We’ll move on to the next item on our agenda this afternoon, which is a debate on the live music protection in Wales petition. I call on the Chair of the Petitions Committee, David Rowlands, to move the motion.

Motion NDM6362 David J. Rowlands

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

Notes the petition P-05-756 Live Music Protection in Wales which has received 5,383 signatures.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Can I say, I’m delighted to open this debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee? Earlier this year, the Petitions Committee and the Business Committee agreed to introduce a new petitions threshold whereby any petition that gathered more than 5,000 signatures would be considered for a debate here in Plenary. At the time I was a member of the Business Committee, and it is by a small quirk of fate that I, as Chair of the Petitions Committee, now stand here introducing this, the first debate on a petition to have achieved that threshold. I hope Members here today will support this innovation for the Assembly’s petitions process, which will potentially provide another route for anyone in Wales to bring their ideas and concerns directly to the Chamber. It is a splendid example of democracy in action. We, the Petitions Committee, hope that we receive a number of petitions with this level of support over the course of this Assembly.

The petition before us today was organised by Richard Vaughan and concerns the protection given to live music venues in Wales. The petition was open for signatures during April this year, and in that time it was signed by 5,383 people. The petition calls on the National Assembly for Wales to take steps to protect live music venues in Wales. Importantly, it suggests two ways of achieving this. Firstly, the petition calls for the agent-of-change principle to be introduced into Welsh planning law and guidance. The principle seeks to put the onus on the developers of new premises, whether residential or commercial, to plan adequate noise reduction measures if there is an existing business such as a music venue nearby. Secondly, the petition calls for local authorities in Wales to have the ability to recognise places as areas of cultural significance for music within the planning framework. This would then potentially have a bearing on future planning applications in the vicinity of such areas.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

Many Members here will be familiar with the specific local background to this petition, which concerns Womanby Street in Cardiff city centre. A vibrant campaign has been undertaken during the first half of this year, in response to local concerns about the implications of new developments planned in the heart of one of the cultural centres of our capital city. Womanby Street, in the centre of the city, has long been one of its foremost cultural and creative hubs—perhaps it’s most famous for the live music venue and Welsh language club, Clwb Ifor Bach. I’m sure other Members here would wish to share their own experiences, or at least some of them, of the street in their own contributions to this debate.

Earlier this year, several planning applications in and around the area and fears over the impact these could have on live music venues there prompted the establishment of the ‘Save Womanby Street’ campaign. The campaign, in turn, gave rise to this petition. This issue has been raised previously in this Chamber by my colleague on the Petitions Committee Neil McEvoy, and a statement of opinion has also been signed by a number of Members here.

Before I open this motion up to wider debate, I want to outline briefly what the committee has heard about the specific proposals made by the petitioners. The agent-of-change principle is promoted by this petition and elsewhere as a way of protecting music venues from closure. It is argued that complaints made by residents of new developments about noise levels from established music venues have been a major factor in the closure of a number of music venues across the UK in recent years. The petition argues that adopting the agent-of-change principle would help to protect existing live music venues by stipulating that anyone seeking to develop or redevelop property nearby would be responsible for mitigating the impact of that change. That means that if, for example, housing or a hotel were built next to a live music venue, it would be the developer’s responsibility to mitigate the potential impact and noise from an existing live music centre.

Supporters of the agent-of-change principle argue that it would represent an important shift from current planning policies, which hold that whoever is reported as causing a nuisance is always responsible for that nuisance. This position is held irrespective of how long the noise considered to be a nuisance has existed or whether someone has moved into the vicinity of the noise in full knowledge of it. It is also important to note that the principle operates in both directions. So, where a new music venue is proposed near an existing residential building, the agent of change, the music venue in this case, would need to ensure they included appropriate measures to reduce noise.

The Petitions Committee first considered this petition on 23 May. Given the high level of support garnered by the petition and its timely nature, the committee decided to request this debate at the earliest opportunity. The indications are that the Welsh Government has also taken notice of the strong campaigning on this issue. Shortly before the committee’s first consideration of the petition, the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs announced that she intends to revise national planning policy to support live music venues. We understand that in the review of ‘Planning Policy Wales’ taking place this summer, the Cabinet Secretary has indicated her wish for the agent-of-change principle to be explicitly referenced and also that national policy be updated to allow for the designation of areas of cultural significance.

On the face of it, this appears to be a victory for the petitioners and, potentially, a step forward for live music venues across the country. I look forward to hearing from the Cabinet Secretary and from other Members about this and how this Assembly feels we should be protecting the future of live music in Wales.

As a result of the timetable involved, we haven’t been able to undertake detailed investigations into the propositions and the Cabinet Secretary’s announcement. Therefore, we present this petition to the Assembly without making recommendations in any direction. The committee hopes that the contributions we hear from all Members today will support the Cabinet Secretary and her officials to further consider the merits of the changes proposed by the petitioners.

Can I thank my successor as Chair of the Petitions Committee for bringing this forward today? As was said earlier by my successor as Chair of the Petitions Committee, this came from a Standing Order change that allows consideration of any petition that has more than 5,000 signatures for debate on the floor of the Chamber. It’s an excellent example of the direct involvement of the public in the work of the Assembly in a Plenary session. I was Chair of the Petitions Committee at the time of our recommendation to the Business Committee of the 5,000-signature threshold and when it was agreed to ask for a debate on the petition. Can I thank the Business Committee for allowing this debate today? I would also like to thank Rhun ap Iorwerth and the Plaid Cymru group for withdrawing a debate on this issue earlier this year. I do not think that we’d have been allowed a debate on the petition if we’d had a Plaid Cymru debate six weeks ago. I think that people would have said, ‘We’ve already debated it’. So, can I honestly say thank you very much for allowing this to happen and for allowing the debate on the petition to actually take place? I and, I’m sure, the rest of the Members here really appreciate you doing that.

The petition meets all the key criteria: it has more than 5,000 signatures; it has genuine public interest; and it is a problem that is going to have to be addressed at some stage. At the Petitions Committee, we agonised over the number of signatures necessary to automatically request a debate. Set it too high and no-one will ever meet the threshold. Set it too low, and the requests will be a regular occurrence and, dare I say it, the Business Committee would not be really pleased to be receiving one every week. The number 5,000 came from the 100,000 at Westminster, and we are approximately 5 per cent of the population, and it has worked. The number has been reached, but only once, over an issue that really has engaged the public.

On live music itself, if I look at Swansea and the live music venues I attended in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Patti Pavilion is now a restaurant, the Marina Nite Spot, which was known locally Dora’s, is now closed, Top Rank closed and is currently being demolished. There have been new venues opened, but they tend to be smaller. A number of pubs and clubs provide live music. In Morriston that includes, or included up until recently, places like the Millers Arms, Morriston RFC, Ynystawe cricket and football club and Morriston golf club. Whilst welcome, these are small venues. We also have the Liberty Stadium, which has hosted Pink and the Stereophonics, and a number of other major groups. But there’s a difference, isn’t there, between 20,000 to 30,000 and 100? And that little gap there is really where we’ve lost out and lost out massively.

I don’t believe that you can have too many music venues. People like listening to live music. The opportunity should be there. It is also true that late-night live music and flats and houses do not always make good neighbours, and sports grounds sometimes have difficulties with neighbours regarding noise and the ball going into their gardens. On both I have the same answer: who was there first? If the music venue or sports pitch was there first, the developer and the people moving in knew what they were moving into. They knew what was there. It is blatantly unfair to move in and then start complaining about something that was there before the building was built, never mind before you moved in.

Even more unfair is if licensing takes that into account. If you move in next to a music venue, expect to hear music. You know what its licence is. If you do not like music or music up until the time of the licence, don’t move in there. What we cannot have is a music venue curtailed by people moving into new developments and then getting the music stopped or finished so early that people do not attend.

Conversely, you should not be able to set up a late-night music venue in the middle of a residential street. We need a system that’s fair to everybody. If it’s there, you know what you’re moving into. I’ll speak for myself: there’s a garage in front of my house. If somebody decided to build a music venue there, I’d be unhappy. But it wasn’t there when I moved in and I didn’t have a choice. When you make a choice to move in next to a music venue, then you’ve got to accept that’s what you’re moving in next to. You can’t say, ‘I’ve been here now for some time. I don’t like it.’ You knew what you were moving into. There should be no late-night licences for any new venues in residential streets, but if it exists, it shouldn’t be punished because somebody else has built houses or flats near it. That’s what’s I call ‘chwarae teg’. Thank you.

I’m very interested in this petition, actually, because it does interest me that existing Welsh national planning policy is not already interpreted in a way that protects venues that have already been cleared by planning and environmental health as not exceeding acceptable noise levels. These are businesses that they themselves have applied for planning permission or licences in the past, usually at some cost, and were accepted as being within the bounds of social acceptability when they made and succeeded with those applications.

Local authorities can already take existing sources of noise into account when deciding subsequent planning applications and they can take into account that new uses shouldn’t be introduced into an area without considering the nature of existing uses. So, I am curious about what is actually driving the need for the petition today. This is not a negative, because I think what the petition is asking for is a good thing. So, is it that there’s suddenly a need for homes that is so great that every square inch of land must be built on as quickly as possible, and that that big social imperative outweighs the future of wicked businesses who are out there to make a buck regardless of the consequences to their neighbours, old or new?

Well, on this occasion, of course, capitalism is wearing its happy face, isn’t it? We’re talking about live music, and it’s easy to make the wider cultural argument about the place of live music in our personal and community identities, the value of this art form as entertainment, through the therapeutic purposes, its cohesive force, its ability to transform an individual, and even, of course, the benefits to the local economy raise their head in this argument.

All these arguments are right. Venues are much loved for these reasons. Yes, they can be noisy, which maybe limits the kind of neighbours that you can have, but the land adjacent to these businesses will be valued accordingly. And, as a former property lawyer, I can’t stand here and argue that landowners should be prevented from making a decent profit from their investment. But I can argue that if they want to enhance the value of that land by seeking planning permission for higher value building, then they should be the ones who invest in the mitigation that allows that to happen. So, in short, why should existing businesses pay for a new neighbour to make more money?

I do have a few words of caution, however. I remember a potential housing site in mid Wales, next to a metal fabrication unit. The owner of the unit was worried because, even though he had all his relevant permits for noise levels, odour reduction, waste disposal and so on, he was nervous that he might have to take the further mitigation action should housing be permitted on the site next door, as was, indeed, the case. So, to be consistent, we need to think about the agent-of-change principle applying for businesses like that as well, surely.

Now, as it happened, the housing proposals were reduced in size and orientated away from that factory. But what would have happened if the developer had said, ‘Well, do you know what, I’m prepared to throw some money at the mitigation myself in order to have more houses. The profits I will make will more than pay for it and I want to build as close to the factory as I can. I will argue that my obligation gives me a corresponding right—if I can mitigate, the presumption will be that the planning authority must find in the favour of my development.’ That’s the argument I’m putting here.

How long will it be before landowners are looking to develop parcels of land for higher value residential use, challenging LDP zoning decisions, and relying on a planning condition to mitigate, when, actually, their land is just far from ideal for a site as a home, anyway? I’m not talking about full-scale redevelopment of brownfield sites, which I think we probably all approve of, but infill in areas that are heavily industrialised.

The second point is how well this principle rubs up against the well-established principle of ‘polluter pays’, and I think David Rowlands was talking about that. It applies to noise nuisance as much as any other kind of nuisance. The inclusion of the agent-of-change principle into planning law would be very, very welcome, indeed, but the unintended consequences and questions that arise from that also have to be worked through, I think.

The petition also asks the National Assembly to legislate for local authorities to recognise an area of ‘cultural significance for music’ within the planning framework. I just would leave it at recognition of areas of ‘cultural significance’. Why not? That would easily capture music, but also areas where there have been concentrations of artists working, or theatres, or landscapes famous for their place in film or paintings, or even the Dylan Thomas trail, which some of my constituents are hoping to engender new interest in. I don’t think they’re captured by the historic environment Act, and maybe not by conservation area status, and I don’t think they could be by an outright ban on development either.

So, in short, what I’m saying is: I support the basic premise of what’s being asked for by the petition, but can I just ask us to remember that it may not be the straightforward answer that the live music venues on Womanby Street were looking for? Thank you.

This is a good day for Welsh democracy. Where else in the world would a petition fly through the Petitions Committee and reach the floor of the legislature within months? People coming together and working together can bring about change. I’d like to thank Richard Vaughan for starting the petition. He was, of course, Plaid Cymru’s candidate in Grangetown in the recent council elections, but he’s also a composer and a conductor, so this issue of protecting live music venues in Wales is very important to him personally. It’s also very important to many people in our country, given that 5,383 people signed the petition within days—within days.

This debate is also very timely, as live music venues across Wales face the threat of closure. It’s not just a problem in Wales either, because UK Music reported that 35 per cent of live music venues in the UK have closed in the last decade, and the threats often come from developers who build new housing right next to the existing live music venues. When the inevitable noise complaints come in from the new residents, the venue is forced to close. We’ve got Coldplay in town tonight and music is in the Welsh cultural DNA. It’s the biggest expression of popular culture that there is. The issue of Womanby Street has really brought this matter to the attention of this institution, because it’s the smaller, grass-roots venues that need our attention and that need help from this Welsh Parliament.

We can’t have major events without the independent venues where musicians make a name for themselves; they have to start in the smaller venues. Womanby Street has made a name for itself. It’s the heart of live music in this city, and most of us will have spent time there watching great bands and listening to great bands in Clwb Ifor Bach and spending too much time, maybe, trying the craft ales in the pubs just down the lane.

Two live music venues have already closed. Dempseys has gone. The Four Bars Inn, upstairs, has gone. Fuel has received a noise abatement order, which is serious. Floyd’s, which used to be around the corner, had a terrible time some years ago with noise abatement and fines, and, in the end, that business closed in that venue. There’s still a club there, but it’s something different now—it’s a different business—and they built flats next to the existing club, and then complained about the noise from the club. There are two new planning applications in Womanby Street that mean the future of live music there is very much under threat, so we need to act and we need to act quickly.

I’m speaking about Cardiff because, obviously, it’s where I’m from, it’s where I live, but I know this is happening across Wales, and, from what I’ve heard, it seems that we have support from all parties here to do something, and to protect live music. The petitioners have asked for the agent-of-change principle, as colleagues have already touched on, so that we can protect those venues. And for those developers that open up new properties, build new properties, then the responsibility is on them to make that property work and not on the existing business.

The ‘area of cultural significance for music’ is also important and it really does need to be recognised in the planning system. I support that and Plaid Cymru supports that, and it seems now that the Welsh Government, finally, supports that also, which is really welcome. So, I hope we can get on with changing legislation as quickly as possible so that we can protect our live music venues in Cardiff—Womanby Street—but also all over Wales. And I think that when that legislation is passed, it’s going to be a really good day for Welsh democracy, so let’s get it done. Diolch yn fawr.

I welcome this debate and I welcome the new procedure of debating the petitions if they go above a certain number, and I think that’s a very welcome development.

Yesterday, I went along with my colleague Jenny Rathbone and the Cabinet Secretary, Lesley Griffiths, to visit Womanby Street and to meet three of the organisers behind the campaign. The street, of course, is in Jenny’s constituency, but I’d been contacted by many residents in Cardiff North, earlier in the year, who were very concerned at the prospect of the street’s live music being stifled by a potential hotel development. And after meeting those constituents and discussing it with Jenny, we did write to Lesley Griffiths, supporting the petitioners and seeking the change in the planning law—the agent of change—and also the designation of particular areas, cultural areas, in the LDP. And I’m very pleased that Lesley has responded to us so positively, and I think the campaigners who met us yesterday were very impressed with the quick response from the Welsh Government, because this change in the planning law should mean that any new residents can’t move to an area that already has a live music scene and complain about the noise to the extent that the venue gets shut down, and I think this has already happened previously in Cardiff, in particular with the closure of The Point in Cardiff Bay.

So, it was great, yesterday, to meet the campaigners, I felt, and to get a real feel for the passion they feel about live music on a day when, as has already been said, live music was really dominating the city as Coldplay were due to play the first of their two Cardiff dates in the Principality Stadium. The fact that there were 18-mile queues on the M4 with the amount of fans coming to see this band just shows how important live music is to the city’s economy and the tourist trade. I think the other point worth noting is that Coldplay first played in Cardiff as an up-and-coming band at Clwb Ifor Bach, just before they released their single ‘Yellow’ and really hit the big time. I think this is what the campaigners were telling us yesterday—that every up-and-coming band needs a small venue to start off in, and a small venue to play in. So, venues like Clwb Ifor and the Full Moon and the Moon Club, which are on this street, are the feeder venues for bands on their way up the music industry ladder, because, without them, you wouldn’t be able to have new talent coming into the industry and no place for these bands to showcase their talents.

So, I welcome the fact that the Welsh Government has acted swiftly here in Wales to change planning policy to protect live music in our cities—in areas that are part of the cultural fabric and richness of city life. I’m really pleased that the Cabinet Secretary has already confirmed—and I’m sure she will say more when she speaks later on—that ‘Planning Policy Wales’ will be updated to allow the designation of areas of cultural significance for music within local development plans all over Wales, not just in Cardiff, and I hope that there will be progress in the individual discussions that will be had with the individual local authorities. I’d also like to congratulate Jenny on the efforts she’s made on campaigning for Womanby Street, which, as I say, is in her constituency.

I’d like to thank the petitioners—the over 5,000 of them—including my constituent Norma Mackie, who submitted the petition on the steps of the Senedd at the end of May, along with Mr Vaughan. I mention her because she is a very local fan. She only lives one street away from Womanby Street and is passionate about live music. It illustrates, if you like, the geography of Womanby Street—this very narrow lane, but very tall buildings, which means that, actually, you can live one street away and not be bothered by the music in Womanby Street. So, it’s a completely ideal place. The other occupiers in Womanby Street are office developments. The Royal National Institute for the Blind has its offices there and, obviously, the night-time activities and the music in no way conflict with the normal running of the RNIB and other offices. So, I think it’s an ideal location for live music, and we need to keep it that way.

The booming Cardiff economy is very welcome in creating more jobs and investment, but it comes with risks, and those risks include overdevelopment and the potential to destroy the key reasons why Cardiff is popular as a tourist destination. For the last year for which statistics are available—in 2015—600,000 people attended music events in Cardiff. Nearly half of them were music tourists—people who were also generating income in our hotels and restaurants. A total of £50 million was generated from this music tourism, sustaining over 700 full-time jobs in the city. So, it’s not insignificant. We don’t want to repeat the mistakes that have happened elsewhere. I was brought up in Liverpool, and it is our collective shame that Liverpool City Council allowed developers to take over and bulldoze the Cavern in 1973, where The Beatles, Cilla Black and Gerry and the Pacemakers all started their careers. You have to look back and think, ‘What were they thinking of?’ So, it was replaced by a completely indifferent shopping centre of no cultural or visual merit. And yes, there is a replica created, using some of the old bricks of the Cavern, but it’s not the same as the original. It’s just like saying, ‘You can recreate Womanby Street on Clifton Street or somewhere else in Cardiff’, and I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s very much Womanby Street’s narrow lanes, in the middle of the city centre, and the lack of any residents living on that street that makes it such a popular and vibrant part of Cardiff’s night-time economy without bothering anybody.

As Julie and others have mentioned, Coldplay actually started their careers in Clwb Ifor Bach, and these small live music venues really are nurturing the talent of the future, without which people like Coldplay might never have taken off. The protest march on the last weekend of April by several thousand people really illustrates just how many people care passionately about the future of live music and their focus on the Save Womanby Street campaign.

So, I think it’s incredibly important to safeguard this important part of Cardiff’s musical heritage. We saw what happened elsewhere—for example, in the bay, The Point was put out of business because of noise complaints from residential accommodation that had been developed long after The Point was established, and so the recent planning applications for hotel and residential accommodation in Womanby Street could have eliminated the live music scene there too. So, I’m really grateful for the prompt action by the Cabinet Secretary, which I think addresses both the demands of the petition (a), by writing in May to all Welsh local authorities highlighting her intention to include an explicit reference to the agent-of-change principle into revised ‘Planning Policy Wales’, it immediately gives Cardiff council the confidence to reject applications that are in conflict with Womanby Street’s music culture, knowing that it almost certainly would be rejected if it came to an appeal. This is incredibly important for any planning authority, because otherwise the costs are huge. And (b) it also enables the council to designate areas of cultural significance for music within their local development plans. My understanding is that legislation isn’t required. It’s just planning guidance that the Cabinet Secretary’s working on, and I think that that will be sufficient. It also puts us in the forefront of protecting live music in the UK, because the Labour Party endeavoured to introduce a new clause in the Housing and Planning Bill in December 2015, but were unsuccessful. So, the amendment to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 only asked councils to take into account noise abatement, but doesn’t force new developers to pay for any mitigation that might be required were there a need for, for example, a hotel on Womanby Street to accommodate those who are taking part in the live music. That is perfectly possible, but it means that we won’t be seeing Womanby Street taken over by the developers who simply want to create a completely different atmosphere and a completely different type of activity. So, I thank the Cabinet Secretary very much for her action.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths.

Diolch, Llywydd. I note the terms of the petition and heed the calls being made to better support live music venues and the night-time economy.

I have commenced a review of ‘Planning Policy Wales’ to ensure it best fits with the intentions of our well-being goals. I’ve also stated my intention to include a clear and explicit reference to the agent-of-change principle.

The planning system should be an effective enabler of the development we need to support national, local, and community objectives. This includes protecting the vibrancy of areas like Womanby Street, which I visited yesterday with my colleagues Jenny Rathbone and Julie Morgan, and where I met several of the campaigners. These areas offer a cultural experience for customers and provide a space to foster creativity in the grass-roots music scene. I acknowledge the various challenges facing live music venues. Lots of small businesses face these, and, where we can assist through positive action, then we will do so.

I’ve listened to the specific calls to introduce a clear reference to the agent-of-change principle within our national planning policy. The changes I propose to make will better equip local planning authorities and give them the confidence to apply this principle when considering new developments.

Existing policy in ‘Planning Policy Wales’ also states two important things: new uses should not be introduced into an area without considering the nature of existing uses, and local planning authorities can consider the compatibility of uses in areas and afford appropriate protection where they consider it necessary as part of their local development plans.

In supporting the night-time economy there is a need to give particular consideration to the compatibility of different uses. Trying to sleep whilst coping with night-time noise is a very real issue. However, the night-time economy is important in economic terms as well as providing the cultural experiences and entertainment that feature highly as part of our lifestyles. We need to strike the right balance between providing homes, enabling visitor experiences, protecting live music venues, and ensuring the health and well-being of local residents.

The revised ‘Planning Policy Wales’ will go further and be more explicit about the agent-of-change principle. It will offer greater support to allow authorities to more fully protect areas of significant cultural experience for music. The different characteristics that give identity to places need to be recognised fully as part of decisions on planning applications. Where noise mitigation offers an appropriate solution, it must be implemented. This is about redressing the balance and ensuring all issues are given equal consideration.

I want to take this opportunity to clarify a few points that underpin our decision to focus on changes to ‘Planning Policy Wales’. There has been no legislative change to enshrine the agent-of-change principle into UK law. The changes proposed in England in regard to agent of change are to alter their national planning policy framework, which is their equivalent to ‘Planning Policy Wales’, and the proposals are not to change the law.

It is more expedient to embed agent of change through amendments to planning policy rather than changes to planning law. To enshrine the agent-of-change principle into law would mean it always becomes a material consideration, even where it is not relevant, and time would need to be spent to discount it. This is not the most effective way to proceed, as it is not a proportionate response.

It is not necessary to make any changes to planning law to ensure the agent-of-change principle forms part of decision making. Focusing on policy change and including this principle in national policy means it becomes a material consideration for decision makers in all cases in which it is relevant with immediate effect. This is a proportionate and expedient measure.

In a similar vein, the only reason for asking local planning authorities to include cultural designations for music in their LDPs as a matter of law would be to ensure that all LDPs include them. This is not necessary, as these issues will not be relevant in many places—for example, in smaller towns or rural locations.

Embedding this through national policy means, where it is relevant to designate areas based on evidence, local planning authorities will be able to do it through their development plans. The plan itself has statutory status and decisions will then need to be made in accordance with the plan. This is the proportionate approach needed to address these issues.

In England, the permitted development rights were changed so it was possible to change offices, which are typically occupied during the day, into blocks of flats, which are sensitive to noise during the evening and night, without the need for planning permission. In England, this has led to very significant problems for music venues and the rest of the night-time economy and they’ve rolled back these changes a little in response to the successful campaign by the Music Venue Trust. These changes were never made in Wales and local planning authorities continue to have the final say over whether planning applications from offices to flats should be approved. In England, this policy has also seen some very small homes created as a result of changes to permitted developments, reportedly some as small as 16 sq m—the so-called dog-kennel flats, 40 per cent smaller than a Travelodge room. This is not something I would want to see in Wales.

Finally, the law on statutory nuisance, as defined in the Environmental Protection Act 1990, is the same in England and Wales. It provides a basic level of protection for citizens from noise that is prejudicial to health or a nuisance. The planning system and the well-being of future generations Act require both the protection of our cultural heritage and the creation of homes that are safe and healthy for people to reside in. We cannot do the latter if we water down nuisance law.

So, the answer is not to water down people’s rights in respect of noise nuisance, but rather to address this matter through improvements to planning policy. Planning is a preventative mechanism and can seek solutions. I want to make it clear this is the basis of the changes we are putting forward. I’m confident the changes that I propose to make will strike the right balance. They will give everyone involved in the process the confidence to obtain solutions that benefit all, and support a thriving live music scene. I’ve already written to planning authorities telling them to apply the agent-of-change principle with immediate effect, and further changes will be published as part of my overall revision of ‘Planning Policy Wales’. Diolch.

I call on David Rowlands to reply to the debate.

Diolch, Llywydd. Can I thank all those who’ve contributed to this debate? And, if I may, I’d like to highlight some of the comments Members made. Mike Hedges—can I belatedly echo Mike Hedges’s comments on thanking both the Business Committee and Plaid Cymru for allowing this debate to take place? And I concur with all of his supportive comments. Suzy Davies spoke about the therapeutic value of music, and the economic value of such venues, and I agree we should also look at existing businesses and the consequence of noise they make. Neil McEvoy rightly pointed out how the unique procedure of petitions and their implications is something we in the Welsh Assembly should be proud of. Julie Morgan also added her support, having met—with Jenny Rathbone and Lesley Griffiths—the petitioners, and also rightly pointed out how important these venues are to promoting local bands. Jenny Rathbone pointed out how localised music noise can be if in the right place, and how important these venues and the music they create are to the economy of Wales. It needs only for me to thank the Cabinet Minister for her broad acceptance of the principles of agents of change, and her swift action with regard to proportionate response and to give appropriate advice to planning authorities.

To sum up, because the committee is not making recommendations at this stage, or siding in either direction, the main suggestion is that the committee takes comments back and considers what Members and the Cabinet Secretary have said following the summer recess. The committee with also, in the summer recess, seek the views of the petitioner over that period before deciding on a future course of action in the autumn. Thank you.

As somebody who spent many long, long nights in Clwb Ifor Bach, I particularly enjoyed that debate. In the 1980s and 1990s, no longer, I hasten to add.

Y cwestiwn yw: a ddylid derbyn y cynnig? A oes unrhyw Aelod yn gwrthwynebu? Felly derbynnir y cynnig yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

We therefore reach voting time, and, unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I will proceed directly to voting time.