Cadw

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 9 March 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:10, 9 March 2021

Llywydd, I thank Darren Millar for that contribution, and I share a lot of what he has said about the significance of Kinmel Hall, its importance to Wales as a whole. Where Cadw has responsibility for the upkeep of monuments, buildings and sites, it is because those sites are in public ownership, and Kinmel Hall is not in public ownership, it has private owners, and as far as I am aware, those owners have never shown an appetite for the building to be taken out of their ownership and acquired by the Government on behalf of the Welsh population more generally. It would be a very big step, wouldn't it, for the Government to compulsorily remove a building from private ownership, and that would not be my preferred course of action. If there is an appetite on the part of the owners for a different ownership model in future, then, of course, the Welsh Government would be part of that conversation. We're not the only possibility there, of course. I know Darren Millar will be very well aware of the National Trust's operation here in Wales, and there are a number of ways in which privately-owned buildings can make their way into wider forms of ownership with different levels of custodianship for the future.