Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 5 July 2017.
Well, Chair, there are—and quite properly—established procedures that govern the way that Welsh Ministers can intervene when things go astray in local government. That often relies on advice from the regulators, including the Wales Audit Office, and where we have had to intervene, where there have been failing education departments or failing social services departments, those protocols and those ways of doing things I think have generally been effective. They’ve allowed us to identify the places where intervention is needed, and very importantly, they include a pathway out of intervention as well. So, where local authorities are able to demonstrate that they have put right the things that had been identified, then we’re able to withdraw and allow them to resume those responsibilities, and we see that being done successfully at the level of individual services. And in the case of Ynys Môn, in the case of the council as a whole, a successful recovery by that local authority. What I would say to Gareth Bennett is that I think it is very important to learn the lessons from that and, where we have other instances where processes may appear to go on for too long and be difficult to reach a resolution, then we need to look back at that and see whether those processes need to be tightened up and, where they rely on the ability of Welsh Government to intervene, to make sure that those circumstances are clear and cannot be avoided.