9. Will the First Minister provide an update on support for the Rhondda Skyline project? OQ56421

I thank the Member for that question. Llywydd, the foundational economy challenge fund has supported the Rhondda Skyline project to build on its feasibility study and explore establishing Wales's first landscape-scale, long-term, community land stewardship project around the town of Treherbert.

First Minister, when the Skyline project was first unveiled, it promised so much. As First Minister, you responded to a question I asked about creating jobs and opportunities in the Rhondda, arguing that the Skyline project was evidence that the Labour Party hadn't forgotten about the Rhondda. In October 2019, you said that you would be prepared to, and I quote: 

'do whatever we can to help that very exciting project to come to fruition.'

Well, the project has been diluted from the community having control over a mooted 650 hectares, to now just 80 hectares, by your Government body, Natural Resources Wales, and as if this isn't disappointing enough, even this watered down, modest project has now been rejected out of hand due to NRW/Welsh Government technical internal issues. Similar schemes are run successfully in many countries around the world. There are more than 200 land-owning communities in Scotland doing exactly what the Skyline project wants to do, yet it seems that a model of community economic control of public forestry land cannot get off the ground properly here in Wales. 

Why is the Labour-run Welsh Government unable to do this? Can you tell us what's gone wrong with this project?

Well, Llywydd, I'm disappointed to find the Member so keen to pronounce the end of the project. I met with senior officials on all of this yesterday morning. I can assure her that the discussions are not at an end. Discussions are taking place between NRW and the project. Those discussions do have to take into account the advice that NRW has had from the Wales Audit Office; she wouldn't expect them to do anything less. There is a further meeting planned today between NRW and the project. I think she's premature, Llywydd, and I think it doesn't help to rush to a conclusion in the way that she has.

I visited the Skyline project and was very impressed by the people I met and the plans that they had. I'm very glad that the Welsh Government has provided £95,000 through the foundational economy challenge fund to support the project, and I am optimistic that the discussions that continue between the project and NRW will find a way of realising the economic and social benefits that the project offers to people in that part of the Rhondda. 

The Minister responsible, Lesley Griffiths, wrote to NRW in December, telling them that she wanted a future for the project that did exactly that, that allowed the full economic and social benefits that it offers to be realised, and I want those discussions to continue on that basis.

Thank you, First Minister.