Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 26 October 2022.
Thank you again for that important question. Like you, I was disappointed at the level of uncontested seats. I think that having contested seats and giving local people a choice is a really positive thing, which is why the work that we're doing through our diversity and democracy programme is so important in terms of widening up access to elected office by all people in our community. We've introduced our access to elected office fund, which will, hopefully, support a wider range of people to become candidates, and we had some success with that. It was administered at the last election by Disability Wales, but we're considering now what other protected characteristics we can bring into that wider work as well. But I know that the Welsh Local Government Association and individual local authorities do work hard to support incoming councillors to understand these things, and, hopefully, to signpost them to where they can find local support, in the event that they should feel threatened or undermined in any way in their particular role, but I'm more than happy to have some further conversations, if there are good ideas as what more we or local authorities can be doing in this important space.