Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:36 pm on 27 April 2022.
I'm grateful to Sioned for raising an important issue, especially in the context of having those resilient communities as we move into a very difficult period. And we are absolutely committed, as a Welsh Government, to strengthening the foundational economy here in Wales. We have engaged with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, CLES, to work across five clusters of public services boards, to examine the community wealth-building potential offered through progressive procurement. And, as a result, PSB members have identified procurement priorities, such as increasing engagement with local and third sector suppliers—for example, on housing retrofit, procurement of local food, and also on decarbonisation of supply chains. And the engagement of CLES has also helped to raise awareness of the other pillars of community wealth building, such as how we use our assets and buildings, and also the importance of local workforce strategies, and how they can all work together to support those local well-being priorities. So, absolutely, this is a key focus of my colleague the Minister for Economy. I think we've got good work to build on, in terms of the work that we've done with CLES, the work the public services boards have been doing, and also there are some great examples in terms of what's happening in individual local authorities. The Vale of Glamorgan foundational economy challenge fund, for example, has succeeded in engaging with more than 1,000 new businesses, through events with Business Wales, Sell2Wales, and others, to help understand some of those tendering problems that were preventing small businesses from tendering for their work. So, I think that's been a useful piece of work, and we can certainly explore how we would share the learning from that to other local authorities across Wales.