Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 19 February 2019.
I thank Helen Mary Jones for that important point. She's quite right in saying that the report did put an emphasis on the availability to community councils of qualified and independent advice from their clerks. I spent last evening, Llywydd, at the meeting of Pentyrch community council in my constituency. I visit it once every year, and it's a very successful community council. Part of its success is that it makes sure that it devotes some resource to sending its clerk on the most up-to-date training courses, making sure that person is really well equipped to provide them with the advice that they need. As a Government, we are putting some additional funding into assisting local community councils to be able to access those training courses for their staff, and we will work through One Voice Wales, the umbrella organisation for town and community councils, to try to encourage more councils to take up the offer that is now there for them.