The strange death of the seaside resort town has come to stand as a symbol of the people and places our economic system leaves behind. Their demise since the 1970s & 80s slowly disfigured once-thriving communities into blotches of deprivation dotted around the British coastline — bygone relics of the last century. In late summer, Glyn Owen visited Rhyl to speak to people about how the pandemic had hit a community already fighting for survival.
Words & Images by Glyn Owen
For those experiencing the decline of towns like Rhyl first-hand, the unprecedented social and economic pressure due to the global pandemic has been tough to say the least. The Westminster Government has not only failed to protect these towns from the great economic restructuring of the last 40 years, they have often contributed to the decline themselves. Meanwhile the people living in these communities have been getting on with it, coping — but also struggling.
“We have two supermarkets and four food banks,” mentions Fiona Davies, project manager at the Foryd Community Centre, as she shows me around the facility housed within a former chapel in Rhyl.
The community centre, situated close to the heart of the coastal town in Denbighshire in north-east Wales, provides a number of crucial advice and assistance services to a community that year upon year has been routinely identified as one of the most deprived areas in England and Wales. It runs on around 40 volunteers working alongside regular staff, many of whom on the morning of my visit were busy with the £1 full English breakfast offered by the centre’s cafe on Thursdays and Fridays.
In the main hall, daylight cast through the tracery of the chapel window illuminates the many stacks and boxes of assorted foodstuffs ready to be arranged and processed for those who have fallen on hard enough times to necessitate a referral to the food bank. The Foryd Centre provides around 120 parcels per week to families or individuals who are heavily reliant on the service to see them through.
Over the initial lockdown period, the centre experienced a significant rise in the number of parcels it was giving out, and although stabilising during the lift on restrictions in the summer, staff are seeing things worsen once more. The new Job Retention Scheme may have come just in time to avert complete disaster, but there are still many who are slipping through the net. Foryd Community Centre food bankForyd Centre staff preparing English Breakfast
“A lot of the people who were homeless have been moved into temporary accommodation — their first few weeks we were having to support them for food.”
According to Fiona, the majority of service users are homeless, but there are also many people going to the food bank for reasons such as temporary workplace closures. Another issue has been that those who are on minimum wage that have been furloughed are finding it difficult to make ends meet on 80% or less of their usual pay:
“They’re struggling as well because they haven’t got as much money as they usually have. Quite a few went back to work in the summer, but it’s normally seasonal work anyway. People are very concerned at the moment — lots of people are just living day to day and not planning anything, but we’re quite hopeful that come summer the tourism and hospitality industry will take off again.”
Despite its decline over the past two decades, Rhyl still depends heavily on its visitor economy for employment, though these jobs are often low-paid, part-time, or seasonal. Many working in Rhyl’s tourism industry sustain themselves by working through the seasonal periods then fall back on government support when the work dries up, especially during winter months.
With the disruption in tourist activity coming at what would have been the start of the tourist season in late-March, those in this work pattern are now facing what is essentially a third off-season in a row this coming winter. Initial local lockdowns in north-west England and the West Midlands, from where Rhyl draws many of its visitors, and now the most recent restrictions that have been imposed, have effectively ended Rhyl’s tourist season months earlier than usual; a death knell for much of the local economy that will have catastrophic implications for people’s livelihoods.
This effect is already being seen in the latest figures of those in the town now claiming Job Seekers Allowance, which rose by around 50% during the months of July and August, compared to the same months in 2019, indicating that there are now hundreds more people in the small town now dealing with unemployment.
The outlook is similar at Rhyl Foodbank based out of the Sussex Street Christian Centre, only several hundred yards away on the town’s high street. It is the most recent in Rhyl, opening in September 2019 and is part of the national network of more than 1,200 food banks operated by the Trussell Trust; a charity dedicated to combating poverty in the UK, which last year gave out 134,646 3-day emergency food parcels in Wales alone.
According to organisers at Rhyl Foodbank, during the initial lockdown the number of people using the service tripled, causing it to have to open an extra day per week; in one instance providing nearly 50 parcels in the space of only 3 hours.
Although seemingly more acute in Rhyl, this sharp increase in the need for food banks as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic is a general trend throughout the UK. During the second half of March and April of this year, the charity confirmed its network’s ‘busiest ever period’ in the number of food parcels it distributed; an 81% increase in the second half of March and an 89% increase in April, compared to the same period in 2019. The latest stats from the charity now show that there has been a 47% increase in parcels distributed between April and September of this year.
The Independent Food Aid Network, a body that supports over 900 independent food banks all over the UK recently reported an even more sobering figure of a 175% increase in the number of food parcels that were distributed, comparing April 2019 to April 2020..
This UK wide picture is a sombre sign for Rhyl and similar towns already suffering under high levels of deprivation as the economic framework of these areas render it difficult for these communities to absorb the impacts of the pandemic.
Recent projections commissioned by the Trussell Trust indicate that the hammer could indeed be about to fall even harder onto the community, with models suggesting that the need for food banks in the network could rise up to as much as 153% this winter compared to last year depending on the strength of the economy. But with unemployment forecast to soar to levels not seen since the 1980s, the country’s economic outlook appears grim; likely hitting the most vulnerable communities, such as Rhyl, hardest
A major factor in the decline of tourism in Rhyl was competition from cheap air travel and package holiday deals, and by the 90s the town had begun to show clear signs of degradation. The spiralling effect of this meant that by 2000 Rhyl West ward (the area that includes the town centre and the promenade) had topped the Welsh Assembly’s first Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) table.
In order to stimulate progress for the town, in 2009 Rhyl was targeted as a key area for regeneration as part of the North Wales Coastal Strategic Regeneration Area scheme. A key component of this strategy was improving housing, the poor quality of which was recognised seriously contributing to deprivation in the town — a legacy of Rhyl’s heyday as property owners transformed empty hotels into cheap bedsits.
The deregulation of the banking industry that began under Thatcher and continued by New Labour which had paved the way for the 2007-2008 financial crash cruelly took grip at this time; curtailing private investment and resulting in the scheme failing to have any significant impact on the housing issue, while the Tory doctrine of austerity further compounded issues of poverty for the town.
Fast forward to the present day, following multiple regeneration projects and millions of pounds in investment, the area has seen little in the way of substantial improvement according to the most recent WIMD report from 2019, placing Rhyl West as the most deprived area in Wales once again.
Rhyl job centre hotel used for housing the homeless
Campaign Organiser for Unite, Leigh Williams, who is based in Prestatyn only a few miles from Rhyl, says that austerity has been at the heart of what is now happening in areas such as Rhyl and believes that more needs to be done to protect jobs:
“To me, it’s just a vicious circle — it has a knock-on effect. With services being cut, austerity made people choose to pay for things or not to have. With Covid, and with Brexit as well, we are now seeing major redundancies. We’re trying to support our members as much as possible and the wider economy. What we are trying to say to businesses is don’t cut jobs first — ‘are there ways around to keep people in a job?’ ”
He has been seeing first hand the scale of what is happening to businesses that rely on tourism and visitors in this part of North Wales:
“People are scared to book holidays just in case we’re going to be in lockdown. Caravan parks are taking the decision to not open up — a lot of people rely on these holiday parks. And also the local shops — the high street are mainly independent shops and if people aren’t spending money there they could go out of business. Under Covid, the support for the self-employed isn’t as much as what you would get for bigger companies. I know people and businesses that are worried and have laid staff off.
“The people I speak to, especially when the [latest] lockdown was announced, are in despair. A lot of cafes and bars should be on the Christmas trade for their next big payday, and now it’s looking like that might not happen. It’s devastating for the local economy.”
Comments such as these reflect pervasive fears that increasing poverty caused as a result of the response to the pandemic could cause deep, generational damage. Following years of neglecting the most vulnerable in society, Leigh believes that the government will now have to pay the price by footing the bill in order to spare communities like Rhyl from collapse:
“I think they [the government] should support jobs a lot more. The furlough scheme should be carried on. I know it’s big numbers when you hear it on the news, but in comparison to HS2, a white elephant project, it’s not. The priority needs to be keeping jobs. Covid’s a pandemic, but I can see greater harm coming from redundancies and jobs being lost. That’s the decision that the politicians need to make now — what’s the priorities?”
“What we don’t want is people on the dole — that’s the start of deprivation, crime and other social issues. Keeping people in work solves a lot of other issues.”
Despite the unfortunate effects that the financial crash and austerity had on Rhyl, the march towards the town’s modernisation continued determinedly, as serious efforts were (and continue to be) made in order to revitalise the town.
This liminality becomes apparent beyond the discount stores shouldered by charity shops and bookies, interspersed with the usual chain outlets that occupy the town’s commercial centre — now an all too familiar sight in towns across the UK.
At the town’s seafront, there is a freshness pointing to the vision for Rhyl and its regeneration. Anchored in cultural and leisure facilities, the fruits of these variable investments are an upgraded Pavilion Theatre; the new £15m SC2 waterpark; a kitesurfing school; and a planned wakeboarding facility. The first new hotel to be built in the town in decades alongside a family restaurant/pub also now adorns the coastal strip.
Staring back at these new developments however are the line of cheap bedsits and vacant hotels repurposed to house those who have fallen victim to the UK’s homelessness crisis or those placed in emergency housing — a stark demonstration of the gaping chasm between the vision for Rhyl and its present reality.
The focus of Rhyl’s redevelopment has now shifted to modernising the town centre to bring it in line with the rejuvenated seafront. The flagship project of this transformation is the development of the Queen’s Buildings, a 97,000 sq ft site that dominates the town centre. The ambitious £30m project aims to create a vital hub consisting of a diverse mix of retail, food and beverage, office and residential spaces alongside a contemporary market and green spaces, while also improving connectivity between the promenade and the town centre. The hope is that this development can bring in more footfall from visitors as well as attracting Rhyl’s more affluent residents to spend more locally rather than travelling to neighbouring towns, with the added hope of job creation and new business opportunities.
The project has garnered significant public approval following extensive consultation with local residents who have iterated that the project benefits local people first and foremost. However, with costs spiralling out of control by the millions in public money due to the dilapidated state of portions of the old Victorian buildings, as well as ambiguity over the relevancy of office spaces, or viability of hospitality businesses under the cosh of Covid-related restrictions, questions may need to be raised over whether or not such a project is the right direction when public money could be put to more critical uses.
Former mayor of Rhyl and Labour councillor Alan James who I spoke with by phone mitigated this point:
“There is little option but to go ahead in the hope society returns to some semblance of normality and that Rhyl gets the transformation it so desperately needs”.
He believes that it is the outside perception of Rhyl, which is often sensationalised by the media, that the town is battling against as much as the material problems it faces, James remains hopeful for the future, however, especially concerning investments that have been made into schools and education in the area.
In the neighbouring town of Kinmel Bay, which sits just opposite Rhyl on the other side of the River Clwyd, I met with Aaron Scantlebury, who runs Sunnyvale Caravan Park. He told me that these developments may be “too little, too late” to save the town.
Kinmel Bay, which straddles a 1km stretch of main road running parallel to the coast with a large caravan site perched at either end, was listed alongside Rhyl in a report published in April on the economic effects of Covid-19 on towns in England and Wales by the Centre for Towns. The report placed the small town at even more risk of deprivation than Rhyl, largely because of its findings that 39.8% of people employed in the town work in sectors at risk of being shutdown due to the pandemic.
Aaron told me that he believes the blame should be on Welsh Labour for paying lip service to voters rather than protecting the tourism industry. Ten jobs at the Caravan park are now at risk due to the seismic effect that lockdowns have had on the area’s visitor economy.
Recent electoral successes have given the Tories a strong base in North Wales. A group of the party’s MPs and MSs from the area recently attacked the Welsh Government’s actions over lockdown, levelling similar accusations of failing to protect the area’s tourism industry.
The criticism can be seen as part of a wider anti-lockdown agenda pushed by Welsh Tories, hoping to capitalise on the significant minority of people who oppose the tough measures.
Arguing to ‘open up the economy’ can have traction among people in towns like Rhyl where stable jobs doable from home are hard to come by. But it is the poorest places — depleted of services and with populations affected by bad health — that Covid also hits the hardest, with Denbighshire recording 115 Covid deaths up to October 30th.
In response to the Tories, Welsh Labour First Minister, Mark Drakeford said that the measures taken have been in line with medical expertise and were there to protect lives and jobs, accusing the Conservative politicians of endangering people’s lives.
The political actions taken going forward will require a high degree of delicacy. But Drakeford has his own questions to answer, after failure to contain the virus and early adoption of Westminster’s ‘herd immunity plan, as well as testing problems, has seen deaths from Covid in Wales continue to rise; the most recent data from Public Health Wales putting the total number at 2,041.
Despite the best efforts by those attempting to bring improvement to Rhyl, tragically it may be the case that the town has, once again, fallen victim to circumstances beyond its control, circumstances that could have been mitigated if it were not for a neoliberal economic model which has caused so much suffering.
However, everyone that I spoke with from the town remains hopeful for its future — yet this hope now relies heavily on whether the government will commit to both saving lives and saving livelihoods, which may only be achieved through the adoption of a zero-Covid strategy.
The crisis now facing towns such as Rhyl has exposed how decades of neglect and mismanagement have withered societal foundations that should be in place to protect the most vulnerable. Hard-fought efforts by many, often at a municipal or community level, have been overshadowed by an economic dogma spanning decades, which has widened the divide between the wealthiest and the poorest in society. While all indicators point to a dramatic increase in poverty during the pandemic, the case has not been the same for the world’s billionaires, who saw their wealth grow by 27.5% between April and July of this year.
A service economy that centres on poor quality jobs and precarious work, as well as an inadequate social welfare system, has left the country teetering on a cliff edge. In Wales, where almost a quarter of the population lived in poverty prior to the pandemic, the crisis appears to be forcing the most vulnerable over the precipice into what could be one of the darkest winters in the country’s recent history.
While recent news of a Covid vaccine has sparked hope globally, the effects of the virus must not be allowed to linger over those who have already suffered the greatest and cannot afford for a system that has already caused such turmoil, to continue.
