Council chief executive clarifies claims children in Wrexham ‘don’t fulfil their dreams’

The chief executive of a local authority has clarified comments he made on national television suggesting children in Wrexham are unable to achieve their dreams.

Wrexham Council’s head of paid service Ian Bancroft made the remarks on the The One Show on BBC One as he highlighted the importance of the county borough’s bid to become UK City of Culture 2025.

Wrexham ultimately missed out to Bradford after the winner of the title was announced by the UK Government last week.

However, speaking on the magazine show last month before the decision was made, Mr Bancroft said taking the mantle would’ve helped youngsters in the area to reach their goals.

He told presenter Michelle Ackerley: “Wrexham has many amazing things but often our children and young people don’t fulfil their dreams.

“It’s about the difference City of Culture will make because culture and activity gives confidence to people.”

The race to find the next City of Culture is on! 🙌🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Tonight @MichAckerley travels to Wrexham to find out if they’ve got what it takes to win.💪#TheOneShow #CityofCulture2025 pic.twitter.com/JcL9RaZ7ll

— BBC The One Show (@BBCTheOneShow) May 23, 2022

Wrexham.com asked the Chief Executive about his comments at a media briefing held at Wrexham’s Guildhall today.

It comes as the council holds responsibility for education, children’s social care and several other services which directly impact the lives of young people.

When asked what the authority was doing to address the issue, he said: “The whole premise of our city culture bid was about raising aspirations. And that’s a positive thing in terms of enabling every child and young person, as well as older persons to fulfill their dreams. It’s a key part of our education work in terms of improving secondary education opportunities and outcomes.

“Obviously, you’ve seen that progressing in terms of secondary schools improving performance over the last couple of years.

“So what we will do from an educational point of view is we will look more broadly at learning outcomes, to achieve aspirations as we start to make sure we got a solid base with our school performance.

“We will look in the council plan at how we increase aspirations across all the work that we do.”

“City of Culture isn’t dead, in terms of other winners they had to bid two or three times to be successful.”

“We’ve obviously got £125,000 from DCMS, in terms of creating a really good platform for next stages of work. We’ve obviously committed to cultural activities in the years 2023 and 2025. So that work will continue culturally also to raise aspirations.

“I think the quote that I gave was, anybody should or could be able to be Thomas Telford, an architect, could be Kidsmoke or Royston Club in being a band, could be an RS Thomas or an Evrah Rose a poet, or could be an apprentice or could work at Wockhardt or could work at Moneypenny.

“So I think that that’s the ability that we want in terms of enabling everybody to fulfill their dreams and aspirations.”

Welsh education watchdog Estyn found education services in Wrexham to be an area of “significant concern” in a damning review published in October 2019.

The council is hoping to be removed from monitoring by autumn this year as inspectors have since noted its “strong commitment” to improve pupils’ achievements.

The performance of the authority’s children’s social services department was also identified as being of “significant concern” by Care Inspectorate Wales in 2020.

A more recent inspection showed improvements had been made but with the service still branded “inadequate”.

Mr Bancroft revealed at the briefing that a second bid is now in the pipeline for Wrexham to become City of Culture in 2029, which he said would assist in boosting children’s aspirations.

Liam Randall BBC LDR / Wrexham.com