Work on the £110m ($200m) Bluestone holiday village in Pembrokeshire, Wales has begun after a series of legal battles over the development went right through to the highest British court, the House of Lords. This has delayed the project approximately two year from the planned date.

Bluestone is expected to create 300 building and then 600 employee jobs and inject £32m ($55m) a year into the local economy. It is receiving £18.5m ($30m) in government grant aid and has raised a further £41m in finance to get started. It is expected to open from June 2008.

Work on the second phase of Bluestone including a 250m indoor snow ski slope and an ice rink at aa cost of $25m ($45m) will commence later with a proposed opening date of 2009. This would be the first Welsh indoor snow centre to open and the UK’s sixth to be operational at that time.

The first phase of the project will feature a stone-built village; 335 high quality log cabins; 30 cottages; 30 studio apartments and a water park.

Bluestone will utilise renewable energy on a commercial scale and will build an energy visitor centre, aiming to place Wales at the forefront of sustainable technology in the UK. The centre will be an important educational resource for schools and industry. Other eco-tourism initiatives include conserving and enhancing habitats, landscape, geological and archaeological resources on site; as well as promoting responsible eco-adventure through partnering off site.

Bluestone expect that the high quality holiday village will bring in up to 100,000 new high-value staying visitors annually, while the two new all-weather facilities - water world and snow centre - are each expected to attract 250,000 day visitors a year, with the capacity to accommodate a million visitors.