Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 2:56 pm on 14 February 2018.
Can I thank the Member for drawing attention for the communities scheme in the landfill disposals tax? It is a very important part of the way we are doing things in Wales, and members of the Finance Committee took a particularly keen interest in it. The fact that we have a five-mile zone that now includes waste transfer stations, as well as landfill sites, was one of the changes that was made to the scheme. Our colleague Mike Hedges was particularly influential in advocating that, and Joyce Watson will be particularly glad, I know, to know that that means that there are now 16 waste transfer stations in her region, where communities will be able to benefit from the scheme who previously had no benefit from it at all. The WCVA has been selected as the body that will oversee the scheme. We expect the first applications to it to come in in the late spring of this year, and there will be a period between now and then in which a fresh burst of publicity about the scheme and the three essential purposes for which it is available are drawn to the attention of groups that might wish to make such an application.