Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 12 January 2022.
Thank you very much, Buffy Williams. And can I pay tribute to all of those volunteers in your community, and across the whole of Wales, who played such an important role during the pandemic, but have always done as the lifeblood of our communities?
So, just to reassure you, officials are working with funders, including the Wales funders forum, which is an important forum to bring all the funders together, to ensure that these issues are being raised in terms of accessibility to grant schemes. The county voluntary councils are often grant managers, and you will be liaising, I'm sure, with yours. And I will be asking my officials to particularly look at how application processes can be more user friendly, and very much proportionate in terms of the situations that voluntary sector organisations are in, to make sure that they can access that funding. And it's not just accessing Government funding; lottery funding has been critical, hasn't it, as well, and making sure that we can—. And local authorities playing their part as well has been crucial throughout the pandemic, and this is part of the way in which we're looking at the financial viability of the third sector, with sustainable funding being a key pillar of that infrastructure.