Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:21 pm on 24 September 2024.
Thanks very much, Lesley, and it was great to visit Wrexham town centre with you recently to see what, already, has changed as a result of that investment in the town centre, because we have a long track record in Wales of that Transforming Towns funding. We've invested £125 million over three years to look at transforming towns, which is really important to the people of Wrexham and to other towns that have benefited. But it doesn’t make sense for us all to go at it in different ways—so, if the UK Government is doing something different in a competitive way and some are losing out as a result of that. I think that there has got to be a better way of doing this in partnership. The levelling-up fund, I think that didn’t work for us in the way that it should have. Lots of local authorities benefited, but, Flintshire and Merthyr, they didn’t get that reward. So, there are people, I think, who lost out as a result of that.
Then the shared prosperity fund—. Look, it was ridiculous that they bypassed the Welsh Government. It didn’t make any sense. And now we're going to have a situation where there are two Governments working together, trying to do their best to reform and to review our towns. And let’s not forget that we have that ‘town centre first’ policy that is embedded in our national framework. It is transforming our towns, but, if we were able to work with the UK Government, we’d be able to do so much more.