Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:33 pm on 18 January 2022.
Llywydd, I thank Joel James for identifying an important issue, but an issue very well known to the Welsh Government. Shared use of space on the highway, on the pavement, is a matter that has been raised and discussed in our own engagement with groups representing disabled people, including those with issues of vision. The actual implementation that the Member refers to, of course, is carried out by local authorities, not directly by the Welsh Government. We provide the plan and the guidance, and then local authorities have to make sometimes complex decisions, where space is at a premium, as to how it can be best used. And sometimes that does mean that the use of space has to be shared. That is true of horse riders as well.
A new version of the highway code, Llywydd, is due to be published in February. That, of course, is a UK-wide document, and it does now directly address these issues and sets out a hierarchy of users in shared space, so that as people take their driving tests and become new users of the road, they will have fresh guidance to make sure that where more than one use is required of any space on the highway, on the pavement, there's a clear hierarchy of whose needs must be attended to first. And the principle that has been used in that redrafting of the highway code seems to me to be a sensible one because it puts the needs of the most vulnerable users at the top of that hierarchy. Now, the review that I mentioned in my first answer, Llywydd, will be an opportunity to look at these issues again. And I can assure the Member that we will seek the views of those people who have identified those implementation issues and seek to address them again as part of that review.