Everyone who cares about their town has opinions about the direction that town should be going in. Penarth Nub News serves as a platform upon which you can voice those opinions.

Today, Crafty Devil co-owner Rhys Watkins pens an open letter to the Vale of Glamorgan Council.

Some of you who take an interest in my business on social media may have been following a now two-month argument with the Vale of Glamorgan Council over the reintroduction of charging for street furniture on the highway, which climaxed this week with the Council removing our planters from outside of our venue when we were closed on Saturday morning.

This ironically also clashed with the Vale of Glamorgan Festival of Flowers campaign, which asked businesses to display flowers outside their properties for residents to enjoy.

How did this situation get to the point where the Vale of Glamorgan Council felt it was right to remove items which had been there for three years from one of their small independent businesses? Well I can't answer that question; that's one for the Vale Council.

But I can tell you all about the steps leading up to this point and how the Council can make amends.

In mid-June 2021, all businesses in the Vale were hand delivered a letter from the Vale of Glamorgan Council stating that from 1 July 2021 all existing licences would expire and businesses would then be charged for all items placed on the highway.

This fee was not to be not dependent on business size or business rateable value, but on how many tables and chairs and advertising boards the business wanted to put out. This was a huge departure from the pre-pandemic costs – a flat rate of £497.50 for three years.

Businesses were sold the idea that to "help" you could pay a small monthly fee, much like the way a sleazy second-hand car salesperson offers a finance option. In the end, you always pay more.

Now, all of us in small business know that there is a cost involved in licensing cafe furniture. As long as that cost is reasonable, they are willing to contribute.

But as we all know we are not in normal times. We are under restrictions which limit our capacity, we are also continually told that being outside is safer, and our sales are on average 30% lower than they were in the same months in 2019.

The Welsh Government knows this is the case. This is why they extended the business rate holiday until March 2022 and have continued to fund businesses effected through grants to try and keep businesses afloat. They have also substantially assisted Local Government with extra funding and support during the Pandemic.

This is why it is surprising that the Vale of Glamorgan Council still think it's the right time to introduce charges on struggling businesses. It's like giving with one hand and taking with the other.

After the bombshell of the letter arrived, I spoke to other small businesses in the area to see if they had the same feeling. Overwhelmingly they did, so I - with a number of other businesses - set out to establish why the Council thought this was a good idea.

We were supported by the Federation of Small Businesses Wales, Vaughan Gething MS for Cardiff South and Penarth and Economy Minister, Jane Hutt MS for the Vale of Glamorgan and Deputy First Minister and Stephen Doughty MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, who all wrote to the Council to ask for a reprieve until March 2022 and request a meeting.

Alongside this, we started to organise a campaign urging the Council to engage with the local business community and its residents, who have been a great support. We sent in a petition to the Council leader signed over one weekend by our customers, continually called out for the Council to respond and even submitted questions for cabinet members at the July full Council meeting which were subsequently whitewashed.

At that meeting, a motion was put forward to council around deferring the charges to March 2022 we were hopeful that a least a few cabinet members may come out in favour of Small Businesses but the motion was defeated.

Within eight hours of that meeting, I received an email from an officer of the Council demanding we remove the colourful planters from the front of our bar. Planters were not included in the new licence applications or the previous licence, and the position of them has never been questioned before. I felt this threat was personal and we were being singled out for being in vocal opposition to the Councils policy.

I replied to this email citing that planters were not part of the licensing policy and we or none of the people or organisations who had contacted various cabinet members had not received responses for over a month. I said as this was the case coupled with the fact that a festival of flowers was coming up that we would not be moving them.

We had no reply to that email and thought that was the end of that for a bit. But how wrong were we? On Saturday morning the planters were removed by the Vale of Glamorgan Council.

These actions by the Vale of Glamorgan Council have now totally destroyed trust from not just my business but other businesses in Penarth and the wider Vale as well as the public as they look on at this unfolding picture.

So, where next? We are at loggerheads with the Vale of Glamorgan Council, with neither side willing to step back. But there is another way…

The Vale of Glamorgan Council have to enter a dialogue with us, something they have so far refused to do. When you strip everything away, the Council, small businesses and residents in the Vale all want the same thing: Vibrant, clean and safe town centres with a buzz of thriving independent businesses and people enjoying themselves.

We all need to work together to achieve this common goal. Businesses and residents need to be brought into the fold in local decision-making. They need to contribute to the Council's corporate plan and long-term strategy and Councillors need to put their ward before their party.

I am not saying the transition to this form of local democracy is easy. It will need a lot of work and the trust between the Council and its constituents needs to be transformed. Now - with only 10 months left to the election and after the collective pain we have gone through - is the time to do it.

I call on all Council members across the Vale to embrace this. Perhaps a starting point would be setting up town centre recovery steering groups who will have the freedom to make suggestions, influence policy and make genuine contributions to their town. This will bring back pride in our towns and build on the community spirit that got us through those dark lockdowns. All is not lost. Trust can be returned.

So, in a few words come, and meet us halfway.