1. Will the Minister provide an update on the effectiveness of the invest-to-save scheme? OAQ54110

Since 2009, the invest-to-save scheme has invested £180 million in over 190 projects across the whole of Wales. It continues to provide financial assistance to Welsh public services and third sector organisations to help them improve their services and provide better outcomes for the people they serve.

Thank you for that answer. I note that the invest-to-save scheme has invested around about £174 million since 2009. I also note that Betsi Cadwaladr is currently in receipt of over £3 million. Given that invest-to-save is an interest-free loan and repayable, and given that our public services are all struggling financially, how do you ensure repayment of the sums owed, and has the scheme hit its target in any way in terms of the savings achieved?

Thank you for asking that question. The portfolio of invest-to-save projects has a really wide range of repayment profiles. For general projects, the longest repayment profile is six years, and there are several being more than that. However, energy efficiency projects, for example, can be repaid within eight to 10 years. But, as I say, it depends on the project. But I can reassure you that the fund does have a 100 per cent recovery rate to date, with no bad debts being incurred since the creation of the fund in 2009.

Invest-to-save has been successful over a period of time, but it mainly involves safe investments, certain, or almost certain, of producing savings. Alongside it, a more ambitious programme of innovate-to-save has been introduced—something I asked for over several years. Will the Minister provide an update on the effectiveness of the innovate-to-save scheme, and on whether any projects have been so successful that they have been taken up by other bodies?

I thank Mike Hedges for raising that; he's long been a champion of both invest-to-save and innovate-to-save. The innovate-to-save initiative between the Welsh Government, Nesta, Cardiff University and the Wales Council for Voluntary Action launched in February 2017 with a budget of £5.8 million. In March of this year, we added an additional £0.5 million to the budget, to take it up to £6.3 million. It does differ from invest-to-save in that the payment is non-repayable grant funding for projects selected to go through the research and development phase. Non-financial support is available in project management from Nesta, and research support available from Cardiff University. There is a real focus there on ideas that are at different stages to invest-to-save. These are projects that need to be researched and tested to assess whether or not the anticipated outcomes are likely to be achieved. Round 1 of the programme saw three projects being approved for loan funding, one of which was Leonard Cheshire, who were awarded £1 million to roll out their new model of care for people in receipt of direct payments. Fabric, in Swansea, has begun purchasing properties for implementing their semi-supported step-down accommodation for young people over the age of 18 who are leaving the care system. Llamau are also in negotiations with public sector partners to put in place a new and more sustainable funding model for the benefit of the people who they serve. Certainly, there are projects there that we could look to be upscaling in due course, and we'll be learning very much from the work that those projects are undertaking at the moment.

No discussion on invest-to-save is complete without a question from Mike Hedges—I think you've asked a question on it every time it's come up. Minister, I think this is one of those issues that is universally accepted across the Chamber as generally a good idea, and invest-to-save and its successor have a huge role to play in contributing to savings in local government and generating more cash. But I think I'm right in saying that, in 2014, five years into the scheme, Ministers commissioned Government social research to undertake an independent evaluation of invest-to-save. And that found that, whilst there were savings across the board, there were some areas where savings hadn't been delivered as expected. I wonder, now that we are 10 years into the project, and looking at successor schemes, do you plan on commissioning any further independent research to discover where the scheme has worked and areas where it can be improved?

Well, as you say, there was some research—an independent study, in fact—in 2014, which concluded that, on average, the fund generates a benefit of £3 for every £1 spent on that scheme. A frequent question, as Nick Ramsay says, is why good practice just doesn't seem to spread very easily, and this is something that we're working on with Cardiff University. We're researching the barriers, and also the enablers, for the spread of the good practice that we've learned through the innovate-to-save scheme. The evidence-gathering stage of that will be completed by 30 June, and then there will be the analysis of the findings throughout the summer. We've secured £4,000 of research funding in Cardiff University, which can be used to support events with academics and practitioners across Wales to discuss our findings and to highlight the benefits that we've been able to accrue through the invest-to-save scheme, and to try and ensure that those benefits are spread more widely.