Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 10 November 2021.
Thank you very much, Deputy Minister. As you know, I've conveyed concerns several times in the Chamber about farms being bought by companies outside Wales for offsetting carbon emissions, and nearly every week we hear about examples of this happening. And as a result, we are losing family farms and we are losing good agricultural land, and we're seeing trees displacing people, with a negative impact on the nature of our rural communities. During recent weeks, I've had an opportunity to meet residents in Cwrt-y-cadno in the north of Carmarthenshire and Hermon in Pembrokeshire, who are very concerned about these proposed developments, and they felt powerless and asked me to raise these concerns with you as Ministers.
Now, when I raised this issue with the Minister for Climate Change last month, she recognised that this is a problem, and, as you said, the only assessment that's being made at present is an environmental impact assessment, and I'm of the opinion that we need to use the planning system to manage this kind of development in order for local residents to have more control over the future of their communities and to shape the land use in their areas. Do you agree with that?