Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd, and thanks to Rhys ab Owen and all the Members who have contributed, showing the great cross-party reach this topic has, and, of course, my colleagues and I recognise the importance of community assets, both buildings and green space, to the communities they serve, and we know these assets are vital as a focus for community activity and as a base for volunteers. And we also recognise the vital contribution of community action to Welsh life and the economy, especially during the pandemic, a time when we saw first-hand the benefit of local green spaces for our health and well-being. We continue to work with our partners to build on this experience, and our programme for government makes clear our commitment to supporting communities.

That is why we've launched the community asset loan fund, which is a £5 million fund that provides loans repayable over 25 years, enabling incorporated voluntary sector groups to purchase community assets. The fund is operated by the Welsh Council for Voluntary Action on behalf of the Welsh Government, and it complements the Welsh Government's well-established community facilities programme, which provides grants of up to £250,000 to help local voluntary sector organisations purchase or improve community assets. The grants are available to groups that own or lease facilities.

The aim of the programme is to ensure that well-used and much-needed facilities are sustainable, both financially and environmentally, and fit for the future, and we're investing too in programmes like the local places for nature scheme, and others provide grants to communities who want to improve their local green spaces. The grant allows communities to plan what they want to see improved and that will make a difference for them. The funding is supporting projects for new orchards, wildflower meadows, community food growing, pollinator gardens, green walls and small areas of woodland. And we'll be investing another £9.2 million into this programme in the coming financial year to support nature at this local level, providing benefits to our communities. Community assets, such as green spaces and buildings, are vital to the health and well-being of our communities, and we will support their ownership, working with partners, to deliver the recommendations of our research into community asset transfers. There's much to reflect on in that.

There's also feedback to us, partly as a result of the WCVA's community foresight project, which set out a number of ways that communities can be further empowered to create change and the importance of local action, and there is a consensus in that on how the policy needs to change and a new community policy needs to be forged. And we are keen—. I hear what Members said about the IWA report, and there is much in there that we can agree on, I think, and I'd be very keen to seek out cross-party consensus for the elements of that that we can all agree on, to take forward and build on in the future, because, clearly, this is an area where there is much agreement. Diolch yn fawr.