Plans for an interactive screen in Builth Wells will go ahead, council decides

An interactive screen will be coming to Builth Wells soon, after the council agreed to go ahead with the project.

The council thought an interactive screen and map would give residents and visitors easy to access, up-to-date and clear information.

The town council secured £83,000 from the UK Governments Pride in Place Impact Fund, which is co-ordinated and distributed on their behalf by Powys County Council.

The fund is aimed at enhancing the physical environment in public spaces, and Town Centre revitalisation.

Town clerk Louise Hammond obtained the funding for three projects which met the application criteria.

One of the projects is to provide an interactive screen and map to significantly enhance the visitor experience by introducing modern, interactive signage that provides clear, engaging and current information about the town to support growth in tourism and the local economy.

The idea was that it would act as a central information point, supporting both casual visitors and planned tourists, while reducing reliance on printed materials and improving overall accessibility to information.

The council had considered where the screen could be positioned in the Groe and the council was told it would cost about £15,000 with groundworks and electrical works too.

But at August's meeting Mrs Hammond said she had received some advice about the potential on-going maintenance and management costs of the project.

County Councillor Jeremy Pugh said community support would be willing to update the screens.

Mrs Hammond said; “The proposed board isn't simply a screen where information is uploaded once and then left alone. The software supports multiple touchscreen sections, events, local business adverts, maps, PDFs, videos, websites, QR codes, social feeds and other regularly changing information. Content can also be scheduled to appear and expire automatically.

“In practice, someone will need to continually gather information from businesses, community organisations and local attractions, write or edit content so it is suitable for visitors, source and prepare images, design pages, graphics and advertisements, add new events and remove expired ones, keep opening times, contact details and other visitor information current, add and update local businesses, check that links, QR codes, maps and embedded information continue to work, organise the information so the touchscreen remains straightforward to use, schedule seasonal or time-sensitive information, respond to requests for changes from businesses and the Council, make sure the overall design remains consistent rather than becoming a collection of unrelated pages and liaise with the screen provider if there are software or technical issues.

“There is then the advertising side of the project as well.

“My concern would be that we purchase a very capable piece of equipment but underestimate the amount of work required to keep it useful. It would be a shame to make that investment and then find that, after the initial enthusiasm, nobody has sufficient time to keep the information current.”

At September's meeting, Mrs Hammond said she had spoken to the clerk at Rhayader Town Council which has an interactive screen. But she said it only has about six pages and is much less detailed but it still takes a lot of administration work.

She then sought advice from Pixelhaze Studio, a Builth Wells-based web design agency. They said they could initially upload content and updates for a charge of about £4,000.

Deputy Mayor Councillor Gwyn Davies said: “I think we should go ahead and pay Pixelhaze Studio to upload the content and update it for us using the grant money. We are not always going to get a grant for such a project in the future. We have got the £17,000 grant so lets use it.”

Members said the maintenance of the system could be considered as a town project in the future as it may encourage people to the town.

Members unanimously agreed to go ahead with the project and ask Pixelhaze Studio to upload the content for them.