1. Introduction and context
This response draws on the independent evaluation of the ARFOR 2 Cymunedau Mentrus scheme in Carmarthenshire, delivered between 2022 and 2025. The scheme formed part of the wider ARFOR 2 programme, an extended pilot funded by Welsh Government to address the linked challenges of economic opportunity and Welsh language decline in Welsh-language heartland areas
Carmarthenshire County Council received an allocation of £1.125 million through the Cymunedau Mentrus workstream to deliver a grants programme supporting businesses and third sector organisations, with the dual aim of strengthening economic activity and increasing the use of Welsh in the workplace and with customers.
2. Experience of delivering the scheme
From a delivery perspective, the evaluation indicates that local authority–led delivery was effective and well regarded.
Key features of the delivery experience included:
Delivery benefited from being locally managed, allowing the scheme to align with Carmarthenshire’s wider economic and Welsh language strategies while still operating within a national framework.
3. Evident successes and positive outcomes
Economic outputs
The evaluation confirms that Cymunedau Mentrus delivered clear and measurable outputs:
Grants were particularly impactful for micro and small enterprises, where the scale of funding was sufficient to influence business investment decisions rather than simply offset marginal costs.
Welsh language outcomes
All supported projects included commitments to increase Welsh-language use. The evaluation finds evidence of:
In several cases, engagement with ARFOR encouraged businesses to treat Welsh as a strategic asset, leading to new products, services and markets that would not otherwise have been pursued.
Sectoral strengths
The strongest impacts were observed in sectors where Welsh is intrinsic to the economic activity, most notably:
In these contexts, ARFOR reinforced existing Welsh-language economic ecosystems rather than attempting to create demand where it did not already exist.
4. Additionality: did ARFOR achieve more than a standard business support grant?
A critical issue is whether ARFOR delivered additional impact beyond what could reasonably be expected from other business support grants operating in Carmarthenshire.
On conventional economic metrics, the evaluation suggests that ARFOR is not clearly distinguishable from other grant programmes. Outputs such as jobs created or safeguarded and businesses supported are standard measures used across a wide range of local and national schemes. In a county with a large and diverse business support landscape, it is difficult to demonstrate that ARFOR’s economic outputs alone represent outcomes that would not have occurred through other funding routes
The report explicitly recognises this challenge, noting that ARFOR 2 – and Cymunedau Mentrus in particular – was a relatively small intervention when set against the scale of wider economic development funding operating locally. As a result, it was never realistic to expect ARFOR to generate distinctive county-wide economic impacts when assessed solely through standard output measures such as jobs or employment stock
Where ARFOR does demonstrate clearer additionality is in its language-specific conditionality and behavioural effects. The evaluation highlights that the explicit integration of Welsh language objectives into business support is distinctive to ARFOR, compared with mainstream grant programmes
Evidence suggests that scheme requirements encouraged some beneficiaries to adopt a more proactive approach to Welsh language use than they would otherwise have done, in some cases resulting in new Welsh-language products, services and markets.
In summary, ARFOR’s economic additionality is difficult to evidence using conventional metrics, but its language additionality is more credible, particularly where Welsh is central to the business model rather than peripheral.
5. Limitations and challenges
The evaluation is clear about the limits of what ARFOR achieved:
6. Areas for future development
The Carmarthenshire experience suggests several lessons for future policy design:
7. Concluding remarks
Overall, the evaluation suggests that ARFOR’s principal contribution in Carmarthenshire lies less in its conventional economic outputs, which are comparable to other grant schemes, and more in its role as a pilot testing how economic development and Welsh language objectives can be aligned at business level.
If ARFOR is judged primarily on jobs and business counts, its impact is difficult to separate from the wider business support landscape. Its added value is strongest where it influenced business behaviour, language use and sectoral development in areas where Welsh is a genuine economic asset. This distinction between economic additionality and language additionality is central to understanding both the achievements and the limitations of the programme.
The Carmarthenshire evaluation demonstrates that while ARFOR delivered conventional economic outputs, these are not materially different from those produced by other business support schemes, and there is no demonstrable impact on migration or population retention
Future design must therefore focus on what ARFOR can credibly influence.
ARFOR should be designed explicitly as a targeted retention programme, not a general business support grant scheme
Should future commitment be realised, we would wish for the broad objectives of the previous Arfor programmes be refocussed, prioritised and simplified into one primary objective of retaining and attracting Welsh-speaking, economically active people in Carmarthenshire.
A programme that centred on the following would be welcomed as these interventions could provide more tangible benefits to the area as well as measurable outcomes
Key delivery actions
Fund only roles that:
Prioritise roles suitable for people early in their career or with families.
Support employers to create:
Targeted support for: