5. What is the Welsh Government's current assessment of progress on joint working between local authorities? OQ59652

I am grateful to local authority partners for their work and progress in establishing corporate joint committees. These were provided for by the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021 to support regional working where it makes sense to do so.

Thank you for that, Minister. There are different configurations at play, aren't there, in different parts of Wales, with regard to joint working between local authorities, and it can get quite complicated. In south-east Wales and in Newport East, Minister, we have the Burns commission with its proposals for better integrated transport, which is really important for the future of the area, and in Newport East that involves Newport City Council and Monmouthshire County Council. We also, of course, have the corporate joint committee and the city deal. I just wonder, with an agenda as important as the Burns commission, what is the Welsh Government's role in assessing the effectiveness of the joint working between the different organisational structures, and whether that's going forward at the pace and making the progress that Welsh Government would like to see.

I'm very grateful to John Griffiths for the question. On this occasion, Llywydd, I might ask the Minister with responsibility for transport to provide a more detailed response to that, because my role in respect of corporate joint committees is more around the governance of those partnerships. I did meet recently with the Minister for Climate Change, the Deputy Minister for Climate Change, and also the Minister for Economy, with all of the CJCs and we talked about their important role in terms of planning, transport and economic development, making sure that those things are properly joined up and dealt with in a collaborative and strategic way. I should say, at this point, thank you to the Local Government and Housing Committee for the interest that you've taken in CJCs in particular. I'm very much looking forward to hearing more about what the committee's conclusions are.

The Minister will be aware that prior to my colleague, Sam Rowlands, I actually held the portfolio for local government for nine years here, and over that time we saw off three whole-scale plans for merging local authorities. At the time, it was talked up that local authorities would actually start working more closely together. As a member of Conwy County Borough Council in 2004, in cabinet, I remember talks at that time about having a north Wales payroll system. Now, only recently, we've lost a bus service in my area, the T19, and all we needed to support that bus service running was co-operation from Gwynedd county council, but we had no representation whatsoever from them on that aspect, and as a result of that we have lost a very valuable bus service. So, what actual plans are in place to continue the theory going forwards of more joint working between local authorities, and one that is meaningful? Thank you.

I think there is a great deal of joint working going forward now and CJCs, I think, are now really starting to work very well together. We have managed to work with the UK Government, actually, to deal with some of the key operational issues that were facing CJCs, including in relation to VAT and wider taxation issues. UK Government did introduce legislation to deal with those matters, because CJCs themselves felt that not having those taxation matters dealt with was preventing them, really, from moving forward together. So, I'm pleased that those issues have now been dealt with.

I think that I will also mention a piece of work that I've been doing with Cefin Campbell through our co-operation agreement, which is a review of the partnership landscape across Wales to make sure that the landscape that we have at the moment is fit for purpose. And as part of that work—and it didn't include CJCs, but it did include regional partnership boards, substance misuse boards, and also violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence and a whole range of other boards—we met with all of the chairs of those over a period of time and heard about their experiences in terms of the barriers to better collaboration. So, now we're pulling together everything that we've heard from those conversations, and we'll be presenting a paper to the partnership council for Wales in July. We'll make sure that the Senedd is fully updated on our findings and our recommendations for the way forward as well.