Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:13 pm on 8 December 2021.
Thank you. Yes, and I know the Minister enjoyed a visit to the Cynon Linc and was very impressed by the project and the work they'd done there to bring services together. And I think that does give us an example of the way we need to rethink town centres—not simply as shopping spaces, because the nature of retail has changed beyond recognition in the last 30 years, with out-of-town developments, with the growth of supermarkets and with the shift online. We need to think of town centres afresh as spaces where people meet and where services are provided.
We do have a 'town centre first' policy now for the provision of public services, and we encourage all service providers to look first as to whether or not a town-centre location can be provided, and I think that is the way forward. As I mentioned earlier, we've published reports in July this year, from Professor Karel Williams, into the future of town centres, and in September, Audit Wales published their own report that echoed many of the recommendations, and we have specifically asked the ministerial town centre taskforce to look at both of those. And involving the public sector and service providers to see town centres as a place where they do their business is one of the things that I'm asking them to look at.