Study of Vacant Buildings in Rural Conwy

The Economic Growth Strategy recently adopted by Conwy County Borough Council for 2017 – 2027 will focus on 5 specific work areas. One of these priority areas will be to create new business units and properties to support and attract new businesses to the county. 

Running alongside the economic strategy, and according to a recent Welsh Government report, the Welsh food and drink industry contributes over £1 billion to the country’s economy, which underlines the importance of supporting small businesses in every possible way, including inciting development, relocating to bigger properties and investing in appropriate infrastructure. 

In order to support and offer businesses new opportunities the authority could invest time to research into redundant buildings, or buildings which aren’t utilised to their full potential. 

Therefore this application will be to carry out a small study and to assess the aptness of locations, the standard and potential of Conwy County’s empty buildings. 

The work will be done in two phases, which in the long term will hopefully lead to an application to the Welsh Government's Rural Community Development Fund, for financial assistance under measure 7.7. This funding is to provide “support for investments targeting the relocation of activities and conversion of buildings or other facilities located inside or close to rural settlements, with a view to improving the quality of life or increasing the environmental performance of the settlement". The two phase study does not include the submission of an RCDF application. 

The first phase will involve developing an electronic questionnaire (Survey Monkey) and encouraging the county’s residents to notify us where empty properties are located. 

The second phase will involve writing a report which will highlight all commercial and community buildings within the county’s rural areas which have been noted by the public, their current use, and if empty, their potential for investment. 

The first phase of this project is fairly simple, although it would require time and effort to ensure a healthy amount of respondents. 

The second phase (report) needs to ensure that no unfair advantage would be given to any private owner of buildings, therefore the report would need to be fairly generic, but also informative. The report would detail the location of each identified building, and their current use. The report would also give a brief description of the current condition. It will also state the development potential for every building.