Sir,

I know that I have accumulated more than three score and ten years and that my memory might not be as acute as it was when I was much younger, but I would like to share my recollections regarding the new school in Heywood Lane.

In 2007, the PCC advised the town council that it had obtained a grant to build a new Welsh medium junior school and had decided that Tenby, with over 2,000 residents speaking some Welsh, would be a suitable site. The new school was to be in addition to the existing Junior School and the Infants School.

A short while later, the Secretary of the Welsh Language Board informed the town clerk that in order to meet legal requirements of the Welsh Language Act that future council meetings should be bi-lingual and that all future public correspondence should also be in both languages. The capital cost of wiring the Mayor’s Parlour, hiring an interpreter for all meetings and translation of documents at £100 per 1,000 words would have resulted in a more than 1,000 per cent increase in the precept for Tenby.

Thanks to diligent research by the town clerk, it was established that the 2,000 figure of residents with a knowledge of Welsh included pupils at Greenhill School who receive weekly Welsh language lessons. After further negotiations, the town clerk was able to establish an acceptable council policy which met the basic criteria without the need for all the translation work - a template used subsequently by several other councils.

Some two years later, it was eventually realised that the demand for the Welsh language school would be less than 40 per cent of the capacity, which would cause major embarrassment. The solution was to relocate the existing Junior School and Infants School into the new building and convert the Junior School into a Welsh language unit. However, this solution meant that the Infants School would be redundant, so apparently, rather than admit any miscalculations, it was decided that the Infants School should be demolished.

I would therefore be grateful if some official, in authority, could explain how the demolition of the Infants School became an essential part of the development when it was not mentioned in the original proposal.

John H. T. Griffiths,

(former town councillor),

Tenby.