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.