#persimmonhomes — Public Fediverse posts
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URDD: Regional eisteddfods in Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire get £2,500 boost
The Urdd’s regional eisteddfods in Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire have been given a £2,500 boost ahead of next year’s competitions.
The money comes from Persimmon Homes West Wales through its Community Champions scheme. The cheque was handed over at Yr Egin in Carmarthen.
The regional eisteddfods take place early next year.
Elen Evans, the Urdd’s community manager in south Wales, said: “This contribution will help further ensure that the region’s children and young people have the opportunity to take part in valuable cultural experiences, develop new skills, and build confidence through the medium of Welsh.”
“Partnerships like this are vital in enabling us to continue providing opportunities that make a real difference to the lives of young people in our communities, and we look forward to welcoming competitors and their families to the eisteddfods next year,” she said.
A century of the Urdd
Founded in 1922, the Urdd gives young people the chance to learn and socialise in Welsh, through sport, the arts, youth work, outdoor and residential stays, and humanitarian and international projects.
It also offers apprenticeships, training and volunteering. The organisation says more than 4.5 million young people in Wales have benefited from its work over the past century.
What Persimmon and the councillors said
Sharon Bouhali, sales director at Persimmon Homes West Wales, said: “As a proud Welsh housebuilder, we are delighted to be supporting an organisation like the Urdd that has done so much to enrich the lives of children across Wales for over a century.”
Two Carmarthenshire councillors joined the presentation. Cllr Emlyn Schiavone, who represents Carmarthen Town West and is the council’s cabinet member for homes, said: “The Urdd is a brilliant, much-loved institution with a presence in every community across Wales, especially in Carmarthen, so it is truly heartening to see Persimmon support them like this.”
Cllr Tyssul Evans, who chairs the council’s planning committee, said the donation “will make a significant contribution to helping young people across West Wales”.
Persimmon says its Community Champions scheme gives £48,000 a year to good causes in Wales. Recent recipients it lists include the Young Farmers Club Eisteddfod, Pontarddulais RFC, Wales Women’s Deaf Rugby, the Saundersfoot New Year’s Day Swim, Gorseinon Cricket Club and the Carmarthen and Cross Hands Autistic Association.
The company is building in Gorseinon, Llanilid, Pembrey, Saundersfoot and Carmarthen.
More from Swansea Bay News
More on the Urdd
Eisteddfodau, camps and campaigns from Wales’ youth movement.Welsh language news
Stories about Cymraeg across south west Wales.More Carmarthen news
#CllrEmlynSchiavone #CllrTyssulEvans #PersimmonHomes #Urdd
All our coverage from the town and the villages around it. -
GOWERTON: Flood regulator says 216-home site ‘did not fully comply’ with flood guidance, then agrees flooding can be left out of the study
Natural Resources Wales has told planning inspectors that the site of 216 proposed homes at Fairwood Terrace “did not fully comply” with national flood guidance. It has also told them flooding can be left out of the developer’s environmental study.
The regulator’s letter, dated 15 September, is its reply to Persimmon’s request to limit that study to a single topic: the nutrients the homes would send towards the Burry Inlet.
It was sent two days before Swansea Council’s own reply, which asked for new wildlife surveys and said nothing on traffic.
The junction of Fairwood Terrace and Victoria Road, where a new signal-controlled junction is proposed beneath the low railway bridge, opposite Gowerton Rugby Club.
(Image: Swansea Bay News)What NRW told inspectors about flood risk at Fairwood Terrace
NRW says its advice on the original planning application was based on the Welsh Government’s flood guidance for planners as it stood at the time, the July 2004 version of the document known as TAN 15.
“The site did not fully comply with TAN15 (July 2004),” the letter says. “However, we accept that there will be no likely significant effects in relation to flood risk and it can be screened out of the ES.” The ES is the environmental statement Persimmon must write before its appeal can be decided.
The regulator takes the same view on contamination. It says there have been “no material changes” since a site investigation in March 2022, and that any risks “will be controlled through the relevant planning conditions”.
It also says the scheme would not affect the purposes of the Gower Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and that pollution during building work is covered by Persimmon’s construction management plan.
On nutrients, NRW agrees they must be studied and accepts the housebuilder’s proposed approach, provided the work “adequately addresses the requirements” of both the environmental statement and the separate habitats assessment.
A second official body questions the age of the wildlife surveys
On wildlife, NRW is less settled. It was satisfied with the ecological proposals in June 2024, but says the information “may now be considered old enough to require updating”.
“Updated ecology surveys would need to demonstrate that previously agreed mitigation was still valid,” it says. It leaves inspectors to decide whether that work sits inside the environmental statement or in a separate report.
That echoes the council’s ecology officer, who pointed out this week that most of the surveys date from 2015 to 2020, and asked for new bat, dormouse and otter surveys.
One of the Save Gowerton From Gridlock campaign boards, now weathered and leaning in the grass beside the Fairwood Terrace site.
(Image: Swansea Bay News)Campaigners’ 38-page case: Flood Zone 3, a missing spine road and the Trafle Mill bridge
Save Gowerton from Gridlock has filed a 38-page response with 28 appendices, asking inspectors to require nine further chapters, including transport, flood risk, air quality, ground contamination and GP capacity.
On flooding, the group says a significant part of the site now falls within River Flood Zone 3, the high-risk category, on the current Flood Map for Planning, and that NRW’s advice rests on a 22-year-old framework. It accepts the appeal may technically fall under transitional rules. NRW’s letter does not mention the current flood map.
On traffic, it says the spine road that Swansea’s development plan treats as essential to the wider Waunarlwydd and Fforestfach allocation is no longer proposed by any of the developers involved, leaving Victoria Road to take the traffic. It puts the number of homes in the planning pipeline across the corridor at 3,196.
It also wants a standalone risk assessment for the Trafle Mill railway bridge, saying April’s strike was the 35th on record and that Persimmon’s proposed pedestrian crossing would sit where debris fell. We reported that strike, and another on 7 August, when a lorry’s roof was torn open and trains were halted.
Traffic squeezed past the stricken lorry while it remained wedged (Image: The Gowerton Starch / Facebook)The group’s submission also points to PFOS, a so-called forever chemical, which it says NRW has recorded in the Afon Llan beside the site, downstream of the former 3M factory in Gorseinon.
Carl Jones, speaking for the group, said: “We are simply asking that the Inspectorate exercises its statutory powers to ensure the developer’s final Environmental Statement reflects the interconnected realities of our local highway capacity, drainage systems, and public health parameters, rather than an incomplete baseline.”
Inspectors can only publish a non-binding view on what the study should cover. We have not yet seen the replies from Dŵr Cymru, Network Rail, Transport for Wales or the Welsh Government’s transport directorate.
The Fairwood Terrace story so far
GOWERTON: Bats, dormice and otters put back on the table for 216 homes
The council’s reply: new wildlife surveys wanted, and silence from highways.GOWERTON: Developer wants traffic concerns omitted from environmental study
The request all of these replies respond to, and the ten topics Persimmon wants dropped.GOWERTON: Lorry roof peeled open as notorious Trafle Mill bridge claims another victim
August’s strike at the bridge that guards Fairwood Terrace.Every Fairwood Terrace story
#BurryInlet #FairwoodTerrace #Gowerton #NaturalResourcesWales #newHomes #PEDW #PersimmonHomes #SaveGowertonFromGridlock #SwanseaCouncil
The refusal, the appeal and the environmental ruling, in order.