7. Will the Minister make a statement on the performance of Welsh councils? OAQ(5)0021(FLG)

I thank the Member. Local authority performance data for 2015-16 were published on 7 September. They showed that performance had improved for 65 per cent of comparable indicators over the previous 12 months. The gap in performance between authorities had also narrowed for over half of the indicators.

I thank the Minister for that response. I think we’ve seen local authorities doing incredibly well with diminishing funds. The local government data unit’s details on council performance was, I found, very interesting. I can, however, find no evidence that larger authorities are performing better than medium or small authorities. Can the Minister find that evidence from the data?

If the Member is suggesting that there is no inevitable connection between the size of a local authority and its performance, then he’s obviously right. Large authorities do well on some things and small authorities do well on some things. There is no inevitability about it. That’s not to say, I think, that there are not some aspects where being able to draw on a wider population and a wider number of staff, for example, may not help to create greater resilience in services.