4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the regeneration of Pontypridd town centre? OAQ53051

Yes. The First Minister recently visited Pontypridd and witnessed the significant progress being made in regenerating the town. These are important town centre schemes, which continue to benefit from Welsh Government support and investment.

Well, thank you for that answer. Over the past few years, Welsh Government resources have enabled the Taff Vale precinct to be purchased, support for the business bid in Pontypridd town centre to allow the regeneration of businesses and give them a greater say in the operation of the town, the work with the European funding, the lido, the pedestrianisation, the bypass, and crucially, I think, the decision to move Transport for Wales in there—the town is now regenerating at a pace, and there are further plans for that regeneration. Now, it seems this is partly based on the actual partnership of Welsh Government, the local council and local representatives working together for regeneration. Bearing in mind the issue around the regeneration of our town centres, what lessons do you think there are that can be learned from the way in which Pontypridd is now regenerating and beginning to become a very vibrant, modern town with all sorts of new businesses and opportunities, for other towns in Wales?

Yes, I think it’s an excellent example. I had the privilege of being there when the first bulldozer arrived on site, with the Member himself, and we had one of those delightful photographs, Llywydd, where we're all wearing unsuitable personal protective equipment for the purposes of the photograph. The Member, I'm sure, looked lovely in it; it's not a good look for myself. [Laughter.] It’s been a phenomenal success since then. At that point in time there was an eyesore in the middle of the town, and it was a very poor-looking centre. But now, it’s completely different. I think that that's absolutely right.

And the Member's right to say that this is largely because we've had a targeted regeneration investment programme, which commenced earlier this year—a £100 million capital investment programme running for three years to support regionally prioritised regeneration projects such as this. Pontypridd is identified as a regional priority area, and officials are working very closely with the local authority on a number of projects. So, I think that collaborative approach is essential to understand the place, if you like, because one size certainly doesn't fit all, and you can see that in Pontypridd and other areas that have been successful.

I'm very fond myself of the BID initiative—Swansea was one of the first business improvement districts. It's been very successful in pulling small businesses together across the piece, and they're to be recommended for town centres that don't yet have them.

We've got a town centre loans fund of £27.595 million currently supporting town centre regeneration in 17 different areas of Wales. Rhondda Cynon Taf has got £1.8 million from the fund for the towns of Pontypridd and Aberdare. And we’re also supporting investment in public libraries via the museums, archives and libraries division’s capital programme. RCT got a transformation fund grant, for example, for the new Taff Vale library in Pontypridd.

What’s nice about that is that it’s a mixed development. So, you have some office buildings there, you've got some regeneration, you've got a nice feeling of buzz around the city, you've got some public services, you've got a nice feeling of life coming back into the town centre. So, I think the Member’s absolutely right: it is a very good project to show what can happen when you take into account the particular character with a place-based approach.

Leader of the house, in the Chancellor’s recent budget, he made available £900 million to alleviate business rates in England. In Pontypridd and other town centres across my electoral region, business rates come up time and time again as being an obstacle to regenerate those high streets and give confidence to people to invest in them. The Chancellor’s initiative of £900 million will see businesses with a rateable value of up to £51,000 benefit from this money over two years. What assessment has the Government taken here of the consequentials that will flow from that announcement, and will it make that money available to businesses here in Wales to alleviate the burden of business rates that are so cumbersome on the development of town centres the length and breadth of South Wales Central?

Well, we agree that business rates are one of the main levers that you can use as a Government to make sure that SMEs take their rightful place. We have a series of made-in-Wales schemes for that, which are very generous. And I don't think that one size fits all, so what we need to do is look in Wales, as I say, at a place-based approach, and we need to give local authorities the discretion to ensure that the rateable regime in their area fits the place that they're looking at. So, for example, what might be okay in the centre of Cardiff or Swansea will certainly not be okay in Taff Vale or Pontypridd, just to use two examples. And so, I'm very keen that we look to see what discretion we can have in the rates system in order to build the place-based approach that we know works.