8. What action is the Welsh Government taking to facilitate the sharing of best practice and information between councils? OQ59656

The Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021 put in place a new sector-led performance regime to drive improvement in local authorities across Wales. To support implementation, I have agreed £800,000 of funding for the Welsh Local Government Association improvement programme to provide for shared learning and corporate improvement across councils.

Thank you, Minister, that's excellent news. There seems to be a theme today on sharing of best practice and information between our councils, and it's something that I'm finding is lacking in policy areas across the board. Despite the sharing of best practice and information between councils being primarily the responsibility of the WLGA, as you've just said, and PSBs, as has already been outlined, surely it falls upon each Minister to ensure that delivery of policy is happening across the board and is happening to the very best standard across our country. The very best way to share this, of course, just from some examples of this, of what's not happening and what should be happening, is the Raglan Project in Monmouthshire County Council, for example, or perhaps a council that's excelling in recycling or delivering healthy food in our schools or having a mental health strategy in our schools that's really working. This sort of information, this sort of sharing of good practice, is not being shared, and it seems to be remiss of the Government to not ensure that their policies are being delivered properly on the ground. To that end, Minister, what action is the Welsh Government taking, and each Minister taking, to work alongside the WLGA to ensure that best practice is shared to each corner of Wales? Thank you.

Well, Ministers and officials regularly engage with a wide range of local authority-led networks in relation to the breadth of the sector's functions. So, those will include Cabinet members, it will include spokespeople for the WLGA and also officers will meet with our officials across the whole range of functions, and those really are invaluable opportunities for us to share opportunities and to hear the challenges, of course, that local authorities are experiencing in terms of delivering their functions as well.

I would say that our relationship with local government is a very open and honest one. I think that the level of engagement that we have is quite extraordinary in terms of the amount of meetings that take place both between Ministers and local authorities, but also between officials and officers. But, if there's more that we need to do, or if there are particular gaps where those networks are not in place, I would obviously look to close those. So, perhaps, if Laura Anne Jones wants to share with me some of the more detailed concerns, I'd be more than happy to look into those.

Finally, cwestiwn 9, Natasha Asghar.