General Election 2024: What voters want and candidates running in the Clwyd East constituency

• ITV Cymru Wales correspondent Carole Green travels across Clwyd East to meet candidates and voters.

The cost of living, the tourism industry and sea water quality are some of the key issues facing voters in North East Wales.

The new Clwyd East constituency encompasses beautiful countryside, charming market towns and the seaside - attracting visitors from far and wide every year.

Politically, this area has ebbed and flowed back and forth between the two big parties. The 2019 election turned a sea of blue, but Labour will be hoping to turn that tide back on 4 July.

ITV1’s Sharp End met candidates and voters, who will be voting for the first time within the new electoral boundaries.

Llangollen is a town which relies heavily on tourism for its local economy. So what do voters there need from their future MP?

Joanne Harry, who runs a fudge and ice cream shop in the town, says the cost of living has had the biggest effect on her and her customers.

She said: "I only started here last year. There's definitely a lot less people this year than there was last year."

So what would help a small business like hers?

"Taxes to go down. VAT to go," she said. "There's a lot of shops empty now and that's down to people not being able to pay the rates."

Tom Taylor, trust manager at Llangollen Railway, echoes this.

"Tourism is a sort of a microcosm of the wider society," he said.

"So I think, from a political perspective, we're looking for that wider societal cost of living agenda.

"We're acutely aware that if people haven't got enough money in their pocket, you don't necessarily want to go to a tourist attraction. Our numbers are not back to pre-Covid levels. We're not scared yet, but we're we do need to understand it a lot better."

Reform UK candidate Kirsty Walmsley is making Llangollen her home and says her party has plans to improve the economy and help businesses like these recover.

She agrees that voters are most concerned about the cost of living crisis.

"People are really feeling the pinch," she said. "And I think what they're looking for is an alternative political party that can help get the economy boosted, get the economy moving again.

"We want to raise the income tax threshold to £20,000, which would actually free seven million people from paying income tax.

"So that would make a real difference to the amount of money people have in their pockets that they can spend in these beautiful shops here in Llangollen and across the constituency."

Named for St Winefride’s well, still a site of pilgrimage, the market town of Holywell’s more recent past has been one of industry. Now, like many other small towns, its high street is struggling.

Danny Inskip, who has run businesses in the town for the past two decades, said: "I think a lot of the shops are struggling in the town because of the footfall and they've still got the big bills to pay, like us."

Shopper Janice Hodgkinson has lost faith in politicians and the system as a whole.

"I don't think it matters who gets into power," she said.

"I think that they're putting the wrong people into the job. If you look at all our past prime ministers, they haven't really done much for the country so I'm not voting for that reason and my husband's not voting either. We've just got no faith in the government at all."

The Labour Party’s candidate Becky Gittins grew up in the area. She’s hoping to rebuild voters’ faith in their representatives.

She said: "My period of time speaking to local people and campaigning didn't begin three and a half weeks ago. We've been talking to people across the constituency for 14 months with a recognition that faith in politics at the moment is incredibly low.

"I feel that I understand now how I might represent an area like this, but the big thing is about being visible and about listening, because there isn't one answer. There's lots of different communities across Clwyd East. They all have different concerns, but they have a lot of shared ones."

But how would she, and her party, solve some of those problems?

"The pitch nationally for the Labour Party is about growing the economy and tackling the cost of living crisis, she said.

"But for me, locally, the issue I talk about the most, is around Great British energy and Labour's green prosperity plan. I'm fed up of hearing north Wales talked about as post-industrial.

"We had coal, we had steel, and I think what we need now is to have renewables in north Wales, to have GB energy, to have those jobs that are crucial to having lower energy bills and tackling the climate crisis."

Mold is one of five market towns in Clwyd East and it has a thriving high street. It has low unemployment with access to high quality jobs, particularly in manufacturing.

Paul Pennlington is Plaid Cymru’s candidate. He says his party would be the only party in Westminster "fighting for funding for Wales".

He said: "The two larger parties have already said they're not going to do anything about funding for Wales. Obviously, we are seriously underfunded and there's a number of issues we need to look at.

"North-east Wales is possibly one the poorest parts of the UK. We have 35% child poverty, 22% in-work poverty, 18% pensioner poverty. Nothing is being offered by the main parties to address that poverty.

"One of my personal aims is to try to alleviate poverty plight. We have the policies and the plans to bring funding into Wales, which will then hopefully tackle some of that poverty."

So how would Plaid Cymru tackle poverty?

"It comes back to fair funding," Mr Pennlington says.

"If Wales is funded the way it should be, tens of billions of pounds come to Wales. We can invest that in industry, invest that in public transport, invest in education, invest in eradicating poverty - that obviously would have a great knock-on effect to the economy."

Rob Roberts was elected as a Conservative MP for the former constituency of Delyn in 2019. He lost the whip in 2020 after breaching Parliament's sexual misconduct policy, and is now running as an independent candidate in Clwyd East. After his own controversy, what message does he have for constituents who may be worried about voting for him?

"I would say that there's nothing to worry about if you look at my record and what I've actually done and delivered having been an independent for the last three years down in Westminster," he said.

"Things like fixing local issues, flooding issues down in Ffynnongroyw that have been a problem for two and a half decades. A lot of those hyperlocal things that people often take for granted."

In the north of the constituency lies the coastal town of Prestatyn.

Dr James Davies is the Conservative candidate. He was first elected as the MP for the Vale of Clwyd in 2015, and claimed the seat again in 2019, after losing the seat to Labour in 2017.

He said: "The key point is looking forward and seeing who will best deliver for north Wales and I would strongly argue that if you look at the north Wales Conservative MPs, we have really been shouting for the region and have achieved things.

"You see the (£1billion) pledge to electrify the north Wales mainline, you see the pledge for Wylfa to be built on Anglesey, the investment zone in Flintshire and Wrexham. All of those things are in our manifesto to deliver along with continued shared prosperity funding. If you look at the Labour manifesto, it's very, very absent from there."

The Conservatives have been in power in Westminster for 14 years, so why is that commitment only being given now?

Dr Davies said: "You have to remember that Conservative MPs in north Wales were elected in 2019, by and large. There has been a strong Conservative voice for north Wales since that time only.

"Prior to that, the government, of course, was dealing with the problems of the day, but it takes local champions to fight for what they need for their region, and that's what we've been doing. I've got a record that I'm proud of and I'm trying to speak to people in the areas that are new to me and communicate to them my work ethic and what I've been trying to do as MP."

Meanwhile, Prestatyn town is faring quite well with a high street full of independent shops, but business owners there say economic stability is the key and the cost of living crisis is still hitting customers in their pockets. 

Gemma Williams, who runs a cheese shop in the town, says businesses have faced many changes and increases in both prices and overheads.

"We just need a bit of help to help us keep going at the moment," she said.

Alec Dauncey is standing for the Liberal Democrats. He says Clwyd East has some of the highest rates of child poverty in the UK and his party wants to raise some taxes to help tackle this.

He says 70% of people would be better off under Lib Dems' tax arrangements and that the party offers a "manifesto for fairness".

He said: "The guarantee is that if the maximum number of Liberal Democrat MPs that are elected, they will be raising these issues and saying, 'come on, we worked out these plans, why don't you do this? That will help child poverty or if you do this that will help carers'."

The Nova Nutters meet regularly on Prestatyn’s seafront and their priorities for their next MP are clear.

One swimmer said: "Cleaner waters is top of my list because I haven't actually been in for about six weeks and I used to come sometimes twice a week, every week, right through the winter.

"I just think it's really sad that it's on our doorstep, it's completely free and we haven't been down to to do it."

Another swimmer added: "With mental health being high on the agenda, I think it's so important to have that as an option because it's fabulous for your mental health."

"I go regularly to volunteer for food bank," a third added. "There's lots of young ladies with children and older people and I don't think the people in London or Cardiff really know what's going on and how much it does cost for a pint of milk, for example."

Environmental issues like these will be important to the Green Party in this election and their candidate, Lee Lavery, hopes voters in Clwyd East will be looking at the bigger picture.

He said: "We're looking at decarbonising the energy network by 2030, which is way before the the current estimates. But we need to do that as quickly as we can to make a real difference."

So how difficult is it for the Greens to sell that message on the doorstep when people are going into this election poorer than when they went into the last one?

"I think people have got to think of this as an investment. It's an investment in the planet, in individuals and families and businesses, in that, if we don't do anything about climate change, it will affect us. It will increase prices in the future."

The question for all candidates hoping to win votes in Clwyd East is whether they can convince voters that they are the best person to draw Westminster's attention to the issues which matter to them in north-east Wales.

• You can see more in-depth coverage of the General Election - plus all the latest political discussion - on Sharp End, Mondays, at 10.45pm on ITV1. Catch up with the latest episodes here.