Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:06 pm on 26 January 2022.
Well, the Member is right. This is very real indeed, and we know it's going to get worse as climate change intensifies and making our roads resilient to the threats of storms and also the impact of extreme heat is one of the things we need to do as we adapt to climate change, which is part of our net-zero strategy. It's one of the reasons why we've set up the roads review, so we shift funding away from continuously building new roads to maintaining the roads that we have better, partly in order to deal with the growing threat of climate change. And it was with that in mind that we created the resilient roads fund and we are spending £18.5 million this year for local authorities to bid in to deal with schemes like the one that Rhun mentions. And, in the next financial year, authorities will be able to continue to apply for funding for schemes they've already begun. We do have difficult budget choices to make—there's no point pretending otherwise—and we're not able to do all that we want to do. We're hoping that the roads review panel's report will come out in the summer, and that will give us some advice on how we can make these choices in the years beyond next year.