Local Government Reform
Janet Finch-Saunders
Cabinet Secretary, I was going to raise the question of responses coming in with regard to voluntary mergers, and whether any local authorities had actually responded and wanted to come forward with voluntary mergers, which are a large part of your forthcoming local government reform in terms of looking for efficiency savings. Having only received one response—just one out of 22 local authorities—how do you intend to actually get stuck in now? We’ve been in disarray over the last three years in terms of local government reform. It doesn’t look to me that there’s an appetite to engage with you, having had only the one response. Therefore, how do you intend now to actually go forward and work with our local authorities to ensure that we’re not keeping our front-line workers and our elected members in a vague situation where no one knows what’s happening? I’m really disappointed to learn that we’ve only had one response.
Mark Drakeford
I’m not disappointed, Llywydd, in the sense that the closing date for the consultation isn’t until 11 April. I’m absolutely confident that we will have a large number of responses from right across Wales by the closing date. There were two specific questions that the Member raised. We’ve received no formal request on the voluntary mergers front as yet. Frankly, with local government elections on the horizon, I wouldn’t have anticipated that any local authority would have made such a proposal with only a few weeks still to go. I will repeat what I’ve said in the White Paper—that where local authorities do come forward with proposals for voluntary merger, the Welsh Government wouldn’t look to be neutral on that but would look to support them where we could to try to bring those proposals to fruition. As to the Member’s final point, which I’ve now managed to forget in my answer—.
Janet Finch-Saunders
It was about engagement really.
Mark Drakeford
Apologies. We were engaged very much with local authorities to encourage them to make sure that they do make those submissions, but it will be in their own best interests to do so, and that’s why I feel confident we will see a far larger number over the next few weeks.