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Jamie Pritchard is the deputy leader of Caerphilly County Borough Council, and cabinet member for prosperity, regeneration and transformation. He is also a Labour councillor representing the Morgan Jones ward.

With some justification, residents will have felt over many decades that plans to invest in town centres, from administrations of differing colours, haven’t come to fruition for whatever reason.

When I became cabinet member for regeneration in May 2022, I knew there was a job to be done to overcome barriers to positive change to our town centres, which like many others across the UK, have felt the impacts of changing consumer habits over the last 20 or so years.

So, what have we been working to achieve? We have had to prove the concept first with Caerphilly Town Centre. The adoption of the Caerphilly Placemaking Plan has allowed us to generate multimillion-pound investment that will improve the towns fortunes.

Some examples include:

• Ffos Caerffili Market – Paid for almost entirely from Welsh Government and UK Government contributions but borne from a council-inspired desire to diversify the high street with a new offer.
• Pentrebane Street – Demolition of the former privately-owned buildings, which have fallen into a state of disrepair, to create much-needed residential, open space and commercial. Nearly all the finance has been secured from Welsh Government.
• Caerphilly Castle – A integral part of the Caerphilly Placemaking Plan, the recent securing of £8m of investment to bring more visitors to Caerphilly County Borough.

Things under delivery include:

• Caerphilly Leisure and Wellbeing Centre – The successful securing of £20m of UK Government finance to bring a state-of-the-art facility to Caerphilly, which will serve significantly more residents than the existing centre;
• Caerphilly Cultural Centre – Plans are underway to create a free, vibrant cultural centre in the town;
• Hotel and Leisure Quarter – An 80-bed hotel to ensure people accessing Caerphilly have a place to stay in a modern town.

I believe the confidence from this investment, under a designated plan which has been mainly financed outside of council funds, has made members of different political parties sit up and take notice as to how similar plans may benefit residents in their own ward.

On July 1 we had the Bargoed and Blackwood Placemaking Plan come to council for adoption. At the meeting, Independent Blackwood councillor Andrew Farina-Childs said he “fully” supports the new placemaking plan for Blackwood, which would “undoubtedly have a positive impact and really see the town thriving again”.

We adopted the Ten-Year Economic and Regeneration Strategy on April 8. At the meeting, Plaid Cymru’s Penyrheol ward councillor Steve Skivens welcomed the council’s strategy and was supportive of the council upholding the principles of placemaking.

Some of the aims of the strategy is to build on the already increased events programme we have in Caerphilly County Borough, to turn around vacant premises, to offer enhanced business support and to adopt more placemaking plans for other towns and villages across the county borough.

A lot of what the plan promotes is what we are already doing at present.

So, let’s take these in turn. We have strengthened the events programme, even when there have been well-recognised cuts from Westminster. We know the events programme helps to bring in tens of thousands of additional visitors to the county borough.

We want to go further by attracting international events that will really put the county borough on the map. Developing our domestic events programme helps to put Caerphilly County Borough in the shop window.

The use of meanwhile spaces in vacant premises is moving along, with another premises in the former Spar building in Bargoed coming under council control.

This will offer more opportunity to engage the private sector in the building, and a very early step in the right direction for Bargoed through its placemaking plan.

When it comes to employment, we are working towards supporting over 1,000 underemployed people over the coming year, with our employability team visible in our town centre locations. And as already stated, a clear commitment to design and develop, with community support, more investment in placemaking plans across the borough.

I am not naive enough to think every elected member across the political spectrum in Caerphilly is going to rush to publicly support investment, as this is politics. Having said that, I do believe there is a different mood emerging, with less negativity, at least among some elected members, and at least some acknowledgement that things can move forward with a positive mindset.

Whilst social media comments often gives a distorted view of where the public is, I know, on the doorstep, residents want elected members to be positive about the area they represent and do whatever they can to drive investment into those communities.

Our commitment is to further develop these placemaking plans, to give us the best chance of improving our towns for our residents to enjoy.