Climate Change

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:57 pm on 11 January 2023.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 1:57, 11 January 2023

Thank you, Darren. This is an ongoing situation and, as we adapt to the changing climate, we're going to have to address it more and more. We've had a number of schemes already in Clwyd West, which I know you're aware of. There's Eldon Drive in Abergele; Llansannan; Top Llan Road in Glan Conwy; Kinmel Bay; the Colwyn Bay waterfront upgrade; Chapel Street; and the natural flood management for the River Clwyd catchment. I'm particularly fond of that last one—I hope you've had a change to see it.

The risk management authority is the local authority for this purpose, and what we do is we ask them to complete an assessment of the flood arrangements, difficulties and issues in their area, and to produce a management plan for us. We then discuss the investment in that management plan with them. We expect the local authority be undertaking that and to bring forward their list of investments, in priority order, for us to consider as part of the flood management investment.

We've invested, as part of the co-operation agreement, actually record amounts of money in flood management. Only this morning, I was having a discussion with the flood management officials here about how the programme is rolling out. So, we are working very closely with the risk management authorities, as they're called for this purpose, to make sure that we are using an agreed set of criteria to be able to assess where the risk is and in which priority they bring it forward. If you've got particular concerns about a particular area, I suggest you ask your risk management authority to specifically look at that, and I'm sure they'll flag it up to us as part of that process.