Introduction
Our starting point
Towards a more prosperous Denbighshire is our ambitious and exciting new growth strategy to support the County’s future economic development. It emerged from a detailed and transparent process with extensive stakeholder engagement across the public, private and third sectors. Maintaining this partnership as the focus shifts to implementation will be crucial; it will require a collective effort from partners inside and outside the County to achieve our shared ambitions. As well as overseeing delivery, a partnership is essential in tracking progress and celebrating our successes through robust monitoring and evaluation.
Towards a more prosperous Denbighshire presents our long- term vision for creating a more prosperous Denbighshire and a local economy that is increasingly resilient and competitive, skilled and enterprising, and famous for its genuinely distinctive places and experiences. The strategy is designed to look outward and make the most of new opportunities across North Wales and beyond.
Summary of economic performance
Denbighshire is a predominantly rural county with around 97,000 residents. The local economy has c.3,500 businesses, generating around £2bn in economic output annually. However, our economy has underperformed on Gross Value Added (GVA, a key measure of an economy’s overall performance) and employment compared to the Wales and UK averages over recent decades.
The County also faces a stubbornly persistent and significant productivity gap. Productivity (measured by GVA per filled job) was £44,900 in 2022, equivalent to c. 73% of the UK average. More worryingly, this gap has only narrowed slightly over the past 15 years. This is the single biggest challenge facing the Denbighshire economy and is a clear area of focus for the new strategy.
Denbighshire also face challenges related to:
- a declining working-age population and lower rates of economic activity, as well as a limited supply of higher level skills
- relatively low growth in business numbers compared to the Wales and UK averages
- infrastructure constraints in relation to north-south transport connectivity and ultrafast broadband
- pockets of deeply entrenched deprivation, particularly in Rhyl.
Encouragingly, we are making progress towards Net Zero, although there is more work to do on this key agenda.
Opportunities for the Strategy
Denbighshire have an outstanding natural environment and rich Welsh heritage and culture, contributing to our important visitor economy and highly distinctive offer. To sustain this, the partnership must:
- respond to the challenge of town centre decline
- be alert to the implications of the Welsh Government’s proposed visitor levy, and the potential establishment of a new Clwydian Range and Dee Valley national park.
The optics and photonics cluster at St Asaph Business Park - centred around Prifysgol Wrecsam/Wrexham University’s OpTIC Technology Centre – is our key knowledge economy asset. However, additional investment in high quality premises and innovation support is needed to support the cluster’s next phase of growth and create more high skilled jobs for our residents.
There are also exciting opportunities to enhance Denbighshire’s external profile and expand our wider partnership working to help attract businesses and jobs in higher value sectors. This relates to the North Wales Growth Deal, but also the Welsh Government and across the border into north west England.