The first Tenby Town Council Community Forum was held on Monday, March 13 at 7pm in Augustus Place Community Hall, with residents asking questions about public toilets and why Tenby beaches had lost their Blue Flag status. 

It was terrible weather, but several sturdy souls came along, and an excellent discussion was held. Praise was given to the gardeners working hard to keep Tenby looking good, volunteer and paid. The Railway Station and the Cenotaph Garden were particularly commented on. 

Questions were asked about the future of Tenby’s public toilets, and it was explained that Pembrokeshire County Council was considering shutting the two free toilets in town, the ones on Upper Frog St by the market and the block on North Beach. This would mean that North Beach would be unlikely to achieve Blue Flag status again, as one of the requirements for this is public toilets. 

Pembrokeshire County Council has asked if Tenby Town Council would take over the running of these toilets at a cost of approximately thirty thousand pounds per year – this works out at approximately £10 extra per year per household on the council tax of Tenby residents. The Town council will be discussing this at their next meeting. 

Questions were asked about the reason why the Tenby beaches had lost their Blue Flag status, and it was explained that the threshold for levels of pollution which causes a fail in the test had been lowered, so the beaches were failing too often. Councillor Whitehurst had been looking into this, and found that raw effluent had been released into the sea on several occasions, and that he was waiting for further information from Welsh Water about this. 

This led on to a discussion about the capacity of the water treatment works at Gumfreston given the huge population increase over the summer. The Council were told it can cope with 60 000 people, which is fine for Tenby/ Kiln Park, but actually water from Saundersfoot is treated there as well which most likely brings capacity to well over this level. 

The sandbank at the harbour entrance was then discussed, but it was found that lots of people had put forward lots of different solutions, none of which had been found to work on a long term basis. 

One solution proposed was to get the sluice gates working again as the idea of these was to help keep a channel open, however this is not easy to do as there is an unstable wall. The annual dredging undertaken by the County Council will be taking place shortly, and it is hoped that this would create a channel out of the harbour. This led to a discussion about the changing landscape – and that the sea was trying to find its way back in to St Florence. 

The next Town Council Community Forum will be in April at Greenhill School – watch this space for details. Everyone is welcome to come along to discuss things the council have considered, and to suggest things you would like them to consider.