This time next year a small piece of land on the seafront in Porthcawl will be getting far more attention from the town’s holidaymakers than it has done over the last few weeks.
The grassy area, known as Cosy Corner after the cinema that used to be there in the early 1900s, is the site of a new £5.5m maritime centre.
With contractors due to start work over the coming weeks and a 56-week construction period, the building is expected to be nearing completion in a year’s time.
The centre is set to transform the town’s attractions providing a 21st century coastal science and discovery centre – involving digital technology, artificial intelligence and holograms – as well as a three-star 55-bed hotel, a restaurant offering European fusion food, a cafe, tapas bar, roof terrace and micro-brewery.
In addition there will be a gym along with training pool and facilities for local community groups and organisations such as the Welsh Surfing Federation, the Sea Cadets, and SSAFA, the Armed Forces Charity.
Research suggests an additional 80,000 visitors could come to the town every year as a result.
Those behind the plans said they wanted to stimulate development in the town, aware that investment encourages further investment.
And they knew it had to be a wet weather attraction for rainy days when the beaches are virtually empty.
But while the maritime centre is the attraction that everyone will see there’s a lot more to the organisation running it than just that.
Credu Charity was formed in February 2018, coming out of the community interest company Porthcawl Harbourside that was set up in 2013.
Since then the organisation has moved into a providing a diverse range of services involving the delivery of education programmes for schools, boat-lifting and tourist information, all operating under different subsidiaries.
Credu Charity’s chief executive Mark Bryant described the charity’s work as being like an iceberg.
He said: “The maritime centre is just the tip of it – what many people don’t see is what’s going on underneath to support that.
“We intend to open the doors of the maritime centre and have a full hotel and a vibrant business from day one.
“We have started the pre-sale as we speak with SeaQuest, Maritime Services and Experience Porthcawl all being part of that.”
The charity currently employs 16 people, with more than 100 jobs being created once the maritime centre opens with roles in facilities management, housekeeping and catering among them.
While a Swansea-based company is coming in to operate the centre’s restaurant, called The Lighthouse, Credu will remain in control over every other aspect, running the hotel, health and wellbeing facilities, the cafe and tapas bar.
Mr Bryant, who has a background in the hospitality sector, first became involved as a consultant on the project when the business plan was being put together.
He said the business plan was all about attracting tourism, employment, and providing a learning development opportunity.
He said: “What we do is unique – managing and facilitating an organisation that includes a schools education programme, the operation of lifting boats, a hotel, a science discovery centre and tourist information.
“A lot of background research work has been done to enable us to produce a business plan and facility that Porthcawl needs and can really benefit from.
“There is a lot of community engagement in the entire project – the whole community knows about it and supports it.”
Here we have a look at the different areas of the charity’s work.
SeaQuest Coastal Science
Over the last two years more than 100 schools have taken part in one of the programmes offered by SeaQuest.
Focusing on primary schools and the first two years of secondary school, the programme is aligned to the new curriculum.
Mr Bryant said: “When we did a couple of focus groups locally to A-level student girls they said that when they transitioned from primary school into Year 7 they felt science was one of the most boring things they could do – it was out of reach and a subject you had to be highly intelligent to do.
“We really wanted to alight students’ enthusiasm for science, in particular coastal science.
“Science is all around us – our coastal activities involve anything from building shelters and safely lighting fires to learning about the ecology of rock pools.
“It’s not a jolly, it’s aligned to the new curriculum, we can cover anything from maths to English and everywhere in between.
“We are attracting people that haven’t been to the beach before – and encouraging others to look at the coast and beach around them in a different light.
“The health and wellbeing agenda is huge and learning outdoors is part of that.
“We also deliver programmes for children with special needs – it’s very simple but it’s outdoors and engaging.”
In the last 12 months SeaQuest has gone from one member of staff to nine with plans to recruit more.
Mr Bryant said: “It’s growing and growing – teachers in schools are now coming to us and asking if we can help them with this or that, which is great.
“Some of our outdoor learning experts have a teaching background, a lot of them started as volunteers in the programme – we have actually employed every single one of the volunteers.
“We have just started a new recruitment process to get a couple more – they’re all really enthusiastic outdoor learning individuals.”
Long-term plans for SeaQuest involve having pods around the Welsh coastline to operate from, offering programmes to local schools in other areas.
It is also SeaQuest which will operate the coastal science and discovery centre in the maritime centre.
Credu has been working with Techniquest, the science and discovery centre in Cardiff Bay, in designing of some of its exhibits.
Marine Services
In January 2018 a 10-tonne crane was installed at Porthcawl Marina to provide a much-needed boat-lifting service.
Before then boat owners who need to take their boats out of the water for routine maintenance or sometimes in an emergency for surveys would have to sail to places like Penarth or Swansea.
There are currently two members of staff working in marine services with a third starting soon and another expected to be recruited before long.
Mr Bryant said: “The crane is custom-made, it has to sustain being in one of the highest tidal harbours in the UK – there’s about 14m difference when the tide is out.
“Before the marina had no facility to lift boats out of the water.
“Boat owners pay a fee for the services – it’s more cost effective than spending a day going back and forth to Swansea or Cardiff.
“There’s also off-site storage for 30 boats.
“It’s enabled the number of boats moving in and out of the harbour to increase.”
In addition there is a boat washdown service while partnership collaboration enables the service to offer the transportation of boats in the UK and Europe along with maintenance and repairs.
Experience Porthcawl
Experience Porthcawl includes a website, a new tourist information kiosk on the seafront and large touchscreens providing information on eating places, activities, accommodation and events.
Mr Bryant said: ” We looked at how Porthcawl was marketed – it was reliant on an old 1970s one-page website that depicted Porthcawl in ‘kiss me quick’ hats and people sitting in deck chairs, which still goes on of course but Porthcawl has so much more to offer.
“The tourist information service is not just about Porthcawl but about the surrounding area as well.
“Our research told us that Porthcawl is seen as a daycation rather than a staycation and one of the reasons for that is it’s not effectively marketed.
“We want to get the message out there that you can stay in Porthcawl and use it as your base. We have four of the finest beaches in South Wales, Afan Valley Biking is nearby for example, as is the Garw Valley Railway, MacArthur Glen and much more.
“Restaurants and cafes of high quality are springing up all the time in Porthcawl – you will be able to come back at the end of the day and be confident of a decent meal.
“We will be trying to flatline the hotel – we can cater for school groups out of holidays and holidaymakers during the holidays.”
The large touchscreens are a collaboration between Porthcawl Town Council and Credu – one is already in place on the information kiosk with another going up by Trinity Church in John Street and four more in the pipeline, helping to link Newton to Rest Bay and the places in between.
The touch screen information is taken from an app for Experience Porthcawl.
Meanwhile the information kiosk which is the former fishing tackle shop is staffed by nine volunteers.
The volunteers love their new role.
Jan Harbottle, who does two mornings a week, said: “I saw it advertised and went for it straightaway. I have the best view in the world.
“Today I’ve already had visitors from America and Switzerland and it’s only 11am – I can go all over the world in a morning.”
Volunteer programme
With the information kiosk manned by volunteers and many of the SeaQuest outdoor education experts having started as volunteers, volunteering plays an important role at Credu.
Mr Bryant says the volunteers are coming up with ideas all the time and the charity is working with local businesses to offer vouchers which it can hand out as a thank you.
While some are retired others have either gained employment within the charity or have gained confidence in their roles going onto find jobs elsewhere.
The charity is also providing a legal framework to local community volunteer groups who remain autonomous but can take advantage of the larger organisation’s insurance protection or resources by signing up through one of the Credu charities.
Where it all began
Credu is Welsh for ‘believe’.
It all started back in 2013 when a local councillor Mike Clarke and a local architect Stuart Bentley got together to see if they could provide a new home for the sea cadets.
One thing led to another and they soon had funding for a feasibility study to see what the town needed and how it could happen.
Barrie Metcalf came on board, bringing his own experience from the Cardiff Bay Yacht Club.
Cllr Clarke said: “We wanted something different for Porthcawl and we wanted to stimulate development in the town but not necessarily us doing it.
“We knew it had to be a year-round, all-weather attraction.
“The local authority said we could have Cosy Corner if we designed something that was multi-use and iconic.
“Being an architect, Stuart looked at it and said he was happy to give his time – we have had tens and tens of thousands of pounds worth of free architects’ time.
“We started bringing in some more expertise – a lot of projects fail to materialise because people don’t know when to step back.
“We have all had big careers, and are experienced business people, we knew it was time to step back.
“We felt we needed a director to be doing the day to day work.”
Enlisting the help of Mr Bryant, who came in as a consultant to begin with, the group began to draw up a business plan.
Mr Bryant said: “The building was designed around the business plan rather than the other way around.
“We review the whole business plan every week just to make sure it’s dynamic – it’s very fluid to react to market conditions, what we feel is working and what isn’t.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime project that comes along where you get to work with a group of people like this to achieve something unique.
“Everything will be self-sustaining – we want to be viable and vibrant and invest back in the community.
“SeaQuest is self-generating, Marine Services is self-generating, and Experience Porthcawl will be.
“The whole ethos is to be commercially viable with charitable outcomes.
“We’ve had a huge amount of due diligence in our business plan and governance as a whole from consultants to major banks in London, our funders also did their own due diligence.”
Credu and its predecessor, the community interest company, has also based itself on a different employment approach.
Cllr Clarke said: “We’ve tried to use a different type of employment approach, working with people that have been involved in the community.
“It’s about empowering people – this is definitely not about being paid for 10 hours and working 14.
“It was felt when you’re in work you can’t leave your family life and pick it up when you walk back through the door at the end of the day.
“There’s a job to be done and you’ve got a life to lead – we want your family life to be successful and your business life to be successful.”
The maritime centre has not all been plain sailing.
Cllr Clarke said: “We knew at the beginning it would be a substantial undertaking and would take a significant amount of time – what we didn’t know was it would take six years, we thought three.”
A large part of the project taking twice as long to take shape as first thought was down to the design of the maritime centre which first gained planning permission back in 2016.
The plans had to be totally redesigned due to the overall cost being over the limit of an European directive.
The redesign was successful with the local authority’s planning committee approving the plans in late 2018.
Cllr Clarke said: “We had followed the design brief which came from the local authority but due to the cost being over the cap we had to go back to the drawing board.
“Visit Wales and Big Lottery have been first class in all of this.”
Mr Bryant said: “While we had to start again with the building, the business plan remained the same – that was core to us.”
Delays can be costly and frustrating but the funders remained in place and it gave Credu time to develop other aspects of the business plan such as SeaQuest and Experience Porthcawl.
Credu is due to sign the lease any day for Cosy Corner which will then mean its main contractor Scott will be able to get onto site.
Funding for the project includes £2.1m from the European Regional Development Fund, £1.15m Big Lottery Funding and £600,000 from Visit Wales.Further support for the maritime centre project has come from RBS Social and Community Capital and the Development Bank of Wales.
