Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 26 February 2020.
Thank you very much for that response, but we do need to go further than that. We need to ensure that this decision is overturned, because we can’t afford to lose this centre. I’m talking about a centre that is in the constituency of my colleague Siân Gwenllian, but, of course, it’s a centre that serves a vast area of north Wales. In August of last year, following concerns raised with me by Huw Williams from the heavy goods vehicles and buses training service—Huw Williams from Anglesey—I wrote to the DVSA, pointing out to them that they had a lack of capacity in Caernarfon as things stood. We need lorry drivers and we need bus drivers for our economy and our wider society.
What Huw Williams—and I know that this is true of other companies—had found is that they couldn’t get enough slots in the centre in Caernarfon in order to test those people who they were training. That tells me that we need to grow and strengthen the centre, so you can imagine my huge disappointment and the shock of Huw Williams in hearing, unofficially first of all, that the intention now is to close the test centre.
That was confirmed in due time. There was a suggestion that they would seek another site in Caernarfon, having closed the current site. Now, that’s not how things should be done. If the DVSA agree that there is a need for a centre in Caernarfon, then they must find a new site in Caernarfon or in that area now, not after the closure of the centre. Can we have an assurance from the Government that you will do everything you can to urge the Government to change this decision, because we can’t afford to lose that centre?