The investment zone will cost every Flintshire resident £500:

The total cost of the investment zone to the taxpayer is £160m, according to Flintshire County Council: (https://committeemeetings.flintshire.gov.uk/documents/s85194/Flintshire%20and%20Wrexham%20Investment%20Zone.pdf?LLL=0)

This includes spending on both Flintshire and Wrexham, so Flintshire’s share is £80m.

The population of Flintshire is 155,000 according to the 2021 census.

£80,000,000 / 155,000 = £516.13 per person.

£500 per child in Flintshire schools would cost £11.3m:

Total Number of children in Flintshire schools is 22,591 according to Stats Wales – https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Education-and-Skills/Schools-and-Teachers/Schools-Census/Pupil-Level-Annual-School-Census/Pupils/pupil-by-localauthorityregion-typeofschool

22,591 x £500 is £11,295,500.

Tripling council funded bus services would cost £1m:

Flintshire County Council reports that its annual contribution to bus subsidies in the county was £510k in 2023/24. Tripling would therefore cost an additional £1.02m.

Repairing all roads in Flintshire would cost £48m:

Sourced from page 10 of the most recent highway asset management plan annual status report for carriageways from Flintshire County Council, available at https://committeemeetings.flintshire.gov.uk/documents/s500003187/Appendix%208%20-%20Review%20of%20Highways%20Asset%20Management%20Plan%20and%20Highway%20and%20Car%20Park%20Inspection%20Policy.pdf?LLL=0

Restoring Winter Fuel Payments would cost £5.3m:

Census data shows that there are 31,533 people over the age of 66 in Flintshire

https://www.ons.gov.uk/filters/bf518241-b375-4294-8856-529b80c2788d/dimensions#search–name

DWP data shows that as of May 2024, 3,424 people received Pension Credit in Flintshire (and therefore continue to receive Winter Fuel Allowance). This data can be accessed at https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk (a free account is needed).

That leaves 28,109 residents of Flintshire who have had their Winter Fuel Allowance removed.

Assuming £190 per person is payable on average (to take account that couples only get one payment, and that payments are either £200 or £300 depending on age), that gives a figure of £5,340,710.

£150 off every council tax bill would cost £8.9m:

There are 69,192 dwellings liable to pay council tax in Flintshire in 2024/25, of which 2,136 are exempt (https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Local-Government/Finance/Council-Tax/Dwellings/counciltaxdwellings-byyear)

A further 8,033 receive 100% council tax reduction (https://www.gov.wales/council-tax-reduction-scheme-annual-report-2023-2024-html)

69,192 – 2,136 – 8,033 = 59,023

59,023 x £150 = £8,853,450

Why won’t the investment zone create jobs?

The Labour – Independent coalition have said that the investment zone “will” create 6,000 new jobs. The council’s official position is that this is just an “aim”, rather than an expectation (see paragraph 1.01 of the document below)

https://committeemeetings.flintshire.gov.uk/documents/s85194/Flintshire%20and%20Wrexham%20Investment%20Zone.pdf?LLL=0

This figure for job creation is a gross figure – that means that it does not take into account how many jobs are lost in the economy in the same period. Office for National Statistics figures show strong correlation between jobs created in an area and jobs lost in the same area (see chart in section 4):

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/firmemploymentdynamicsinlocaleconomiesuk/2004to2022

This makes sense: there are a limited number of people in the area, so if someone moves to a new job, unless they have been unemployed all their life, they must have left a previous job.

Within Flintshire, just 2.8% of working age people claim unemployment benefits – far below the Welsh and UK averages. This confirms that there are not 6,000 people in the area looking for work. Therefore, for these jobs to be created, it will be necessary to squeeze some local companies out of business to free up their workers to be employed by the multinational corporations the investment zone hopes to attract.

Another weakness of using a gross figure for jobs, rather than a net figure, is that a job which is created, then destroyed, then recreated and destroyed again counts as two jobs created, rather than zero, even though it no longer exists. Imagine a company which takes on 10 extra staff for 6 weeks every Christmas. Over 10 years, that would count as ‘100 new jobs’ under the coalition’s claims – even though it’s the same 10 jobs, and they’re only for 6 weeks at a time.

The figure of 6,000 jobs applies to the whole “investment zone”, which covers the entirety of both Flintshire and Wrexham. Therefore any new job created, even if the company has had no support from the investment zone funding, could count towards the figure created within the zone.

Imagine a company is going to open a new factory employing 100 people. They would do this anyway, but because handouts are available from the investment zone pot, they take the money. Those are genuine new jobs, and they have been funded by the investment zone grants – but they are not created because of the investment zone as the company would have expanded even without the handouts.

Adding these up, it’s clear that the jobs figures thrown about in support of this scheme are dubious at best, and propaganda at worst. Meanwhile, the cost of the scheme is very real, and very large. The coalition has produced no reliable figure for how many long term jobs will be created as a direct result of the £160m cost to the taxpayer – mostly because there is no evidence that new jobs will actually be created by this programme.