Local Government and Public Health Bodies

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:39 pm on 13 November 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:39, 13 November 2019

We're not actually in the game of moving functions from one to the other. You can make an argument that social care should be in health, or the whole thing should be together in one body or whatever. Generally speaking, I'm a proponent of the view that it's not the structure that matters but the working arrangements and the culture. So, we're going down the regional partnership board route because we want all of the public services to work well together. So, he's absolutely right, but you could also add having a decent job and decent primary healthcare, and all the rest of it, into that.

So, the regional partnership boards have the range of public services sitting on them. They have shared budget arrangements, and they have a shared vision and purpose. As I say, we're about to give them a new vehicle if they want to use that. It's not compulsory; they can use it if they want to. We haven't gone for a one-size-fits-all, because the culture is different across Wales, and so, in some places, they will want to have slightly different arrangements. But, together with Vaughan, I have been looking very closely at how the regional partnership boards have been developing, how we fund them and how the partners work together. You'll know that we've recently made housing a statutory member of the board for the very reason that you outlined.