Summer Sports - Cricket & Bowls Carmarthenshire County Council
Going mobile - at the double
Necessary budget cuts have brought about major changes in the way that Carmarthenshire County Council looks after the twenty summer sports turf surfaces under its control. Michael Bird reports on a move that has seen the majority of the county’s bowling greens and cricket grounds lose their resident groundsman to be replaced by two dedicated and skilled mobile teams
by and within three local government areas; namely Carmarthen District Council, Dinefwr Borough Council and Llanelli Borough Council. At that time, these three local authorities
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were constituents of the administrative county of Dyfed, which had been created out of the ancient Welsh counties of Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire. Following the Local Government Act of 1972, the three counties merged in April 1974 to create Dyfed County Council, which was headquartered in Carmarthen.
58 I PC AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2014
t was a very different picture twenty and more years ago when local authority services within the present- day county of Carmarthenshire (Welsh name: Sir Gaerfyrddin) were delivered
Stretching from Aberystwyth at its northernmost point down to Llanelli in south-west Wales, Dyfed County Council covered an area of around 2,230 square miles and had a population close to 320,000 when it was formed in 1974. On 1 April 1996, twenty-two years to the
day after its creation, Dyfed County Council was officially broken up under the terms of the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994. The three administrative county councils
that emerged from the dissolution of Dyfed followed closely the borders of the original three counties of Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire, the latter being renamed Ceredigion by its new local authority. The third largest county in Wales behind Powys and Gwynedd, Carmarthenshire saw
its three former districts of Carmarthen, Dinefwr and Llanelli brought together in 1996 to form a unitary authority which provides all local government services in a county covering close to 1,000 square miles with a population of around 185,000. The main population centres of Carmarthenshire lie towards the southern, coastal side of the county, the dividing line being marked by the A40 trunk road, built originally in the 1920s to connect London with Fishguard.
North of the A40, the landscape is well-
wooded and rugged with a very low population. There are no towns, only a few small villages and hamlets. Although steeped in rugby history, thanks mainly to the exploits of Llanelli RFC and other vibrant town, village and community
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