4. What advice will the Cabinet Secretary give to local councils that are facing service cuts? OAQ52691

I recognise the pressures on local authority budgets and the difficult decisions councils have to make. We will continue to engage with local authorities to address the challenges of austerity together in the wake of the budget that has been given to us. It is more important than ever that authorities engage local people on local priorities and in those decisions.

Thank you for that response. Of course, you will know as well as I do that the reality is that councils are facing the very difficult position of cutting services on the one hand and increasing council tax on the other, and Conwy council is the latest authority to have talked about increases of up to 11 per cent while, simultaneously, there are hardly any non-statutory services left to cut.

With councils on their knees and more cuts on the horizon next year, and given what’s happened to some authorities in England, such as Northampton, where they have failed to continue to deliver front-line services, can I ask whether the Welsh Government has a process in place to deal with such a situation if it were to arise in one of the local authorities of Wales? Would you be prepared for such a situation?

I wish to emphasise that I agree with your analysis that authorities are facing an extremely hard time, and one of the most difficult jobs in politics currently is that of leading local authorities—I have no doubt about that at all or about the challenges that they face. But may I say this, too: the policies that led to what occurred in Northampton are not being implemented in Wales. In Wales, we have a different policy, direction and philosophy—a philosophy that appreciates local authorities and decisions taken locally, and which appreciates the concept of taking decisions at a local level and the delivery of public services.

But, to answer your question with regard to the statute book, yes, we do have the powers necessary should a council collapse. We do have such powers, but I’m not certain that we have each of the powers required if that did not happen. It’s something that I have discussed with the—. We have the working group on the reform of local government, which has met in the last week, and one of the things we discussed is what would happen should a council face a challenge that it cannot resolve and is therefore in dire need of support. Whether we have each of the necessary powers, I’m not certain. That is something that we will address during the discussions on the next Bill, which will be introduced in February.

Cabinet Secretary, you've just acknowledged the difficult challenges that local authorities have across Wales, and I appreciate that, but rural local authorities receive the deepest cuts to their revenue support grant year on year. Powys County Council, for example, has received the joint deepest cut for the past 10 years. You will appreciate the challenges that rural local authorities have in delivering services across a large geographical area and the extra costs associated with that. So, what positive news can you give to rural local authorities in terms of the revenue support grant?

I'll make announcements on the revenue support grant next week. I understand the points that have been made, and I do certainly understand the pressures facing many rural authorities across the whole country in continuing to deliver excellent services across sometimes very sparsely populated geography. But I will say this to him: I was also sitting in two Valleys council offices last week, where I was told in no uncertain terms, with some very colourful language, that it was Valleys local authorities that had suffered the worst cuts and why this was. 

The impression I get, speaking to people across the whole country, is that there is this sense of, 'The cuts are harsher here than there.' What I will say to people, wherever they happen to live, whether it's in an urban area or a rural area, or north, south, east or west, is that we do have a way of delivering funding to local authorities that I believe is fair. We have met local authorities in two sessions in the last two weeks, in what we call the distribution sub-group and the finance sub-group—there are many of these meetings throughout the year—and I have not heard any request to fundamentally change the formula and change the way of funding.

The finance Secretary spoke at the WLGA council meeting last week and I do not believe that any request was made there to change the way in which we fund local authorities. Presiding Officer, we've had this debate on a number of occasions in this Chamber. I tell the Conservative group that their councillors do not want Conservative policies in Wales; they are delighted to have a Welsh Labour Government delivering support and funding to local authorities that Conservative councils in England could only dream of. So, when I meet Conservative councils, what they tell me is that what they need is a Labour Government.