Delays, debt, jobs, and Kilvey Hill: Leader on £1bn regeneration

IT HAS been more than a decade since Rob Stewart took helm of Swansea Council as its leader with a focus on creating a “city that people have confidence in”.

- SHAURYA SHAURYA

The Labour-led council's ambitious £1bn regeneration scheme aims to rejuvenate the city through a series of projects funded by a mix of public and private money, with some major projects already delivered.

Cllr Stewart said: “I think when I took over as leader I set out a very clear vision of what we needed to do. We were a city that had lost a lot of investor confidence,’ he said.

“We had seen quite a significant decline in people investing in the city. We didn’t have a lot of homes, we didn’t have the sort of environment that we needed.

He added that though 2014 was prior to the pandemic and the things that followed, “It was very clear that if we were to create a city that people had confidence in, that could compete in the 21st century, we had to change what the city centre offered.”

Delays in council projects

Though the council has delivered several projects, some have experienced delays, the most publicised of these, is the multi-storey car park by the Swansea Arena which was supposed to be completed around the same time as the arena itself.

Cllr Stewart has explained that the delay has mainly arisen due the project’s original contractors, the Buckingham group going into administration, adding that the council hopes to open the car park by the end of the year.

“To be really clear on why that’s been so challenging, when a company goes into administration, obviously that entity ceases to be,’ he said.

“We then have to deal with the administrators and we have to then go through and look what works had Buckingham done, what works remain to be done.”

He explained that the new contractor then had to check the site to ensure that work done by old contractor was to right standard as they would have to provide the council a guarantee on the building upon completion.