The Economy of the Swansea Bay Area

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 6 November 2019.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 2:18, 6 November 2019

The way that the city deal project has been set up by the UK Government and the Treasury has been extremely challenging and complicated for local authorities that are not kitted out to take projects through a five-case business model approach. Two independent reports done into the city deal pointed out that the capacity did not exist locally and, as a result, great frustration was building up on the part of local authorities who had the ideas and they had the plans to take these projects forward, but simply could not meet the tests of the business cases demanded by the Treasury, which we then had to discharge as part of the heads of terms of the city deal. So, it's been a very frustrating process all round. Those independent reports suggested a series of reforms to blast that out of the way, and the region is making progress in delivering those. Part of meeting the concerns laid out in that report was the implementation of terms and conditions to make sure the money would be well spent, and we've been working through with the region the detailed implementation of those terms and conditions. I believe we are very close to the point of being able to sign them off.