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Councils warned to be careful over commercial ventures
Pointing to recent reports, Shadow Communities Minister, Mark Isherwood MS (Con, North Wales), painted a grim picture of local government finances as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. WLGA estimates councils could face budget pressures of £600million by 2022-23.
“How, therefore, do you respond to the report’s statement that, whilst the financial support provided by the Welsh Government has largely offset the immediate financial concerns, it may be the case that councils have to increasingly use their reserves should the financial impact continue over future years?”
– Shadow Communities Minister, Mark Isherwood MS
Local Government & Housing Minister, Julie James (Lab, Swansea West), said her department was working with councils on an individual basis to determine what specific circumstances are involved. She was confident no Welsh councils face a “financial crisis” – though it was dependent on future Welsh and UK budgets.
Audit Wales suggested councils could pursue commercial opportunities and the Minister said councils will be granted a general power of competence in the Local Government Bill which would allow them to innovate. That said, she didn’t want to see Welsh councils end up making risky “speculative commercial ventures” as has happened in England which “can spectacularly backfire”.
Wales “would need extra powers” to deal with unsafe buildings
Delyth Jewell MS (Plaid, South Wales East) returned to the issue of unsafe buildings, with one eye on those with the ongoing problem of dangerous external cladding. The First Minister recently said developers should foot the bill for bringing any unsafe structures up to standard, so why hasn’t the Welsh Government forced the issue yet?
Additionally, would they consider measures such as making a developer’s track record a material consideration for deciding planning applications?
While there was plenty the Welsh Government could do, there were limitations in this particular instance:
“Well, unfortunately, Delyth, we don’t have all the powers necessary to change the basic law to be able to do that. If it were that we could, I would very much like to be able to do that. There are some things we can do going forward, which will protect people from being in that situation with new buildings, but that won’t help the people who are currently in very difficult situations in buildings around the place – a large number of them have been mentioned previously in Plenary.”
– Local Government & Housing Minister, Julie James
The planning issue is particularly complicated and there was a danger that developers could rebrand or be sold to enable directors to get around any new rules on their track record.
