13. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Preparing our Public Services for a 'No Deal' Brexit — Civil Contingencies

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:46 pm on 22 January 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 6:46, 22 January 2019

Yes, the Member's absolutely right. We have put in place a range of engagement exercises with local authorities. It's a standing item on the partnership council, but in addition to that we've put in place a new engagement structure, the local government EU preparedness advisory panel, and we've also got an internal Welsh Government-local government EU co-ordination group. We agreed in December new governance arrangements to support local government to prepare fully for the exit from the European Union—any exit from the European Union—but obviously a 'no deal' exit is the hardest, as she's rightly said, so requires additional planning to be put in place. 

We've provided funding—£150,000-worth of funding—for the establishment of the Brexit transition support programme for Welsh local authorities through the Welsh Government's EU transition fund, and the aims of that programme are to ensure Welsh local authorities are not duplicating work in preparing for Brexit, that we ensure all local authorities in Wales are equally prepared for Brexit in key sectors, and we establish a more formalised, two-way programme of communication between local authorities and those planning for Brexit in the Welsh and UK Governments in order to co-ordinate activity.

We funded, as I said, the Grant Thornton toolkit. We know that, as of mid January, the WLGA have given specific briefings to 14 of the 22 local authorities and very shortly we'll have covered the whole pizza. We are, as I said, putting as much contingency planning in place as we can, but it's important to emphasise that there's no way to mitigate the whole of the impact of a 'no deal' Brexit.