Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:33 pm on 7 June 2017.
Well, I thank Mike Hedges for that question. He’s quite right that the White Paper does propose new regional arrangements exercised through what the White Paper calls ‘joint governance committees’. That model is the one most familiar to local government. It’s the way that cross-border service arrangements are most often currently delivered in Wales. They do draw on other models, such as police authorities in the past, where councillors from different component county councils—I was one, he may well have been one—were sent to represent our county councils on a joint board and then were held accountable to the local authorities from which we proceeded. So, he’s right to say there is a wealth of history in doing things in this way in Wales, and the key to doing them is to make sure that those people who sit on those boards are directly able to account for the decisions they take to their local authorities and to the populations that have elected them.