Community Empowerment

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:07 pm on 8 March 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:07, 8 March 2022

Llywydd, I simply don't agree with some of the points that are made in some of those reports. There are other parts that are very useful and constructive, and that we will wish to discuss further and to take forward. But the truth of the matter is that in every single part of Wales, there are community groups because of the actions of this Government who today are able to take on the running and management of facilities that otherwise would not have been available to them, who are able to be involved in the provision of those services, and where a partnership approach—. See, this is where he and I differ. His view of community empowerment is simply to hand things over to somebody else. Our view of it is that a partnership arrangement with the help of a public body can continue to be available to groups who, in taking on the running or the management of community assets, need to have—this is one of the conclusions of the report that we instigated into community asset transfer—the continued interest and engagement of a public authority able to help them with what are sometimes onerous things that are taken on.

And where this is done well, as, for example, in Labour-controlled Flintshire County Council in the Member's own area, you have a council that publishes a register of all potential asset transfers, gives information about the current level of expenditure, the usage and the occupancy rates, has an app that provides a potential community group with an up-to-date condition survey—all of this commended by those groups with which it works, and that has resulted in up to 30 transfer of assets from the council to groups that are not then abandoned to get on with it, but continue to be helped and supported. That is the sort of community empowerment that I think we talk about and mean here in Wales.