Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:22 pm on 4 March 2020.
Minister, funding cuts to local authorities have resulted in councils having to reconsider the way they provide services to deliver savings. In some cases, they're sharing services with neighbouring local authorities. However, councils in Wales inevitably focused on short-term measures to balance their budgets, rather than investing in longer term measures to transform services. Since they do not know what future settlements will be, what action is the Minister taking to provide local authorities with more certainty about future settlements to allow them to develop more robust medium-term financial planning and thereby help avoid the risk of local government reorganisation, resulting in higher costs for taxpayers in Wales?