6. Will the Minister outline the Welsh Government's policy to improve inner urban environments? OQ58752

The focus of our Transforming Towns programme is the sustainable development of our town centres, supporting investments in our towns that are shaped by place-making plans and include green space, reuse of derelict buildings as community hubs and increasing the variety of services on offer.

I paid my first visit to the refurbished Newport market last week, after a visit with John Griffiths to open the secure cycle store in the heart of the centre, and, I must say, I thought the market was superb and I'm proud of the role that we've played, with the local council, in making that an attractive facility, which I'm told is packed on weekends. And for those who haven't visited, I would encourage a trip. 

Well, I'd certainly join you, Minister, in encouraging as many people as possible to visit the wonderfully refurbished and transformed Newport market. There is much good work going on in Newport. A further example, Minister, in Newport East is the Maindee renewal project. This has engaged local residents to transform the local area, which is a very busy urban environment with a lot of road traffic. As part of those projects, Greening Maindee is producing some really good quality green space to be enjoyed by the local community. There is a Maindee makers project that is reusing and recycling, producing things like portable flower containers to help with the greening effort, and the Maindee triangle, which is opposite the community library, has a cafe and a performance space, which saw the first ever Maindee music festival this summer. So, much is going on there, Minister, but there are ambitious plans for further work. And I wonder if you would consider how Welsh Government might continue to support this transformative work and hopefully visit the area with me to see first-hand the progress made, and hear first-hand the future plans, which I think would further transform that very important local community. 

Well, thanks very much for highlighting the great work going on in Maindee, John. I'm pleased that the Maindee Unlimited triangle project has received over £200,000 of Welsh Government money towards transforming what was a public toilet into a community hub and green space. That was through our community facilities programme, and applicants can submit up to three applications totalling a maximum of £300,000 in any three-year period. This means that Maindee Unlimited can currently apply for an additional grant of around £70,000 within the current window, and I'd be keen to work with him and talk to them about what other opportunities there might be to improve the area. 

Swansea city centre has seen welcome investment from the local council, Welsh Government and UK Government in recent years, mostly as a consequence of the Swansea bay city deal. The investment, worth around £1.3 billion, has helped deliver things like the new digital arena in Swansea and other projects, with the aim of making the city a more attractive place for workers and employers. But constituents have contacted me about the disproportionate emphasis they feel that this and other funding has, having been aimed at the city centre specifically. Swansea is home to fantastic other conurbations, such as Morriston, Gorseinon, Mumbles and Pontarddulais, and in some of those areas, high streets are really struggling, and transport and infrastructure needs are not being met in the same way as they would be if they were in the city centre. So, with that in mind, how are you working with Swansea council and other councils to ensure that it is not just city centres that benefit from additional funding to improve urban areas?

Well, I have been leading an exercise looking at what we can do to help town centres; what are the barriers to improving them? We all know, from our own areas, of the sorry state of many town centres and the huge pressures that are on them—pressures that are only going to get worse with rising energy prices. And I am very concerned about the lack of an offer from the UK Government for businesses, for very significant increases in their energy bills. I was simply talking to a chip shop owner in Burry Port the other week, who tells me that their energy bills have gone up by 300 per cent. It's very hard to see how businesses like that can sustain those sorts of rises for very long.

So, I fear that we will have an even sorrier state of town centres over the coming months as businesses close down because they are not able to meet unsustainable increases in energy bills. I would urge the UK Government to put a package together to help with that.

We'll be publishing the results of the town centre action group recommendations soon. But, one of the things that we did look at was the experience of Morriston, as part of that work—the study done by Professor Karel Williams into the value of that very long high street, and actually, what local people value. Far from being infrastructure, of the sort that he mentions, what they found is that they valued social infrastructure. So, the state of the park, the state of the toilets—things that have been hit by austerity cuts significantly in the last 10 years, and will be hit even further by the austerity cuts that we are expecting as a result of the budget.

So, it's very hard to improve things when public services are being hammered, as they have been under this Conservative Government. But we have come up with a series of practical recommendations of things that we can do, working with local authorities, to help town centres rebuild.