4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government’s role in securing the long-term future of the North Wales Hospital site in Denbigh? OQ59323

The long-term future of this site is the responsibility of Denbighshire County Council and their appointed developer. The council, as the owner of the site, along with their contractors, are making progress with significant help from the north Wales growth deal funds.

Thank you for your answer, First Minister. To provide a little bit of history and background, North Wales Hospital was a former mental health asylum in Denbigh, which closed way, way back in 1995 after the implementation of the care in the community Act, which came into place in the 1980s. Since its closure, it has been subject to a lot of things like arson attacks, vandalism and urban exploration. You only need to do a quick search on YouTube or any social media to see evidence of that. But there is a silver lining in the fact that the North Wales Hospital site has secured £7 million worth of funding from the north Wales growth deal, which, of course, as you know, is a joint venture between the UK and Welsh Governments. In terms of the long-term future of the site, which is now owned by Jones Bros from Ruthin, could I ask you, First Minister, this afternoon, what the Welsh Government can do more to maximise this fund and make sure that consequential investment can be attracted to ensure the long-term viability of the site, so that people in Denbigh and the Vale of Clwyd have a site to be proud of, and to maintain the building's rich history in the town?

First of all, Llywydd, I definitely agree with Gareth Davies about the rich history of the North Wales Hospital site. A former colleague of mine who worked at Bangor University, Pamela Michael, published a really excellent book looking at the care and the treatment of the mentally ill in north Wales over two centuries, focusing very much on the Denbighshire hospital, because, Llywydd, uniquely, in the whole of that nineteenth-century period, only three people ever recorded the admission of people to the hospital in those hospital books. So, uniquely, I think, in the whole of the United Kingdom, there is a record of a whole of a century, absolutely consistently allowing you to see how people came to be admitted, the sorts of backgrounds that they came from, the sorts of illnesses from which they suffered and so on. I think it has been a great shame to see a building with such a powerful history then experience the sort of dereliction that has been there in more recent times.

The good news, as Gareth Davies says, Llywydd, is that there is now £7 million set aside by the north Wales growth deal. I think it's fair to point out that the additional money that has come from the north Wales growth deal is because the UK Government turned down the levelling-up fund application from the Vale of Clwyd. Had that levelling-up fund application gone ahead, there would have been £2.75 million to help with the demolition of those parts of the site that will not form part of its future and to repair those parts of the building that will be there. However, that opportunity came and went, and at least now, through the actions of the county council, the north Wales ambition board and the developer, there is real prospect that phase 1 of the site’s development will get under way before the end of this calendar year and be completed within 12 months, that phase 2 will begin before the end of next year, and that 300 housing units will be provided, and business opportunities as well. I'm very pleased to see that my colleague the Minister for north Wales is to visit the site during the Easter recess. I think that that will give confidence to those local residents in Denbigh that, at last, a building that has been such a proud part of the long-term history, but has recently had such a set of difficulties, is now on a path to a successful future.