Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:51 pm on 1 February 2022.
Thank you. I am very pleased that the local authority that we share across our constituencies is applying for UK City of Culture 2025. I'm very happy to provide a formal statement of support from the Welsh Government. Just last Friday we held a conference, a virtual conference, to support the bid for one of the six visions that Wrexham have, and that was around being the UK centre for play, which of course is so important for our children and young people, and the First Minister opened that conference, so I'm very happy to provide another statement. The rumour about Will Ferrell coming to watch the football team that we both support, I think, is very much out there. We seem to be attracting some very famous people to the Racecourse these days.
In relation to your second, very important request for a statement, I'm sure the Member is aware that when we've been making emergency loans through the COVID-19 Wales business loans scheme, the Development Bank for Wales took steps to speed up the delivery of funding, whilst maintaining identity verification procedures to a very, very high standard, and that robust approach was really needed by DBW to make sure that we safeguarded public money. To be eligible for CWBLS, a business had to be trading for over two years, while the BBLS provided loans to companies that had to be engaged in trading since 1 March 2020, so, very, very quick. The DBW also applied standardised personal guarantees at a maximum of 20 per cent, and they capped the loans at £25,000 also, though they never supported by the applicant's principal private residence, which, along with that identity verification, mitigated some of the risks that were in place in pace of delivery. Therefore, this means that the risk of fraud with ours was far, far lower than compared to the bounce back loans and the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, as they were audited accounts to scrutinise in the diligence process, and the DBW was not at risk from fraudulent new company registrations.