Regenerating the Northern Valleys

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:42 pm on 3 March 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:42, 3 March 2020

Well, I thank the Member for that important question, Llywydd. I'm happy to report, following questions last week, that a further meeting between officials of Natural Resources Wales, the local authority and the Coal Authority have happened since the meeting I chaired with the Secretary of State. We are both expecting a report by the end of this week, which will provide the additional information that we were looking for in that meeting, will provide some assurance, I hope, about the current state of safety in coal tips, but will go beyond that, in the way the Member has suggested, to provide at least an initial assessment of what needs to be done to make sure that those sites are safe for the future. And if we are to see a different level of rainfall and a different intensity of weather events, then the standards against which safety has been judged in the last decade may not be sufficient for the decade to come. And the report that we will see—it will be an initial report by the end of this week—will begin to give us some advice on that matter and that will be part of a longer term review of a whole series of issues arising from the events across Wales in the last two or three weeks, which we will be leading through the Welsh Government to make sure that our physical infrastructure is resilient for the future and we're doing everything we can to protect those communities.