Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 23 June 2021.
That's certainly not the intention. You'll know that the initial focuses of work for the CJCs, when they are up and running, will be along the lines of regional and local—across those local boundaries—development in terms of economic development, and also planning. These are areas that are not currently the responsibility of public services boards, the regional partnership boards and so forth. But I'm absolutely, genuinely keen and open to have these discussions about how the boards can be made to work more effectively in future and to ensure that any changes to their responsibilities are done in partnership with those who sit on those boards. But CJCs are absolutely not a mechanism at this point for making those kinds of changes that you describe, because I think they'll be first and foremost trying to get to grips with those important items, such as economic development, that they will need to work on together. So, obviously I'll be keen to familiarise myself with the work of the Public Accounts Committee on this, alongside the other reports, and to have those discussions with public services boards, regional partnership boards and others before coming to a way forward.