Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 8 June 2021.
Llywydd, I thank the Member for that supplementary question, and he's right that the Welsh Government has strengthened the actions that we have taken and the advice that we provide to prevent developments on vulnerable land and land that could be vulnerable to flooding in the future. We know that the nature of climate change is such that incidents of extreme weather on the topography of south Wales does make us more vulnerable to flooding today than we were in the past. And it is right, therefore, that the standards that we expect when planning permission is being given for residential development take that fully into account. Of course we communicate that directly in the many meetings we have with our local authorities, and I imagine that there is no more powerful way of communicating that message than when Welsh Ministers do call in planning applications and take a different view to that which the local authority had originally concluded.