3. Will the Minister make a statement on the implementation of the national development framework in mid Wales? OQ56033

I will, with pleasure. We will commence implementation of 'Future Wales' when it is published in February, to ensure that it has positive impacts on well-being, prosperity and decarbonisation. In mid Wales, progress on strategic planning will take an active role in delivering progress towards 'Future Wales' outcomes.

Thank you for your answer, Minister. Beyond the merits and drawbacks of onshore wind energy, which I think is probably more a matter for your ministerial colleague, the implementation of the national development framework has significant ramifications from my perspective, in terms of the balance of power between central and local government—concerns that I have got long-held views on. You would recall, perhaps, in June 2011, just after you and I were first elected to this place, there were many thousands of people coming from mid Wales on dozens of buses to protest then about the damage—as they saw it, and I saw it too—to swathes of mid-Wales countryside.

In England, it is local councils and communities that have the final say on these kinds of developments, and the lack of adequate scrutiny underscores my original fears about the top-down nature of the national development framework, which ultimately gives those powers to Ministers here for themselves. What can you say to allay the fears of local communities who do feel that the NDF does not adequately reflect local democracy decisions?

So, I think that's a complete misunderstanding of a plan-led system that we have here in Wales. I understand, Russell George, that you are trying to put a good spin on what's happening in England, but I would take the exact opposite view, in fact. The deregulation that's being proposed in England takes away all of the community involvement in the planning process. In fact, once the designation has been made, you can pretty much build anything you like in the zones designated for development. I think that the recent developments politically over the border, with the protests of a number of Conservative MPs from shire counties about that exact point would underline the point I'm making.

Here in Wales, we have a plan-led system. The plans are extensively consulted upon, and they are subject to all the scrutiny processes of this place and of the democratic consultation process. Then, it is a national spatial strategy for 20 years. We have also, of course, put in place the regional arrangements that will allow regions to come forward with their regional development plans, aligned with the national development framework, or 'Future Wales' as we want it called, and of course with 'Planning Policy Wales'. I've made the point a number of times in this Chamber that none of these documents is a stand-alone document. They have to be read as a suite of documents across the piece. 'Planning Policy Wales' is also widely consulted on, and of course is the basis on which local authorities make their local development plans.

So, what we will have—and I've acknowledged many times that we started, perhaps, in the wrong place, at the bottom end—. It would have been much better to start at the top end. But we've got the national spatial strategy nearly there. It's still going through its Senedd scrutiny processes, and I've received very helpful recommendations from the Senedd committees on the latest version of the plan, and we'll be considering those before we publish the final version in February. This will allow the regions to come forward with their regional strategic plans, and of course they will be widely consulted on locally as well, and your constituents will have an enormous number of opportunities to feed into those regional plans for their region, because, of course, we don't want the regions of Wales to all look exactly the same; we want them to have that local flavour, and that local input. And then, of course, they translate into the local development plans, where local people have a big say.

Also, you and I sat on that committee together, and looked at the Planning (Wales) Act 2015. And you'll remember that I was vehemently opposed to the removal of the village green safeguards, and we had a number of spirited discussions about it, and I'm very pleased to say the planning Act in Wales upheld safeguards for village greens. So, you cannot put that into the local development framework and then apply for planning permission. At this point in time, you can still claim village green status for that. Delyth Jewell raised, didn't she, the access to green spaces with me. My own view is that often the first time that the people locally, who use the village green, understand there's a development proposal for it is when the signs go up on the local lamp posts. So, saying that they should have known that when the local development plan was put in place I thought was disingenuous. So, I'm personally quite proud of the fact that our committee made that recommendation and the Government held to it.