8. How will the Rhondda benefit from the Valleys Taskforce? OAQ54529

I thank the Member for that. Amongst the benefits accrued to the Rhondda through the work of the Valleys taskforce are the Valleys to Work bus pilot, helping people in the Rhondda to get into work, and access to the £10 million to bring empty homes back into use across the taskforce area.

Of course, buses and housing are what you should be providing anyway. The last time I pointed out the lack of investment in the Rhondda to you, you mentioned the Skyline project as something that could boost the local economy. Now, this is something that I would support; it chimes with the notion of communities taking control of local land and their own destiny, which was the basis of my paper 'A Greenprint for the Valleys', which I published eight years ago. There are, however, some barriers to progressing what has the potential to be a very exciting project, and this was evidenced during the event that was held recently in the Pierhead building. The obvious question relates to funding, so can you tell me today what money the Welsh Government is providing, or intends to provide, to facilitate the Skyline project in the Rhondda? More important, however, is the unwillingness of Natural Resources Wales as landowners to be enablers for this project. At the moment, they look like their role is one of procrastination and obstruction. So, will you instruct this Welsh Government department to get behind this project as a matter of urgency to support it with practical actions, so that your warm words on this matter can actually mean something?

Well, I thank the Member for drawing our attention to the Skyline project again, and I share her enthusiasm for it. I enjoyed the opportunity to be at the Pierhead, and I particularly enjoyed the chance to go to Blaenrhondda in August, and to meet people directly involved in the Skyline project there, to go and see for myself some of the places that they hope to bring within its scope, and to hear from them what they thought the immediate next steps for them would be. And they did mention NRW to me, so Leanne Wood is absolutely fairly drawing attention to that aspect of the Skyline's work. 

I offered them a further meeting later this year, if the work that they were engaged in didn't come to fruition in the way that they wanted. They were content at that moment to continue with the efforts that they themselves were making to resolve some of the obstacles that they saw in their path. But I said to them then, and I'm very happy to repeat it again today, that if they reach a point where they feel their own efforts are not succeeding in unblocking some of the barriers, as they saw it, to progress, I'm very happy to meet them again, and I'm very happy to work with other Ministers here to make sure that we do whatever we can to help that very exciting project to come to fruition. 

Thank you, First Minister.