Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:45 pm on 9 October 2019.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:45, 9 October 2019

Yes, so, as I say, it's early days for the way that these two boards work together. It's early days for the public services boards. And, obviously, the regional partnership boards are even more recent in their inception. I'm not going to comment on the detail of that. We are aware of different practices across Wales, and one of the things that I said in answering your second point was that we are looking for ways of spreading good practice. So, without commenting on the detail there, it is interesting that, in some areas of Wales, they've not been able to do things via those mechanisms, which, it seems, have been perfectly possible elsewhere in Wales to do. So, we need to do some work with the Welsh Local Government Association, and the two Deputy Ministers have taken forward the work on how those two things hold together. And we will be, of course, taking all the learning from scrutiny committees and scrutiny arrangements from around Wales, to take into account that learning.

There is an issue about spreading good practice in Wales and how slowly good practice has travelled. I do want to commend the WLGA on the work it's been doing over the summer on doing that. And, certainly, I can say, Mark Isherwood, that we will be taking into account the scrutiny findings of all of the committees across Wales in considering how to take those two arrangements forward.