Thank you. I'm going to move on now to item 5, a statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: the working group on local government—next steps. I call on the Minister to open.

Thank you, acting Deputy Presiding Officer. I apologise for my craggy-sounding voice today.

Today I would like to update Members on the recommendations of the working group on local government. I would also like to set out the next steps following the conclusion of this work.

The working group was created by my predecessor as part of an agreement between Welsh Government and local government to design and define together the future of local government in Wales. Its core task was to develop a shared agenda for reform that ensures the sustainability of local service provision through appropriate structures and processes, whether collaboration, shared services or voluntary mergers. The working group was also an opportunity for us to reset our relationship with local government, to explore and recognise the significant positive, collaborative work local authorities already do, and how collectively we can simplify arrangements to achieve a more sustainable local government sector in Wales.

Our meetings have been both challenging and positive. Significant progress has been made on issues of importance to us all. I'm very grateful to the Welsh Local Government Association and to local government leaders for approaching the meetings and this work with an open mind and a desire to agree workable solutions to complex issues. 

The Llywydd took the Chair.

I must also thank and congratulate Derek Vaughan on his fair and inclusive chairing of the meetings. Derek’s commitment to this group and his belief in what could be achieved were fundamental to the group’s progress. I was very pleased to see that he received the CBE in the Queen’s birthday honours this month for his contribution to political and public service, which is well deserved.

Today I am publishing the recommendations of the working group, which cover a number of areas including shared services, voluntary mergers, powers and flexibilities, diversity in local government, and the mutual respect agenda. There was much constructive debate between all members and I was pleased the group was able to quickly agree a clear set of shared principles to underpin discussions and any future delivery of regional working.

The principles place regional working firmly within a framework of democratic control and accountability, with sustainability at its core and a focus on delivering better public service outcomes for citizens and communities. It was clear from the conversations within the working group, and mapping work undertaken by local government, that there is already a significant amount of collaborative partnership working on both a voluntary and statutory basis throughout Wales. I welcome and applaud this.

However, there was also a recognition within the working group that this landscape was complex, and that this complexity was potentially limiting the effectiveness and efficiency of these arrangements. I am intent on working with my Cabinet colleagues to find ways to reduce some of the complexity surrounding partnership working in Wales. 

Through the working group, and other meetings that I have had with leaders, local government has also underlined the need for greater consistency in our approach to partnership. I am committed to seek simplification wherever possible. Following discussions at the working group, the WLGA leader and I have commissioned a joint review of the strategic partnership landscape to identify the key areas where there is felt to be unnecessary complexity or duplication and to identify opportunities for simplification and rationalisation. This review will report to the partnership council in October of this year.

A key recommendation of the working group was the need for more consistent mechanisms and structures to support regional working and collaboration. Considerable time and effort is absorbed in creating and recreating the practical working arrangements for joint working; for example, which authority will lead on the finance, which authority will be the employer? Members of the working group agreed that a single structure for statutory and voluntary arrangements would retain local democratic accountability and deliver consistency and simplification to collaborative arrangements.

The local government and elections (Wales) Bill, due for introduction to this Assembly later this year, provides the opportunity to deliver a single consistent, simplified and straightforward vehicle for democratically accountable regional working. I intend to include in the Bill powers to enable the creation of a new form of joint working vehicle—currently referred to as a statutory joint committee—which will be the blueprint design for local authorities working together. This will remove set-up costs associated with the setting up of multiple duplicatory arrangements and enable authorities to maximise the opportunities that working together present. This new form of joint working vehicle will be a body corporate, capable of employing staff and holding assets and funding. 

Local authorities will be able to request the establishment of such a body where they wish to work together on the basis of shared interests and mutual benefit. This can be in relation to any service that local authorities believe can be delivered more efficiently and effectively in this way. I also propose that Welsh Ministers will be able to require local authority functions to be delivered regionally in this way for certain service areas. Our intention is to focus on those areas where the Welsh Government has already put in place regional arrangements—either statutory or voluntary—or where provision to make regional arrangements already exists.

The Welsh Ministers would be able to establish bodies in these service areas, where doing so would provide a more effective, efficient and beneficial way of carrying out these functions. This would mean the potential establishment in service areas such as planning, transport and economic development. The democratic accountability and transparency that these new statutory arrangements will bring are essential for any joint working, but particularly for services and activities that directly impact on citizens' lives.

In support of this, I am pleased that the WLGA will also co-ordinate the development of a code of collaborative practice for adoption by all local authorities. The code will provide clear principles for wider regional working with clarity of expectation on where regional working is important, and what local authorities can expect of each other when considering new, or managing existing, joint arrangements. I am also pleased to say that I am committed to supporting, through the WLGA, a new improvement and support function, recommended by the working group, which I believe will provide positive support to authorities to deliver the innovation and service transformation needed for the future of our citizens and communities.

I have agreed with local government that a new sub-group of the Partnership Council for Wales will be created, which will take forward some of the key recommendations of the working group.  This sub-group will adopt the principles which made the working group so successful—mutual respect and a shared agenda to deliver the best outcomes possible for the people of Wales. Diolch.

Thank you very much for your statement. As you say, the working group was established to design and deliver together the future of local government in Wales. I love the term 'design and deliver together' because that's co-production. I consulted some colleagues in local government for their take on that. You'll be pleased that one of them came back to me stating that the working group has been very productive. There'll be nothing, he said, in your statement that will frighten colleagues in local government. He's not at liberty to share the outcomes of the work to date, but can share that it's likely that a sub-group of the partnership council will continue the work that was started throughout the summer months, and, of course, this reflects the working group's first recommendation.

However, would you please address a concern raised with me in another response from a colleague in local government, quote, that there seems to be a continual obsession with playing around with local government—can we be left to get on with what we know needs delivering for our residents and Welsh Government can get on with what they should be doing?

I think the two responses reflect the continuing concerns, perhaps: positive will to engage, but concern that this might get in the way, based on previous reviews and proposed legislation on doing things better.

You say in your statement that the group agreed a clear set of shared principles to underpin discussions and any future delivery of regional working, placing regional working firmly within a framework of democratic control and accountability. How do you envisage that might work where different local authorities have different council chambers, with different sets of elected leaderships and elected members, each of whom will be seeking to hold to account and to scrutinise the workings of potentially shared regional bodies, and possibly having different agendas between different councils, and even groups within councils, accordingly?

You say it was clear that there is already a significant amount of collaborative partnership working on both a voluntary and statutory basis throughout Wales. When we took evidence successively on previous Welsh Government proposals in the last Assembly for the future of local government, the Welsh Local Government Association and council representatives, officers and elected members emphasised to us that they are obliged to carry out a cost-benefit analysis when proposing regional working or working together with anybody on any project, as with anything else, and then presenting the findings of that analysis to full council for them to decide whether to go ahead or not. Of course, the Welsh Government itself doesn't have to do that when it's proposing changes in local government, so how will you factor that in? It was a major concern when some of your predecessors appeared not to do so. I'm sure you would, but, again, how you would you factor in that past concern of theirs?

You state that, following discussions at the working group, the WLGA leader and you have commissioned a joint review of the strategic partnership landscape to identify the key areas where it's felt to be unnecessary, and complexity or duplication—. And this will report to the partnership council in October. How, then, will you be sharing the findings with the full Assembly? What timescales and what role do you envisage the Assembly having regarding that?

You state, or you refer to, the creation of a joint working vehicle, currently referred to as a statutory joint committee—the blueprint design for local authorities working together. How will that work with and avoid replication of the work of regional partnership boards, which were meant to be a new way of regional working across public services that would be mandatory and systematic and drive the strategic regional delivery of social services in close collaboration with health, but also public services boards for each local authority, designed to improve the economic, local, environmental and cultural well-being of their areas, engaging with all public bodies and communities? So, are you proposing to replace those bodies, or is this going to be another tier, with potentially the same people sitting around a different table discussing very similar and overarching issues?

You state that you propose that Welsh Ministers should be able to require local authority functions to be delivered regionally in certain areas and that this would mean the potential establishment in service areas such as planning transport and economic development. How will that reconcile with bodies such as the North Wales Economic Ambition Board, the north Wales growth board, as it goes forward with the response to its growth bid from both Governments, hopefully later this year, where they themselves—and of course you have the city deals in Cardiff and Swansea as well—have their own asks in terms of control and executive power in some of those areas on a shared regional basis already together? You say the WLGA will co-ordinate the development of a code of collaborative practice. Will that be mandatory and how will it be enforced or will it be entirely a voluntary code?

If I can conclude by asking the obvious question about third sector representation, we know that Age Alliance Wales has continued to raise concerns about third sector representation on regional partnership boards, feeling excluded, feeling not fully engaged, and they've repeated that again very recently. We've had feedback from, for instance, the Wales Neurological Alliance that people with neurological conditions are not being signposted to services or given a voice under existing Welsh legislation. 

Only yesterday, I and my colleague Darren Millar attended an event in north Wales, the shared lives scheme, something that I know the Welsh Government is keen to support. We heard from representatives from Gwynedd and Anglesey through to north-east Wales, and the key point they made was not only is this good very much for individuals but it's good for councils and health boards that want to save money. They said that it costs less than other forms of care—an average of £26,000 a year cheaper for people, for instance, with learning disabilities, and people have much better quality of life than other kinds of care. 

So, how will this—finally—new body finally break through that wall, which is generating continued concerns from third sector providers, that, despite Welsh Government legislation and intent, they're still on the outside?

Thank you for that series of questions. I think there were 24, so, I'll do my best to answer them.

This proposal has been developed, I cannot emphasise enough, completely co-productively with local government. This is not something that the Welsh Government is proposing to do to local government, it is something we are doing together. It comes out of the working group. The working group worked very effectively, because, as I said in my statement, it's widely accepted throughout the local government landscape that the current system is complex and has potential for duplication, is very non transparent to the citizen who's looking to see how their services are delivered. So, what we're doing is putting in a simplified vehicle that would allow local authorities permissive power—with one or two exceptions, but it's a permissive power that allows local government to come together in a particular format, which they currently don't have access to. We will enable that access through the Bill, which is a committee that has a legal entity in its own right, which is formed of the leaders of the local authorities that collaborate together. So, it's a very simple democratic mechanism. The local authorities will be expected to delegate the powers to that committee that it wants to do regionally in that way, and then that committee can set up any structure it likes underneath that, with any co-option, anybody it wants. We're not in any way—. We're not imposing our will in any way on that; it's entirely a matter for the local authorities that come together to do that piece of regional work.

We're doing that because that does allow things like the North Wales Economic Ambition Board to morph into that structure. It will certainly allow the Cardiff city deal arrangements to morph into that structure. It allows third sector representation. It allows co-option of anybody who is a working partner for local authorities in delivering the services that they're delivering. 

You asked specifically about the regional planning boards. We haven't specifically included them as mandatory or anything else on the face of the Bill, but it will be a vehicle that is open to local authorities and health boards. We didn't have the time to do the policy work to put it onto the face of the Bill, but, in collaboration with local authorities and health boards—and the health Minister and I have had initial conversations about this—we will be looking to see whether we think it would be beneficial, because you correctly identify that, at the moment, some local authorities feel that they sit in the same meeting and only two people change every couple of hours. And we really want to make sure that people are using their time and money in the most effective and efficient way possible.

There will be three areas that we want to explore with local government over the summer. The first of those is in the area of transport, where there's already been a White Paper talking about joint transport authorities. And, rather than layer a different regional arrangement on, we're looking to put that into this arrangement. The Planning (Wales) Act 2015 already has strategic planning arrangements in it. We will put those into this arrangement. And we really would like to put economic development and land use for the development of social housing into this arrangement. That would have three benefits, it seems to us: one is it would allow the collaborative use of land across Wales in order to get the best out of the possibilities for social house building, which we want to do at pace and scale. The second is it would allow people to share scarce human resources. It's very difficult to get hold of all of the skills necessary to build at pace and scale in every area of Wales, so it would allow us to pool those scarce human resources. And third is that it would allow pooled budgets. In introducing this vehicle in the Act, we will be introducing a new performance framework to go with it that will cover off the issue around the cost-benefit analysis and what needs to take place in order to do that and, in collaboration, again, with the WLGA, we will produce the guidance that local authorities will be expected to adhere to when they enter into, or indeed remove themselves from, such an arrangement. But I cannot emphasise enough, Llywydd, that this is done collaboratively with local government. It is something that they want as much as we want, and it will simplify for the citizen of Wales the way in which their services are delivered. 

Can I thank the Minister for her statement on the working group on local government? Now, obviously, 22 local authorities were created back in 1996 and they hardly had any time to bed in before the fledgling National Assembly for Wales came along in 1999, and sometimes I think we're still reaping that harvest, really, because I don't think we've ever really got to grips with the conversation about who does what as regards the delivery of services in Wales as a result of that 1996/1999 situation. And the challenge of how to organise services—what needs to be done nationally, what needs to be done regionally and what needs to be done locally, that challenge to service organisation— remains. And people are always saying, 'Well, Wales is only 8,000 square miles, 3 million people, come on, people, surely we can organise something without tears, lots of partnerships and the rest.'

Now, I noticed the creation of a new sub-group here, and you mentioned quite broadly in your speech there the work that's going on. Could I ask you to elaborate a bit on the work, more broadly, in how we seriously consider delivering public services across the board in Wales, that national, regional, local thing—about the whole of public services, not just about local government, now, wider than local government, yes, all of local government, but also health, social care, housing, transport, economic development, which you mentioned, and how you see that happening? Because that's what needs to happen, regardless of—. I'm not going to have the 'lines on maps' conversation, but we need to have a mature debate about how we deliver public services to 3 million people in 8,000 square miles. It's done in other places without the degree of complexity that we have now, which is partly historic, but obviously sometimes you just have to grasp the bull by the horns and actually go for it in terms of properly co-ordinated delivery of services, which you do mention, and I'm wondering if you could expand on that, because obviously the point about democratic scrutiny is all-important and sometimes what gets lost now when we talk sometimes a bit loosely about regional planning is where the democratic scrutiny comes in, then, because people are only elected to their local authority, not to a regional board, as such. 

And, more specifically, my only other question is in regard to enabling local authorities—the power to create a new form of joint working that you outlined, a new joint-working vehicle, a new body corporate, if you like. Will this be extended to allowing local authorities to establish jointly between them a non-profit service provider, where local authorities jointly can provide better services, rather than them just setting up non-profits individually? I would hope that they could work together, public services, and jointly provide better services, but I await your answer. Thank you.  

Yes, thank you for that. You've absolutely hit the nail on the head; I think there is no reason at all why we can't deliver public services in Wales as a single all-Wales public service approach. We're going down a road of discussing that with local government in this instance, but also we've had discussions with the health boards. I was very upfront in saying to Mark Isherwood, and I'll say it again: we have not had the policy time to bring health into this straightaway, but we will look, as we take the Bill through the Assembly, and through the scrutiny of the Assembly committees, to have that discussion and to leave the pathway open for health if that is something that health and local government, working together in the regional partnership boards, think would be beneficial. We think they will think that, but we are not—I cannot emphasise enough that we are not imposing this.

I completely agree with you about the scrutiny issue. So, again, we will not be being prescriptive in the Bill; we will be looking to co-produce with local government scrutiny guidance. We hope to be able to share the good practice of scrutiny across Wales. The regional arrangements—they can have regional scrutiny if they want. They can also have individual local government scrutiny if they want, or I would envisage, actually, a combination of the two, but we are not being restrictive in any way about that. What we want to see is what works best.

The new performance regime that will go alongside this in the forthcoming local government Bill, as it's introduced to the Assembly, we hope, in October, will also have the new arrangements for local authority elections in it and, Llywydd, my officials have been working very hard on the Senedd bit of that, but this is the other bit of it. So, the Bill will have two big parts; part 1 will be the change of the franchise for local government, with all of the complexity that goes alongside of that around the canvass and all the rest of it, and then the second part of it will be these new arrangements and a whole new performance regime. We will, effectively, be repealing the 2009 Measure and replacing that with a new self-improvement peer review regime, which will have a whole series of both statutory and non-statutory guidance associated with it in order to simplify the mechanism by which we do this. 

I could not agree more that what we have is a historical layering on of various arrangements, without anyone ever thinking, 'Goodness, this is not how you would do it if you started again'. So, this is local government coming up with this start again, if you like, process. I cannot emphasise enough how collaborative and well intentioned this whole working group has been. It has been a pleasure to attend, and people have approached it in the spirit that Dai Lloyd set out in his contribution. So, I very much look forward to taking the Bill through the Assembly, and being able to have the in-depth conversation in the scrutiny committees and on the floor of the Chamber as we take it through.

And I neglected to say to Mark Isherwood, in response to one of his questions, I've just realised as well, that, on that issue about scrutiny, we'll be very keen to see what the Assembly committees have to say about their role in scrutinising the Welsh Government's role in this sort of collaborative working.

Firstly, can I just say to Dai Lloyd, if we hadn't had reorganisation and the merger of district and country councils, we wouldn't have had the Assembly? That made a huge difference, because it would have added another layer of government, and, if you look at how close the election result was, it wouldn't have happened. 

I want to talk about local government—I always want to talk about local government. I believe local government is very important. It provides services to people across Wales, and the services it provides are normally of a very high standard and always appreciated by the residents. And, when things go wrong, they don't half tell us as Assembly Members, and they tell the local councillors. 

But I think it's very important that I welcome the statement and it gives an opportunity for us to reset our relationship with local government, to explore and recognise the significant positive collaboration and work local authorities already do. That might come as a surprise to local government, because they've not been used to people saying nice things about them in this Chamber from the front bench for several years. And I think it really is important that we do appreciate the work done by local authorities. 

Can I just say about shared services, which I think are an excellent idea—and I belonged to one that existed in the past, the south west Wales integrated transport consortium? But I think it's important that they actually take place in understandable areas, so each city region has all the services taking part not necessarily across the city region, but within the city region, and those in mid and west Wales take part in mid and west Wales. The great weakness in Swansea is that they don't know who's going to turn up for the next meeting, because sometimes it was Ceredigion, sometimes it was Ceredigion and Powys, sometimes they are with Bridgend. It does create difficulty in collaborative working when you're collaborating with different people depending on what service you're talking about. So, if everything can be done in one footprint—and I've argued this several times before so I'll keep on arguing it—then people get used to it and the relationships build up and people get used to dealing with it in that manner.

I think statutory joint committees are an excellent idea. I think of economic development, and the development of Swansea University in Neath Port Talbot council area has probably had more of an effect on Swansea, on Swansea East in particular, than it has on Neath Port Talbot. I remember the old Lliw Valley Borough Council setting up Clydach market, which was actually in Lliw Valley but the houses opposite were in Swansea and the people who were most affected where the people in Swansea. So, I think it is important that we get some collaboration because some of the out-of-town shopping areas—. I mean, Trostre effects Swansea and Fforestfach affects Llanelli. This is the inevitability with places that are so close together with good road links.

The only other question I've got is: how will it differ, if at all, from the joint committee in Northern Ireland, which was made up of the participant councils and constituted as a body corporate?

Well, the very simple answer to the last question is, 'Not at all.' So, basically it's a joint committee like any other, except that it's a body corporate in its own right. The reason that that's important is because it means it can directly employ staff and have its own budget, and it's a legal entity in its own right. So, when an authority delegates its functions to a joint committee that is enabled in that way, it means that the citizen knows that that is the body that's responsible for delivering it and if, for example, you wanted to sue that authority for not delivering your individual rights, that would be the body corporate that you had the rights enforced against. So, it's a much simpler landscape than we have already.

I share Mike Hedges's feelings about local government. I too am a big fan of local government. He and I worked together in one local authority for a very long time. Local government is very good at making the best out of poor structures and processes and continuing to deliver its services in the face of what can be unnecessary hurdles. The whole purpose of this working group has to be to remove those unnecessary hurdles. It's clear that authorities across Wales have an economic impact, one on the other. In education terms, for example, the boundary of the local authority would appear to be an impenetrable forcefield for some schools' catchment areas, and that makes absolutely no sense at all in terms of what the local school might look like and so on. We've had lots of conversations with people. Kirsty Williams and I have had several conversations with people about having a more sensible approach to infrastructure planning around new housing developments and so on for exactly that reason.

One thing I don't agree with Mike Hedges on is the single footprint issue. We will be talking to the authorities about the three areas that we want to form a statutory joint committee in and, as I said, those are the joint transport arrangements, the strategic plan arrangements and economic development/building of social housing—the pooling of land, effectively, for the building of social housing. But, otherwise, this is permissive. So, the local authorities can make whatever arrangement they want, but because we're doing it through the working group, the working group has done a map of what exists and what doesn't exist, and it makes no sense to overlap them. So, local authorities themselves will be the masters of their own fortune in that regard. They will be the ones who either enter or don't enter into an arrangement of different overlapping or otherwise committees. But it doesn't seem sensible to me that you would make five where one would do. So, we think that they will have that conversation amongst themselves and come to that conclusion.

So, it goes alongside the new performance regime, which will drive regional working. We will expect a local authority to consider regional working in planning its services, why that isn't a strategic necessity and what it might get in efficiency and effectiveness in doing so, and then we will require them to consider how they might best deliver that. But there will be no requirement to set up a particular vehicle; it is entirely permissive.

Thank you for your statement, Minister, and I also thank you for providing us with an advance copy of the working group's recommendations. While it's clear that much work has been done on setting the agenda for reform, there has been, actually, very little reform. Minister, do you accept that the current model for local government is unsustainable, and considering the state of public finances, we need reform sooner rather than later?

A new sub-committee is being set up within the partnership council. So, when will you be able to share the full remit of the sub-group, and, more importantly, what, if any, will the timescales be that they will work to? If you accept the premise that there are far too many local authorities doing things differently, which it appears that you do, given the drive to create greater regional working, then you must accept the urgency for change given the cuts to essential services and rising council tax bills.

The public, our residents, are concerned about what they get for their money. When they pay their council tax, what are they getting back? So, Minister, how do you answer the allegations that this is simply a re-imaging of the old county council system and that this will not lead to better public services and savings for taxpayers? 

The public, our constituents, demand a greater pace of change. This has been talked about now for nearly two decades, and we're still not much closer to reform. So, Minister, when will we actually see change in local government? What is the timescale? We need action now rather than words. Thank you.

Well, I don't agree with the basic premise of Caroline Jones's submission there. I'm not looking to reduce the number of principal authorities in Wales. We're specifically not doing that. There will be provision in the Bill for voluntary mergers, where local authorities feel that they want to come together, but there will be no mandatory merging of local authorities. Instead, as I said, we will be looking to have a systematic approach to regional working, developed in line with local government through the sub-group, the terms of reference for which were agreed at the partnership council. I'm more than happy to circulate the terms of reference if Members are interested, but they are to look again at the regional working arrangements for local government. The first report of that group will come back by October and will be used by us to inform the debate for Stage 1 of the Bill as it goes into the Senedd. We very much hope, with the Llywydd's permission, to introduce that Bill in October in order to make the election timetable that she will certainly be aware of, and at the moment we're on target to do that. Then, as we take that through, we will be referencing the new sub-group, the working arrangements and the scrutiny of our committees here to make sure that we take forward a collaborative approach to a new system of working for local government. 

I thank the Minister.