the incentive of £3,000 over three years offered by the County Council would have induced the town and community councils to take over the management of these vital amenities, but this hasn't happened. So, in conjunction with the group of local business people (the Toileteers) who had expressed an interest in taking them on, we looked around for the means to fund the necessary renovations to the toilet blocks and to research solutions that would make them sustainable in the long term.

Having been successful in an outline bid for funding to WAG's Local Environmental Quality grant scheme, we are currently working on plans to renovate and open the block at the Town Hall. If we can make enough of a case to WAG in regard to the need for the toilets to re-open, we should be able to get them operational again by June. The block at Bwlch y Gle, by nature of the remoteness of its location, is more problematical and is going to take more time.

The aim of this project is to establish a footbridge link from the Gro Car Park to the Riverside Park, thus increasing the profile of this public amenity, shortening the distance that visitors would need to walk and improving pedestrian access to the park and to the Penygreen Road in general. There are a number of elements required to realise this project, and for the moment they are proving problematical. Finance of £50,000 is available to both build the bridge and undertake landscaping of the park, but there are difficulties. Half will come from the Section 106 agreement on the log cabin development at Pen y banc, but this measure of local benefit has been held up by the Public Enquiry on the ‘stopping up' order (see Information Centre above). The other half is Landfill Trust money, arising from the operation of the landfill site at Bryn Posteg (Potters). Agreement has been reached with Potter's, but the two sources of funding cannot be mixed. One must build the bridge, the other landscape the park. It will happen – but at the moment it is still a question of when...?

This project seeks to create a community meeting space inside the historic fabric of St Michael's, the parish church of Trefeglwys. A part of a major project that is also seeking to improve the disabled access to the church and provide a new heating system, the aim of the room is to provide a meeting room for smaller groups and activities at an affordable price. We were able to use our funding expertise to draw down both Landfill Trust money for the project, and match it with a £10,000 grant from Powys County Council's Community Enablement Fund. In addition to the grant funding drawn down by L.LA.N.I. Ltd the Church has raised some £20,000 from various fund raising activities, and the whole project at St Michael's is a testament to what can be achieved when a community gets behind an idea and pulls together.

L.L.A.N.I. Ltd set up a Childcare Committee in 2005 to investigate how the lack of childcare in Llanidloes could be addressed. The After School Club was the first tangible result of the work of the Committee, which was successful in attracting £20,000 in 2006 for the development of an after school club. Based at a mobile classroom in the grounds of the Primary School, the ‘Jungle Club' has just completed its second year of operation. Largely supported from the fees paid by the parents of the children attending, the Club continues to go from strength to strength. It is hoped soon to have holiday club cover in place for those long summer holidays, whilst a new management committee has been set up to ensure that the Club has a long term future independent of L.L.A.N.I. Ltd.

The second task the Childcare Committee has set itself is to develop a Nursery in the town, providing full day care for all ages of pre-school children. Further grant success has seen the employment of a part time Childcare Development Officer, who has investigated the business case for such a social enterprise nursery and located potential venues from which it can operate. A project is currently under preparation which seeks to create just such a venue in the function room of the town's United Services Club.

Discussions with the United Services Club over the establishment of a nursery in the more modern part of the club's property revealed the need to work on a development option for the historic part of their building, a 19th Century woollen mill; one of only a few surviving relics from Llanidloes' once thriving flannel industry. Again, funding has been obtained to develop the feasibility of converting redundant space within the mill building to bunk house accommodation. Without threatening existing serviced accommodation options, such a development will give a much needed boost to the availability of bed space in the town for walkers following the national trails of Gyndwr's and the Severn Way, not to mention the 40 or so trails developed under the Countryside Access Project (see above) and cyclists using the two Sustrans routes that pass through the town. Surplus revenue from the operation of the bunkhouse will contribute towards the ongoing maintenance of this historic building, safeguard the future of the United Services Club for its members and, hopefully, provide a surplus that can be used to fund more development work in the town.