The Recovery of Welsh Towns

Part of 4. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition (in respect of his European Transition Minister responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 12:26 pm on 15 July 2020.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 12:26, 15 July 2020

I thank Vikki Howells for that question. I echo her support for the measure to alleviate some of the costs that BIDs have faced over the past three months. BIDs play an important part in sustaining our town centres, and in my own constituency I've been in close contact with them in relation to some of the challenges specifically posed by COVID. Some businesses are able to respond quite nimbly to that, but others obviously will face particular challenges as a consequence of the restrictions that our response to COVID has necessarily brought into effect. As I say, I would encourage BIDs across Wales to take advantage of the safer public spaces guidance that the Welsh Government has issued in order to understand how best to configure town centres in order to maximise the opportunities for those businesses that can take advantage of these increasing easements.

And I think also I'll just refer her to the announcements made today, some of which will affect communities that I'm sure are close to her heart, in relation to support from the Valleys taskforce, but also the interventions that the Deputy Minister Hannah Blythyn has made from the transforming towns funding, which is a reprofiling and a repurposing of that funding in order to enable local adaptations to be made in towns in Wales to cope with post-COVID circumstances.