Unfair Representation

Had a meeting this morning.

I'll tell this story very much in brief.

For the past six years this organisation has been planning the 'Bwllfa Mountain Centre' - a large park-type place on a local mountain that will incorporate walking trails, mountain bike trails, pony trekking, sustainable energy displays, a hill farm museum, campsite, log cabins, play areas, etc etc. For the past six years we've had backing from WEFO, Welsh European Funding Office, that we'll be able to receive European funding for this project. Since I've been working here, some three years, we've been getting closer and closer to putting in a bid for this money. We've come up against problems, but WEFO have always helped us find ways around them.

WEFO have had our Action Plan which details the project, and for a good few weeks have had our detailed Business Plan. They've known, for months, exactly what this project will entail and as I've said, there have been problems but they've offered us help in getting around them.

We went to a meeting today to discuss State Aid - one of those problems. Any project receiveing funding must not be in direct competition with other similar projects in the area - if they are, they can only receive a certain amount of funding. We were told that at this meeting today, there would be present a representative from WEFO especially to discuss State Aid and its implications on our project.

Instead, we were told by some WEFO representative we've never seen before that there's no way our project, the Bwllfa Mountain Centre, the project they've known about for some six years, the project they've had detailed information on for months and have STILL backed us, will get funding because it's predominantly a leisure project and leisure isn't eligible.

End of.

WTF? Angry? You could say.