Since being elected to the Town Council in 2019 I’ve had the privilege of chairing the Community, Markets and Tourism Committee.

We have responsibility for managing these important areas and I like to think we’ve made some progress over the past three years with a range of projects that have either recently come to fruition or are due to be delivered in the coming months.

Most of them have come about through the Tourism Strategy I prepared back in 2019.

This has seen us employ a Tourism Manager who has been able to help deliver the strategies priorities including new town maps, social media marketing, the Equinox Festival, a revamped Tourism website, a digital museum and (imminently) digital touch screen Tourism Information points as well as some new Christmas lights.

One of my other priorities was to try and achieve these new objectives by attracting external funding as it’s often available and I don’t think it’s fair to put more of a burden on us all through increases to Council Tax.

Of the projects I’ve just mentioned more than £70,000 came from external sources, a fact that I wanted to bring to your attention as our administrative team have done a fabulous job making this happen.

Many of our businesses rely on tourism, and while the cost of living crisis will mean many of us have significantly less disposable income we still need to prepare to welcome visitors.

If people have less money to spend on exotic holidays they may be more inclined to spend a weekend closer to home, and we want them to come to Ross.

However, all this good work will count for nothing if we don’t see action to protect our greatest asset, our river.

If the Wye continues its rapid decline then the knock on impact to our tourism industry will be devastating.

Algae blooms caused by excess phosphorus are suffocating our river and sadly a request to designate the Wye catchment a Water Protection Zone was denied by the government earlier this year.

Recent evidence from citizen scientists shows that much of the blame may lie with the intensive poultry farms that have increased production dramatically along the Wye over the last decade.

We need to see government action immediately or we are in real danger of losing our magnificent river and everything it brings to our community.