Town fighting to turn tide of prosperity

Reporter Owen Hughes walked through a town called every name under the sun...

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RHYL is a seaside town that has had more than its fair share of criticism in recent years. Among other unflattering things, it's been dubbed the “worst seaside town in the UK”, “infamous” and “rundown”.

I was brought up around Colwyn Bay, so I know all about once-prosperous resorts that suffered the consequences of changing holiday tastes - compounded — by disastrous decision-making and poorly invested regeneration funds.

Immigration dominates the political agenda and headlines right now, but it was internal migration within the UK that trapped both these towns in a vicious circle.

When the demand for British sea, sand and amusement arcade holidays waned, the resorts were left with a glut of empty properties. Many were divided up into HMOs and people felt encouraged to leave poorer areas of cities and towns in England for a slice of life at the seaside.

Placed in cheap and substandard housing, a “dream” move to the seaside often did nothing to change their fortunes and instead imported drink, drug, mental health and crime issues into these fading resorts from the Victorian era.

As visitor numbers fell, this left once-famous attractions struggling financially and starting to fall by the wayside.

As a child and teen, Rhyl was all about the funfair and the Sun Centre, one place almost everyone I met had been at some point in their childhood.

When the money is not flowing in, then private-sector investments aren’t made into upgrading or replacing these attractions for the next generation - and public money has too often not been spent wisely.

The Ocean Beach funfair went in 2007 - finally replaced by a shopping park after many setbacks and delays.

The Sun Centre, originally opened in 1980, closed permanently in 2014, a real failure of Denbighshire councilfunded trust Clwyd Leisure.