3. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management, 2022-23 Programme of Investment

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:16 pm on 15 March 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 3:16, 15 March 2022

Well, we are committed to implementing TAN 15, just to be clear about that. We have agreed to a delay of 18 months before it and the flood map for planning become operational because of concerns about the practical implementation by local authorities. And the crucial thing here is to get this right, and this does involve quite a significant change to many of the assumptions local authorities and planning authorities have made about what development is possible and what is viable, and that is putting under threat a number of schemes that are important for other policy priorities. And this is the tension we have: how do we marry these different pressures? So, that's the process we're going through now, working with local authorities, and I can assure your constituents that we've delayed it, I think for sensible public policy reasons, but we're not avoiding the challenge it faces. And the follow-on consequences for that are something all of us are going to have to get used to, because it does mean doing things differently, and that is not going to be easy.