Town and Community Councils

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:07 pm on 13 March 2018.

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Photo of Janet Finch-Saunders Janet Finch-Saunders Conservative 2:07, 13 March 2018

Thank you. Over the past seven years, I've had many concerns raised with me regarding the functions of community and town councils, and in that time also I've raised them here. There have been two other reviews, so we're now finding ourselves in the middle of a review going forward.

Now, the Wales Audit Office has found 65 community councils have not even yet adopted a code of conduct for members—99 unable to provide evidence that they maintain and publish a register of interests. Eighty-one failed to comply with the statutory timetable for publishing audited accounts, 260 submitted annual returns that were incomplete or contained simple errors, and 108 do not have a website and have not made other arrangements to publish information, and we know that 81 per cent of town and community council seats last year were uncontested or vacant.

Now, I and many others consider community councils to be a very important level in our five layers, currently, of democratic governance. How can we be assured, First Minister, that you will actually show some sort of involvement in this and that this review will actually deliver a new way of moving forward for our community councils so that our residents and our community councillors can be assured that all those relevant processes are in place in terms of transparency, democratic accountability and financial probity?