Written statement (Wales): Response to Hunt Medi Report - Oct 30

Wednesday, 30 October 2024 11:51

Ken Skates MS, Cabinet Secretary for North Wales and Transport: Councillor Hunt and Councillor (now MP) Medi have led a Panel reviewing the relationship between transport, land use planning and economic development. The Welsh Government provided for Corporate Joint Committees to allow existing regional collaborations to evolve and make use of the additional tools that the structure of a corporate body offers. Aligning economic development, transport and land...Request free trial

The Welsh Government provided for Corporate Joint Committees to allow existing regional collaborations to evolve and make use of the additional tools that the structure of a corporate body offers. Aligning economic development, transport and land use planning in the CJC provides the opportunity for councils to pool resources and consider and capitalise on the interdependencies between these functions. It enables our councils to demonstrate yet again how they can work together to deliver better outcomes across their regions. We are pleased to receive their report that recognise the importance of how people working in these three fields can better achieve shared objectives and ultimately deliver more joined up results on the ground for communities.

The Panel's recommendations around collaboration, coordination of skills, resource and data and taking a place-based approach are all endorsed by the Welsh Government. We will take forward the recommendations making use of the actions suggested by the Panel.

The recommendations can help us move towards more successful regional working, including CJC's producing of Regional Transport Plans and their land use planning equivalent, Strategic Development Plans.

We will work collaboratively across Welsh Government, Corporate Joint Committees and Business Wales by taking advantage of place-based approaches on a regional footprint. This is certainly true where regional transport plans and economic wellbeing duties of CJCs can be drawn together to help shape local and regional priorities. These should aim to boost job creation, business investment, and business development in specific places.

The Panel, and the Welsh Government, recognise that resources are already limited and stretched. Therefore we welcome that the Panel's recommendations seek to help find efficiencies and priorities rather than adding to existing workloads.

The recommendations range from quick wins to long term changes. Our officials will work with their counterparts at Local Authorities and the CJC's to take them forward.

Hunt / Medi Panel Recommended Action	Welsh Government Response
Action 1: Break down siloed working using a place-based approach	We agree action can be taken on this both by the Welsh Government and by the CJCs (and their constituent Authorities). CJCs were established to supporting local authorities to take a strategic and regional approach in relation to economic development, transport and land use planning, capitalising on the interdependencies between these areas. We are reorganising and redirecting WG Transport officials and Transport for Wales staff to align with the regional footprints to best support collaboration. Through our involvement in the preparation of SDPs, RTPs and LDPs we will continue to support and monitor this work as individual plans emerge. We will better adopt a more place based approach in our economic development activities, such as across Welsh Government, CJCs and Business Wales. This can make use of the regional footprint and the RTPs/SDPs.
Action 2: Better inform people about regional plan-making across Wales	Statutory guidance makes clear the importance that political decision-making within CJCs takes place in the public eye, with CJCs ensuring their citizens are both kept informed of policy developments and provided the opportunity to be consulted on policy changes. The Welsh Government will work with the Local Government Chief Digital Officer to consider how CJCs can be supported to achieve this digitally.
Action 3: Skills development and long-term resource planning	CJCs allow existing regional collaborations to evolve in a corporate structure and provide opportunities to share or pool resources, such as staff with scarce skills and knowledge. The lack of resources in the entire planning system, which includes local authorities and statutory consultees, has been many years in the making. There are limited quick solutions and we do not under-estimate it. The First Minister has identified green jobs and growth as a priority – accelerating planning decisions to grow the Welsh economy. We are working with the RTPI to address the issue of the pipeline of professional planners and exploring options to increase opportunities for people to train as planners. We have also set out our aspirations to ensure that the planning system operates on a full cost recovery basis and that the income generated through the system is retained for the recruitment of additional staff. A consultation on the resourcing of the planning system is expected to launch later this year.
Action 4: Update Technical Advice Note 18 (Transport)	We agree this recommendation and work is underway to update the Advice Note to best support collaborative working.
Action 5: Create a ‘playbook' of best practice and tools for place-based development	We support the aim to share best practice on place-based development. Design Commission for Wales, as a Welsh Government funded body, already do excellent work on this for a diverse cross-section of stakeholders. We will work with DCfW to consider how this could be taken further.
Action 6: Share data with a national transport-social model	We support the principle of the Panel's recommendation to refine the evidence base for decision making through intelligent modelling work. We also recognise that alternative approaches to traditional transport modelling may be more suitable for some types of transport and behavioural change interventions. We have created a Unit within Transport for Wales which is able to support Welsh Authorities with transport modelling, bringing consistency, improved quality and reduced costs by maintaining the regional transport models. This Unit is tasked with findings ways to improve the evidence base for decision making, which includes identifying the latest datasets and modelling techniques. This Unit will consider transport modelling functionality within Wales including national transport-social modelling, working with external specialists where necessary, to continue to provide a high quality, relevant and efficient service to Authorities.
Action 7: Align plan-making at national and regional levels	We agree the principle of aligning transport and land use Plans given their clear interdependencies. In addition to encouraging greater collaboration between teams in the preparation of the first RTP and then SDP, we will press to further align these Plans in their next iteration as well as taking a longer-term view to consider working towards singular plans. The conformity between the national, regional and local scale of development plans is essential to ensure that decisions are taken at the appropriate level and that there is a holistic approach. Future Wales The National Plan sets out a template for collaboration, clearly identifying how the Regional tier of Strategic Development Plans should relate to National priorities.
Action 8: Prepare regional level place-based estate strategies	We have an action in our Town Centre Position statement to work across government to develop a long-term plan for the location and/or relocation of a diverse range of public services into town centres, supported by the appropriate asset management strategies and associated governance structures of public service bodies. Through Ystadau Cymru, we are already supporting excellence in active management of the Welsh public sector estate through strategic collaboration and good practice guidance. Public estates are rationalising their estates following the pandemic and the move to more hybrid working. We will undertake a survey to help establish a better understanding of estate rationalisation plans of public service providers to help inform discussions on more co-location.
Action 9: Develop strategic development funding strategy	The Programme for Government includes a commitment to reduce the administrative burden on local authorities. As part of this approach the Welsh Government will consider how funding can be allocated to regions in a more strategic way, including explore opportunities to devolve more powers to CJCs and use them as the focus for the delivery of regional economic development.