7. Will the Minister make a statement on the provision of non-statutory services by local authorities? OAQ54249

Yes. Local authority services play an important role in the lives of the people of Wales. The Welsh Government continues to protect funding for our local authorities so that those vital services, both statutory and non-statutory, can continue to be provided.

As local government's budgets have reduced and increasing social care demand and education needs have had to be met, non-statutory services, or services with a minimum statutory duty, such as libraries, have been cut, and cut severely across Wales. Such cuts have seen library hours cut and libraries closed, which impacts on the poorest most; leisure facilities reduced, when increasing physical activity and reducing obesity should be a priority in order to improve people's health; youth services cut, which affects the lives of young people. Does the Minister agree with my analysis and, if so, what is she going to do to try and increase the amount of money available to local authorities next year? If the Minister doesn't agree with what I've said, can you explain why?

I do entirely agree with your analysis. The Member Mike Hedges is very aware that the Welsh Government has done its very best to protect local government in Wales from the worst of the budget cuts imposed by the UK Government. I'd just reiterate again, in case Members of the opposite benches are too bored with this, that the Welsh Government's resource budget this year is almost £1 billion lower in real terms than it was in 2010-11, and so trying to maintain vital public services in the teeth of cuts such as that has been a very large challenge. My Cabinet colleagues and I continue to engage with local government through our well-established channels to deliver the best settlement that we can for the people of Wales. However, with Brexit and the lack of clarity around any potential spending review, the levels of uncertainty around our plans for the future are even more pronounced now than they have been in the past, and I would urge the UK Government to sort itself out and tell us, at the very least, what it's going to do with next year's budget.

Of course, when times are tough, we need to be far more creative, and I'd like to bring your attention, Minister, to an organisation called Dr.M'z in Carmarthen. It's a youth project. It's highly successful. It's extremely popular. It has fought tooth and nail to carry on surviving. And it is funded by Carmarthen County Council in part, but also by about seven or eight other large organisations to whom they've applied for grants. They've been very creative in trying to sustain the invaluable service that they provide to 12 to 25-year-olds, young parents, difficult-to-reach and vulnerable adults, and I would ask you to perhaps look at what you might do to encourage other organisations, and indeed the county councils themselves, to be far more creative in teaming up with organisations and charitable trusts that do have some funds, ranging from the Big Lottery down to some of the more obscure but large charitable organisations, because all of this money combined together will help, in some part, to keep some of our services going.

Yes, I very much welcome that approach, and we do have some very innovative schemes right across Wales, where local authorities have really worked very hard to keep services going in a range of different ways, through third sector and other organisations, local community organisations, town and community councils and so on. There's a range of very creative ways forward. The youth work strategy is in fact in the portfolio of the Minister for Education. I'm very pleased that the youth work strategy for Wales was launched in June of this year, and what we're looking to do with that strategy is to develop a greater understanding of the services in Wales to ensure a more consistent offer, grounded in a youth work approach—so, learning from examples such as that, because they are patchy across Wales, because local authorities are very pushed, where the service is not statutory, to give some of the funding. I am very pleased that more than £10 million has been made available via the youth support grant to support that activity, including £2.5 million for mental health and emotional well-being in young people, and £3.7 million to address youth homelessness in particular, from the other part of my portfolio. Because we know, and I agree with Angela Burns entirely, that youth work has an important approach to play in ensuring that the personal, social and emotional development of young people in Wales stays on track to make sure that people are able to become the best people they can be. So, I agree entirely with the sentiment, but I do think that having that vital core funding can mean life or death, and so, actually, there has been a real problem with austerity cutbacks in non-statutory services, because that vital core funding has been removed, and then the service really struggles to get the kinds of support that she has highlighted.