Carmarthenshire County Council plans to spend up to £1.2m extending Ysgol Pontyberem whether or not it closes Ysgol Bancffosfelen, the village school whose children it wants to send there.
The council says in the closure proposals going to cabinet on Monday that it “currently plan[s] to progress with this expansion in accommodation whether the proposal to close Ysgol Bancffosfelen is implemented or not”.
Parents in Bancffosfelen had already accused the council of deciding before asking. A parent governor at neighbouring Ysgol Pontiets said this month the Pontyberem grant showed the decision “has apparently been taken even before the consultation itself has begun”.
Cabinet will decide on Monday whether to open formal consultation on closing Bancffosfelen, Ysgol Carwe, Ysgol Pontiets and Ysgol Blaenau, all from 31 December 2027. If it agrees, the four consultations run from 10 November to 22 December.
Four questions from the valley open Monday’s meeting
Before cabinet gets to the papers it has four questions from the Gwendraeth Valley to answer. Cllr Tyssul Evans asks whether any cabinet member has visited Ysgol Gwynfryn Pontiets “to see for yourselves the condition of parts of the school buildings”, or relied entirely on officers’ reports “before coming to such an irreversible decision”.
Paul Hill asks what new evidence lies behind what he calls the “reported decision to withdraw the proposed rebuild” of Carway’s school, and whether cabinet will publish it. Tudur Jones, chair of governors for the Carwe, Gwynfryn and Ponthenri federation, asks how long the Gwynfryn and Ponthenri buildings can keep taking the valley’s children.
Aled Davies asks the question the council has now half answered: what the link is between expanding Pontyberem and closing Bancffosfelen.
Governors at the three valley schools have already asked Education Minister Anna Brychan for a national halt on Welsh-medium closures. The Welsh Government replied that school places are “a matter for local authorities”.
Scrutiny councillors sent the Bancffosfelen papers back over “inaccuracies”
Bancffosfelen’s document is the only one of the four to have been rewritten on the way to cabinet. On 13 October the council’s education scrutiny committee refused to pass it, citing concerns about “the accuracy, ambiguity and currency of the information”.
Pupil numbers had to be corrected out loud during the meeting, and one councillor said the deficit figures were out of date. The committee also objected to the weight put on a 2018 Estyn inspection, when the school was inspected again this year and the report is due.
Education cabinet member Cllr Glynog Davies told the committee the leadership concerns Estyn raised in 2018 had been dealt with through the school’s federation, and that there were no current concerns about the quality of education or leadership at the school.
A special meeting on 23 October approved a revised version. References to the school’s leadership have been taken out, and the five-year building bill has fallen from £727,321 to £616,424.
Officers also accepted that the school’s published capacity of 98 places will drop to 86 once the condemned parts of the building are taken out of use, which cuts the headline figure of half its places standing empty. No demolition has been scheduled, councillors were told, and the cost would come out of the budget for maintaining every other school in the county.
One councillor asked why Bancffosfelen was picked “when other schools within the authority had higher surplus capacities and larger deficits”. The council has promised the committee a list of every school’s viability assessment.
Pontyberem extension: Welsh Government money applied for, council cash as the fallback
The Pontyberem extension, costed at £900,000 to £1.2m, is being put to the Welsh Government’s Sustainable Communities for Learning Welsh-language grant, with a business case under way and ministers said to have backed it in principle. If the grant fails, the council says the money will come from its own capital programme.
Asked at scrutiny whether that prejudged the consultation, officers said the extension was being pursued “independently” to deal with rising numbers in the Pontyberem area and did not depend on Bancffosfelen closing.
Ysgol Bancffosfelen has 48 pupils. Its hall has been declared structurally unsafe and all teaching has moved into the original 1877 building, where the council reports persistent damp, mould and water coming in.
What Monday means for Carway, Pontiets and Blaenau
The other three schools cleared scrutiny on 13 October, Blaenau unanimously, though councillors complained about being handed four closures in a single sitting and about children being moved in the middle of a school year.
At Carway, the council has confirmed the classroom block is to be demolished, and replacing two classrooms alone was costed at £1.2m.
The village’s 58 pupils have been taught at Ysgol Gwynfryn in Pontyates since August 2025. Their own building shut over safety fears that month.
If the school closes, its catchment would be merged into Trimsaran’s rather than Gwynfryn’s.
Pontiets’ 21 pupils would go to Ysgol Ponthenri. The council has decided the Pontiets and Carway plans are “not related proposals” under the School Organisation Code, meaning each can go ahead without the other, even though the two schools and Ponthenri share one governing body.
Ysgol Blaenau’s 28 pupils would move to Ysgol Gymraeg Penygroes or Ysgol Llandybie. Llandybie is one of four schools the council wants to switch to Welsh-medium teaching.
Officers told scrutiny Blaenau’s deficit, now £287,857, grew after governors appointed a headteacher “despite previous advice from the Education Department regarding affordability”.
Closing all four would save about £140,000 a year in running costs, the council says. It also expects to sell the three empty buildings for about £475,000 between them, and says redundancies “cannot be completely ruled out”.
How to respond, and why Christmas week matters
If cabinet agrees on Monday, anyone can respond until 22 December by email to MEPConsultations@carmarthenshire.gov.uk, by letter to Owain Lloyd, Director of Education and Leisure, County Hall, Carmarthen SA31 1JP, or through the online survey for each school.
Responses at this stage are not formal objections. Those come later, in a 28-day window after a statutory notice, and the final decision would go back to cabinet in the new year.
Cabinet meets at County Hall in Carmarthen at 10am on Monday 2 November and is streamed on the council’s website. Ysgol Meidrim and Ysgol Y Fro close under the same programme at the end of December.
The county’s schools are heading for a combined £16.4m deficit by next spring, according to the council’s own finance papers.
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