P-06-1447 Stop Natural Resources Wales closing the visitor centre at Ynyslas National Nature Reserve - Correspondence from the Petitioner to the Committee, 13 January 2025

Dear Petitions Committee

I would just like to say that this letter to Carolyn Thomas from the Deputy First Minister does not address the issues that we raised in any way.

We were never concerned about the provision of coffee and ice creams at Ynyslas and always about the conservation and safety work that the Visitor Centre staff undertook. The idea that NRW has a fantastic education and visitor destination on the reserve that will not be open to the public is shameful. Rather than using what they have, they are proposing to bring more traffic to the site in the form of a third party coffee cart. 

Will the coffee cart staff collect the dog pooh or warn visitors not to swim at the red flag beach? Will the current contractors (I assume the Minister means the people who clean the loos) put out the high tide warning signs or plover lines? 

NRW keep saying that the Visitor Centre staff are retail and catering but this is not true. My husband was a temporary team member in the summer season and he did between 8,000 and 12,000. It would be impossible to do that number of steps while standing behind a counter without a treadmill (which he did not have).

I am dismayed to read that "Natural Resources Wales is considering whether there is scope to increase the value of the visitor centres for users and whether extending the offer beyond retail and catering will provide additional attraction to the tourism industry" when this is what we already have at Ynyslas. NRW appear to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater and wasting thousands of pounds of taxpayers money to boot.

Again, I have reached the point of not knowing what else to say as no one other than members of the Petitions Committee is listening or willing to try to understand the issues.

Other members of our team will almost certainly send separate emails to you.

Kind regards

Polly Ernest