Regenerating Newport City Centre

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 10 March 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:48, 10 March 2020

Llywydd, I'm very pleased to make that commitment, because Newport City Council I think is a real example of a local authority with ambition for the regeneration of its city centre, and a willingness to work in partnership with the Welsh Government, where we are able to provide assistance to them in doing so. There are many examples of this that John Griffiths has referred to, from the Ringland community hub in his own constituency—visited recently by my colleague Hannah Blythyn—to the £17 million Connecting Commercial Street programme. And as I said in my original answer, Llywydd, there are a series of potential further investments in Newport, whether it's the Tirion Homes investment on the former Whiteheads steelworks site—and I'm very pleased to see an application from the city council to the Welsh Government's £5 million fund for green infrastructure and biodiversity in urban areas, and particularly looking forward to working with the city council on the initiative that was announced some weeks ago by the Welsh Government, where we had to provide new powers to local authorities and a £13.6 million fighting fund to tackle blight caused by abandoned buildings in towns and cities across Wales. And I know that Newport council has put forward a number of buildings where they think using the powers and the funding will allow them to regenerate those buildings, to prevent the blight that they currently cause to surrounding areas, and to bring them back into genuinely beneficial use.