Population Forecasts and Local Development Plans

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:28 pm on 29 January 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:28, 29 January 2020

Yes, and the answer to your question is to look at the complex set of instructions that local authorities must follow in setting the various things. So, we can look at the housing numbers projections, for example, and the LDP has got to take into account a number of things in coming to its housing land supply and doing that, as I've just said to Llyr. But we also have, for example—. We're currently consulting on the national development framework, which has some major infrastructure things. As you know, we're in the process of putting, via the Local Government Elections (Wales) Bill, a framework in place to facilitate the regional strategic planning arrangements for local authorities, which should put the regional planning arrangements in place for those kinds of infrastructure. So, in the round, the set of plans that we will eventually have in place will do exactly that.

The way that I have been explaining it as we've been conducting a number of stakeholder meetings is that, if you set out a flat plan of Wales, you ought to be able to say, 'Well, here are the trunk roads, here are the hospitals, here are the existing schools, here is where the housing is, here's where the new school should be', and so on, and then when the council is negotiating with the house builder about their contribution to local infrastructure, there would be much better certainty about what that infrastructure should look like in advance, so that when somebody's planning to come forward with a piece of land, they know that they're likely to have to contribute to the school or the hospital or whatever it is that's nearby.

We haven't started this in the optimum place. We've started it at the bottom, and I would have preferred to start it at the top. But my colleague Lesley Griffiths started the process just before I took over this portfolio, and, very shortly, we will in a position where we have all of those plans in place, and we will be able to do exactly as you suggest.