3. Will the First Minister provide an update on the current undertakings of the community council review panel? OAQ53452

I thank the Member for that question. The independent review panel provided its final report to the Welsh Government on 3 October 2018. In November of that year, a written statement set out actions to be taken in this calendar year and beyond in response to that report.  

Thank you, First Minister. And, of course, it was during your tenure as the local government Cabinet Secretary that you did set up that panel. The independent review panel, having presented its final report on the future roles of these councils, did think it very important that councils are to be held accountable for the public money they spend, and that they are managed well in terms of financial probity. The report by the auditor general, of course, has also highlighted the fact that the number of qualified audit opinions has doubled in 2017-18, and we now have 340 councils that that applies to. There are many recommendations in that report. In Aberconwy, we've currently got a situation of dismay that a community council in Penmaenmawr has spent over £100,000-worth of reserves over a three-year period, causing much concern, especially when some of the councillors on that council don't know how this money is being spent.

Will you state, please, by when you will act on the recommendations of the independent review panel? And will you also explain how you, as the First Minister of Wales now, will take steps to strengthen robust financial practices and transparency in the spend of council tax in terms of this, its precept? Because this particular council in Penmaenmawr had a 21 per cent precept a couple of years ago, and residents are now very, very concerned that councillors themselves don't know how this £100,000 has been spent. There are community councils across Wales, where, simply, they don't have any audit practices in place, and financial accountability is very poor. So, will you please look into this as a matter of some priority so that that independent review panel and its work become meaningful rather than meaningless?

Well, I thank the Member for that and for the interest that I know she showed in the review itself. I know from my discussions with her that she wants to see a community and town council sector that is strong and that will stand up to scrutiny as well. I share the auditor general's concern at the continuing high number of community councils that have received qualified audit opinions. Now, the Member referred to 340 of them, and I think it's fair to say, as I'm sure she will acknowledge, that the majority of those are relatively minor infractions of submissions being made a few days beyond the deadline and sometimes the correct form not being used and so on. But there are examples where the difficulty goes beyond that and where there are public interest reports that the auditor general has had to publish because of his concern at probity in the way the public money has been used, and that is completely unacceptable.

Now, the auditor general has now agreed that he will review the adequacy and effectiveness of the current audit arrangements to ensure that they are fit for this purpose, and that review will give us an opportunity to make sure that we have a regime in place that guarantees the community councils are independently accountable and that when they use public money, they do so in a way that is robust, that is defensible and that stands up to scrutiny from those outside the membership of those councils.

The First Minister will recall that one of the recommendations in the review was for the Government to explore how a pool of qualified clerks could be made available to support town and community councils in Wales. I'm very well aware that some of the smaller community councils in Mid and West Wales, the region I represent, sometimes struggle to find the right person to support their work, and that, of course, is crucial with regard to some of the issues that Janet Finch-Saunders has already raised. This issue of good governance and accountability can depend on having the right member of staff in place. Many of them are councillors who are doing this on a very, very part-time basis, unremunerated, giving a lot to their community, but they can't necessarily be expected to have as individuals that level of expertise, so they need that professional support. Can the First Minister tell us what steps the Government is taking to help support the supply of suitably qualified and experienced clerks for community councils?

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.