About Vale Of Clwyd

The Vale of Clwyd constituency came into existence in 1997, created from parts of the Clwyd North-West and Delyn constituencies. It incorporates about half of Denbighshire has a population of around 70,000 with around 57,000 eligible voters.

The main towns are Rhyl, Prestatyn, Denbigh, Rhuddlan and St Asaph. There are also several small towns and villages including Dyserth, Tremeirchion, Bodfari, Llandyrnog and Henllan.

Much of the rural part of the Vale is designated an Area of Outstanding National Beauty including the countryside around the hills of Moel y Parc and Moel Arthur. Offa’s Dyke footpath, the route of the ancient border between England and Wales, runs through the constituency and forms part of the constituency border.

Politics

At the 2007 Assembly Election Matt gained 8,012 votes to Labour’s 8,104 votes achieving a swing of 7.4% from Labour to Conservative resulting in a Labour majority of a mere 92 votes.

Labour            8,104 Ann Jones

Conservatives 8,012 Matt Wright

Plaid               3,884

Lib                  2,275

Turnout: 22,275

Since 1997 the seat has been held by Labour, however, had the seat existed at the 1992 election notional results suggest that it would have been held by the Conservatives.

At the General Election Matt seeks to overturn a majority of 4,669 votes.

Vale of Clwyd is a Conservative target seat and as such people’s votes here could help change the government.

Economy

Traditionally employment has centred around agriculture and tourism. As in the rest of the country, farming has been adversely affected by issues such as the Common Agriculture Policy and European bureaucracy whilst tourism has been strangled by the failure to adapt to changing tourist markets.

A near death blow was dealt with the white elephant scheme of the Children's Village in Rhyl, which destroyed the sea view promenade and left local taxpayers with an £8 million debt. Since then there have been other questionable schemes using public money. 

Towns such as Rhyl are in urgent need of practical business-led regeneration. However, there are real problems in Rhyl West which has two wards with the highest deprivation indices in Wales.

Growth sectors are optronics, instrumentation, metal goods, rubber and plastics, food and drink and communications. One of the top employers is the NHS with north west Wales’ regional hospital Glan Clwyd situated at Bodelwyddan. New opportunities are emerging for Research and Development, Film industry, Financial Services, Conferences and Training. The constituency has an above-average proportion of its population employed in management, agriculture and craft-related occupations.