6. What is the Minister's assessment of the local government settlement provided to Wrexham County Borough Council for the current financial year? OQ57937

I prioritised funding for local government when setting the Welsh budget. In 2022-23, Wrexham County Borough Council will receive a 9.4 per cent increase in its core settlement allocation. 

Well, thank you, Minister. It's really heartening to hear you, Jane Dodds, Joyce Watson and Sam Rowlands paying tribute to councillors and to councils who have acted heroically during the course of the pandemic and faced criticism often that is unwarranted. The Welsh Local Government Association, of course, welcomed this year's settlement for councils as the best in decades, and it comes at a time when there is unprecedented joint working between the Welsh Government and Wrexham council on projects such as the Wrexham Gateway, the City of Culture bid and, of course, the Newbridge road repair scheme in my own constituency. You announced recently £2.8 million for that scheme. How important is this sort of joint working between the Welsh Government and local councils, and, Minister, would you assure my constituents that the Welsh Government is absolutely committed to helping Wrexham council and other local authorities navigate through what will be a very difficult period as we emerge from the COVID pandemic and face, together, the cost-of-living crisis?

Absolutely, I would give your constituents that reassurance that Welsh Government will always seek to work very closely with local authorities on our areas of shared responsibility and shared interest, and particularly now to work together to support people through that cost-of-living crisis.

I think that we've developed, through the crisis of COVID, excellent mechanisms, excellent relationships and excellent ways to communicate that will, I think, put us in good stead to meet the other challenges that we'll now face, one of which being the cost-of-living crisis, but then also the issues around the plight that people fleeing Ukraine will be facing. We've established some really good mechanisms to work with local authorities to make sure that people do have a warm welcome when they come to Wales, and they have the services and support that are needed to wrap around them to make sure that they are welcomed and that they feel safe when they do come here to Wales.

So, I think the relationships we have have been excellent. I hope that they will continue in that vein, but we still yet face many challenges that we'll need to work on together. And alongside the immediate challenges, we have what I would think of as immediate and longer term challenges in respect of issues such as climate change and our need to work on decarbonisation together. So, after the local government elections, I look forward to meeting again with leaders and meeting again with new leaders. I know that we will certainly have some, because there are a couple of leaders who are standing down, so I look forward to meeting with new leaders and old to work out how we can continue to address these challenges together.