6. What assessment has the Counsel General made of the preparations for Brexit of local government in Wales? OAQ53605

The First Minister, other Ministers and I met with local government leaders in January to consider how local authorities were preparing for all EU exit scenarios. Ministers and leaders have met again this week. Local authorities must also assess their own preparations. The Wales Audit Office, as the Member will know, has assessed the public sector overall. 

I recently wrote to a number of local authorities asking them for details of their Brexit planning, and in particular what assessment they had made of the impact of a 'no deal' Brexit on their spending, service delivery and other related matters. In response, one council told me, and I quote directly, that the short answer is,

'none, at least of any substance'.

Other councils are at a more advanced stage, with cabinets having already received and discussed Brexit reports, as you say. Are you therefore concerned that some local authorities seem to be lagging behind? What monitoring mechanisms have you got in place? At this late stage, what plans have you got to ensure that all local authorities are as prepared as they can be?

Well, that's a very good question. Of course, the Wales Audit Office indicated that the work that they had done at the back end of last year indicated a degree of variability between local authorities. I must say, I'm not sure that that is the picture now, so I'm concerned to hear that one response that the Member referred to there.

There are a number of challenges here. We have funded, through the EU transition fund made available to the Welsh Local Government Association funding—modest amounts, in all truth—to provide a kind of sharing of best practice and to develop a toolkit so that individual authorities are able to assess for themselves what their readiness is, and that's public domain information in relation to the dashboards that they've put together.

In relation to the individual resources of authorities, the Minister for local government announced last week further funding to all local authorities in Wales to increase their capacity for preparedness for Brexit preparations in general. It's ultimately a question for local authorities to satisfy themselves, of course, but, mindful of what the Wales Audit Office indicated in that report, one of the steps the Government is taking in response to that is to support activities between WLGA and the academy to build capacity for scrutiny of the political decisions being taken in local authorities across Wales. His question was about operations, but it was also about political leadership and political scrutiny. There have been, or there are about to be, roadshow events for authorities in Swansea and in two other locations—I'll remind myself of where the two other locations are—and they are under way at the moment. So, we hope very much that that will raise the capacity of those undertaking scrutiny of political decisions in local government around these decisions.

Perhaps the best de facto example of local government preparation for Brexit in Wales is represented by the north Wales growth deal and north Wales growth bid, based upon funding, direct and indirect from both Governments, but also internal devolution to be equivalent to that devolved from the UK Government to the Northern Powerhouse. It was understood that heads of terms would be agreed between the Governments and the growth board by the end of February, but nothing has been heard publicly since then. Are you able to provide, therefore, an update on the current position in that regard?

I am not, I'm afraid, but I will write to the Member in relation to that.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.