1. What discussions has the Minister had with Denbighshire County Council about repairing infrastructure damaged by storm Christoph? OQ57516

Thank you, Gareth. Denbighshire were successful in their application for £440,000-worth of works for post-storm repairs to flood and drainage assets as a result of storm Christoph at various locations. Post-storm repairs were 100 per cent funded and the grant award of the works were subject to technical appraisal, ensuring flood funding eligibility criteria.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. While I understand that there are processes to be followed, the fact is that, a year after the devastation, my constituents are still without a vital road link between Trefnant and Tremeirchion, and two local communities, essentially, remain isolated from one another and there's no end in sight, which is hugely frustrating. Minister, will you ensure that any funding requests are prioritised and that processes are accelerated and that you do all you can to ensure that the historic Llannerch bridge is restored as quickly as possible?

Yes, thank you, Gareth. I appreciate the difficulties caused to the local road network, but it is the responsibility of the local authority to maintain and ensure that resilience of those assets. We haven't yet had a funding bid from Denbighshire regarding Llannerch bridge. A sum of £18,491,000 was awarded from the resilient roads fund in 2021-22 to local authorities in Wales for works to address disruptions caused by severe weather to the highway network, particularly the public transport network, and that included £5.3 million for schemes in north Wales.

Local authorities have been invited to apply for funding from the resilient roads fund in 2022-23 for schemes to address disruptions caused by severe weather to the highway network. So, basically, the short-form answer is: we haven't had a funding application from the council yet. I'm very happy, of course, to look at that as quickly as we can do once we have that application. We've not yet had it, so I'd encourage you to contact the local authority and understand from them what exactly is happening with that.

Infrastructure across several places in north Wales has been affected by recent storms, including the bridge mentioned before at Tremeirchion in Denbighshire. Newbridge in Wrexham keeps getting mentioned and there's also a landslide in Ffrith, in Flintshire, which is estimated to cost £3.8 million. When such natural events occur, they are often with very short notice and devastating consequences, which can be expensive to repair for one local authority. Would Welsh Government look at setting up an emergency capital fund for such repairs following natural disasters?

Well, Carolyn, the way that that works at the moment is, obviously, we allocate an unhypothecated capital grant to local authorities as part of their overall funding settlement. We try very hard not to hypothecate funding in the way that you suggest, because obviously what would happen is that would be taken off the overall unhypothecated grant and held centrally. We don't think that is the best way to do it. In point of fact, we've assisted, as I just said to Gareth, local authorities with nearly £18.5 million in storm damage repairs over the last winter. Also, from the revenue point of view, we also have the emergency financial assistance scheme, which is the revenue funding that kicks in in particularly severe climatic conditions. So, we have a number of schemes available to assist with both revenue and capital, but local authorities would, I think, be the first to say that they didn't want more hypothecation inside what is a finite capital grants system.