1. Will the Minister make a statement on the delivery of local public services in South Wales Central? OQ56226

Yes, I continue to work closely with local government, including in the South Wales Central region, and other public service providers on the key lessons learned during our response to COVID-19 that will aid our strategic longer term recovery, and help define the new normal of the future.

Thank you. I wanted to raise the issue of cladding today. It's now more than three years since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and leaseholders who live in apartment blocks in Wales—some of them in Cardiff, some of them elsewhere—these leaseholders who suffer problems with cladding are still waiting to hear what support they're going to get from the Welsh Government. We know that £32 million has been set aside in the budget, but there is still no announcement of a building safety fund that would at least help to alleviate the anxieties of the leaseholders. I have been in contact with some of them, and I've also been in contact with you, Minister, about this matter. I know that you've said there will be an announcement of what the Welsh Government intends to do in due course, to use your own phrase, but that is very vague and it does little to lift the concerns of the leaseholders affected. Can you give us something a bit more specific today, Minister, and can your Government give some kind of definite financial commitment towards this massive problem?

Yes, I'm happy to answer a question on building cladding, although it's very hard to see what that's got to do with local public services in South Wales Central, it has to be said. The building cladding problem is largely centred on private sector tenanted or leasehold blocks all over Wales. We are working on a building safety fund to enable us to remediate the buildings and allow access to that finance without losing the equity of the leaseholders involved. It is a very complex problem, which is partly devolved and partly not devolved, which is why the complexity exists. We have been working very closely with colleagues at the UK level, both at official level and otherwise, in order to try and understand exactly how we can take this problem forward.

Unfortunately, a large number of the levers are in the hands of the UK Government, including, for example, extending the contractual obligations of the people who built the buildings in the first place, and assisting in finding out where the complex legal issues can be centred. There are also issues around access to legal funding and access to a complex range of other legal issues that we need to work through in order to make sure that the funding gets to the right people. 

In the meantime, we have worked closely with fire and rescue services across Wales to ensure that people are as safe as it's possible to make them, and to ensure that the various authorities are alerted. There is a very large and complex piece of work going on. I have met with a range of the developers and a range of the residents of the various blocks in order to progress this work, and it's very much ongoing.

Minister, public services across South Wales Central rely on annual budgets to be set, and at the moment—. And I do declare an interest, as a member of a local authority, the Vale of Glamorgan local authority. At the moment, councils and police authorities are setting their budget rates. The police and crime commissioner set an indicative rate of a 5.5 per cent increase, and the Vale of Glamorgan Council set an indicative rate of a 3.9 per cent increase. Given inflation is negligible at the moment, do you agree with the comments that your leader in London has made, Keir Starmer, that such increases are absurd, or are they a sensible part of the budget setting process that public services require?

Yes. The position of this Welsh Labour Government is that local decisions are best made local to people, so we do not impose a cap. We could impose a cap on council tax increases, but we do not impose that cap. We believe that locally elected councillors, such as yourself, ought to be in a position to make the best judgment about what needs to be done in terms of local services. However, I am pleased to have provided for a provisional local government settlement, which gives an overall increase of 3.8 per cent. So, every authority in Wales is receiving an increase, and the average is 3.8 per cent. We've protected council budgets by providing funding for both additional cost and lost income this financial year, including lost general income, and working with them to understand what the position on both council tax and NDR funding is, alongside my colleague, Rebecca Evans. This is the second excellent settlement I've been able to make for local government, and I'm very pleased to have done so, but of course these settlements clearly don't make up in their entirety for 10 years of Tory-imposed austerity, which is still reverberating through our current services currently.

Minister, last week, Rhondda Cynon Taf council began the second phase of its public consultation on the 2021-22 budget, with residents, businesses and other stakeholders invited to have their say on the specific proposals outlined. This includes: a proposed 2.65 per cent council tax rise, likely to be the lowest rise in Wales next year, and below the 2.85 per cent originally proposed and consulted on; an additional £2.2 million for the schools budget; £4.6 million in efficiency savings; no service cuts; and additional targeted resources across several service priority areas. Minister, would you agree with me that these proposals represent excellent planning and proposed service delivery in what are undoubtedly very challenging times, and show how local government, working together with the Welsh Labour Government, is able to deliver for the residents of RCT?

Yes, Vikki. I'm very happy indeed, of course, to confirm that councils in Wales have been making excellent planning assumptions all the way through. We have worked extremely closely together across party lines this year in Wales in reacting to the pandemic. We have worked extremely closely together as a family of local authority and wider public services. We've been very pleased to be able to have provided, as I said in response to Andrew R.T. Davies, to have protected council budgets this year by providing the overall increase of 3.8 per cent. Actually, RCT, which you particularly mentioned, is actually on the average at 3.8 per cent. We've been able to provide additional costs and lost income funding to make up for that, and we would not expect councils anywhere in Wales to have to make cuts to services or to rely heavily on reserves in order to make up their exposure to the pandemic, because that has been covered off by the Welsh Government and I am extremely happy to have been able to do that. As I said in answer to a previous questioner, we're very keen that local democratic accountability pertains here, and that local councillors representing their local areas should make the best decisions about local services, including on council tax increases. But as you've rightly pointed out, a well-run authority, well-planned and well-catered for, should not be having to make excessive council tax increases in the light of the very generous settlement that we have proposed in the provisional local government settlement.