Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 30 November 2022.
I would say that local authorities are telling us that they are seeing massive pressures and gaps in their budget, both in this financial year and next financial year, and that they are looking to reserves to, in part, meet that challenge. I'm more than happy to ask my officials to have some further discussions with the Treasury on the specific point in terms of understanding reserves and the use of them. I don't think that local authorities have been anything other than straight with us when they tell us about the pressures that they are facing at the moment, and we do enter into lengthy discussions with them about the pressures ahead. But reserves can only be used once. Lots of the pressures that local authorities are facing relate to pay in particular, and, obviously, using reserves to meet pay pressures isn't a sustainable solution to that particular problem. I'm very happy to have further open discussions with local government on this issue.