Wishing the Minister well as she recovers from her cold. 

5. What support does the Welsh Government provide to make roads that flood regularly more resilient? OQ57514

I note that no good wishes were offered to me as I recover from my cold, but I'll put that to one side.

The Welsh Government have measures in place to manage trunk roads that are affected by weather events, including flooding. The local road network is, of course, the responsibility of local authorities who are provided with grant funding by the Welsh Government to maintain and ensure the resilience of their roads.

My best wishes to the Deputy Minister depend on his answer to the next question, of course. When wind, rain, and high tides come together, the road to the east of Beaumaris near the Laird site floods. It's happening more and more often, and although there are no homes at risk directly from the flooding, thousands of homes in the areas of Llangoed and Penmon are isolated, care homes can't be reached, routes for emergency services are interfered with, and there is a real risk. I know there is no easy solution, but it has to be done, and I do know that officials from the council share my concerns, following the conversations I've had with councillors. Now, one problem that local authorities face is a lack of capacity in putting plans together, and I would welcome a commitment to assist local authorities to generate that capacity. But my main question is: crucially, can I ask for a long-term commitment to the resilient roads fund, in order to ensure that there is funding available for ensuing years, in order to find a solution to this specific problem and other problems such as A5 in Pentre Berw too—that is, where homes are not directly at risk, but where the risk to the resilience of transport and to community safety is very real indeed?

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.

I'm sure the Deputy Minister will be aware of the issue of the B5605 in Wrexham, which was raised in First Minister's questions yesterday. However, the First Minister said he wasn't familiar with the issues there. It's also been raised in Prime Minister's questions this afternoon by my colleague Simon Baynes MP. And it's the closure of this road for more than a year now that has had a huge impact on local people, who now have to take longer journeys. This is a significant issue for them, adding 15 miles and up to 30 minutes to their journey, while of course also adding to their carbon footprint. I did write to the Minister on 23 November regarding the damage to the B5605 between Cefn Mawr and Newbridge, caused by storm Christoph. I wrote again last week, but I've yet to receive a response to any letter. The repair works to the road are expected to cost around £1 million, and 12 months after the storm, the only progress that appears to have been made is that Welsh Government approved money to carry out a preliminary assessment. So, Deputy Minister, do you think it's acceptable for this road to stay closed, and if you don't, what urgent action are you taking to ensure it reopens as soon as possible?

Yes. I noticed it was raised both in First Minister's questions and in Prime Minister's questions by Simon Baynes—erroneously, because he's blaming the Welsh Government for something that is the responsibility of the local authority. I understand the temptation to play politics on this, but he ought to do his homework a little better before casting aspersions. We are in discussions with the local authority. We want to help them to solve this problem, but it's for them to put in the right application, to the right fund, in the right way. I think it's unfortunate that Sam Rowlands joins the bandwagon of placing blame at our door when it doesn't properly belong here. That said, we recognise the problem this is causing to the local community and we want to be part of finding a solution. The leadership for this belongs properly—as a former council leader, he will recognise—with the local government, and we hope to work along with them to try and find the solution as quickly as possible.

I also mentioned this earlier, I think, in the questions, as a supplementary to Gareth Davies's one. Our highway infrastructure, including the drainage system of ditches, culverts and gullies, was built many years ago and is struggling to cope with the volume of rain that often falls these days. Many properties sit level with roads and some older ones are below road level. A lot of water drains off land onto the highway, and once the highway gullies cannot take the volume, water then flows off the road into properties. I watched one day as rain fell so heavily, the gullies could not take any more and water started to flow down towards the sandbagged properties, but thankfully, as the volume of rainfall eased, the gullies started to take it and the ebb of water eased and receded. Due to climate change, there are more instances of this monsoon-like rainfall. So, what is being done to capture rainfall using natural solutions to help with the capacity of the drainage systems and mitigate the impact of heavy rainfall on roads that flood regularly? Thank you.

As I mentioned in the answer to Rhun ap Iorwerth, we recognise that climate change means that these events are going to occur more frequently and they do pose a problem to our critical infrastructure, and we are committed to doing what we can to address that.

The question the Member asks specifically about natural drainage solutions is a really important one, because I think we over-rely sometimes on engineering, when we want to try and use different approaches, because we can achieve results quicker and cheaper as well as enhancing biodiversity as we do so. She'll be aware that, since January 2019, all new significant developments, including roads, have had to implement some kind of sustainable drainage scheme to capture the rainfall and run-off from those projects. That is now something embedded in our approach to capital construction, and of course, we look for opportunities to mitigate where we can.