4. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs: The National Development Framework

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:55 pm on 1 May 2018.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 3:55, 1 May 2018

I strongly support the principle of a national development plan and a strategic development plan sitting above the local development plans. I think that we too often look at areas in isolation, and for those who know the area near where I live, you have Parc Trostre and you have Fforestfach retail park, which are both three or four miles apart. They have an effect on each other, but they're dealt with by different planning authorities, and under any changes anybody's put forward in recent times, it would still be under different planning authorities. We've seen the development of a second campus in Swansea, which I think has been a tremendous building, but it actually has a much bigger effect on Swansea than it does on Neath Port Talbot, the council which by serendipity it appears in. It was a bit of land that nobody used, and they followed a stream down to get a boundary. So, I think it is really important that we do end up having a strategic overview. 

Can I go back to before the spatial plan? The spatial plan only replaced the old county plans. The county plans existed and they designated areas within a county for different usages. It's quite interesting that the county plans disappeared, because the counties' planning departments disappeared, because somebody decided that if there was a planning department in a district and a planning department in the county, there must be some form of overlap there where you can bring efficiency in by merging them. People have always wanted to merge things to bring efficiencies in; one day it will work. And we found out then that the county plans disappeared, so you didn't have a county development plan, which was very useful. I think that we do need overall development plans, because people are always affected by the area next to them, and that's not solved by the boundaries of Wales or the boundaries of council areas, however big you make them, or by the boundaries of the city regions. 

I've got two real questions. Will you be looking to designate land for forestry? One of the great failures over the last few years is that the amount of afforestation that should have taken place in Wales hasn't. Many people in this room are very keen on increasing the amount of forestry in Wales. Will you be designating areas, like the county plans used to designate areas for minerals and areas for forestry? Will that be in there so that you can have areas designated, so that we can actually have enough land available for afforestation to actually meet our plans? 

The second question is: we've now got a marine plan separate to the national development plan—why? I've come to the conclusion that the sea at every point meets land. And I'm also of the view that ports, for example, have an effect on marine; at least part of them is on land and part of them is at sea. Surely, one unitary plan covering marine and land would be better than having two plans, because I'm sure somebody in the future will be wanting to join them.