Welsh Government evidence paper for the Equality and Social Justice Committee’s post-legislative scrutiny inquiry into Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015
The paper addresses the inquiry terms of reference, as follows:
· How far the intended objective of the Act is being achieved; any action which should be taken to improve the effectiveness of the Act and its implementation; whether the review and reporting requirements under the Act are being met;
· how far the Act has been legally binding and enforceable; and how far the Act has represented, and will continue to represent, value for money.
Contents
Duties on Public Bodies – Map 2
Relationships for Accountability, Assurance, Compliance and Transparency – Map 3
4. National Picture on Well-being Goals
Well-being of Wales Report, National Indicators and Milestones
5. Welsh Government Implementation
Continuous Learning and Improvement Plan
7. Value for Money and Enforcement
Welsh Government Funding for the Act
The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales
Public Bodies and Public Services Boards
8. Annex 1 – WFG Landscape Maps
9. Annex 2 – Progress of the Well-being Goals
A Wales of Cohesive Communities
A Wales of vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language
Welsh Government Policy Case Studies
Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse & Sexual Violence
Gwynedd and Anglesey PSB - Collaborative Journey to Becoming Trauma-Informed
Vale of Glamorgan PSB - Implementing the Act Through Food Strategy
1. Introduction
1. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 (“the Act”) is a response to meeting several complex long-term challenges and takes further Wales’s commitment to sustainable development. The Act remains a unique piece of legislation within the UK, drawing on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”) and the views and desires of people in Wales.
2. The Act strengthens existing governance arrangements for improving the well-being of Wales to ensure that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It identifies well-being goals which public bodies are to seek to achieve to improve the well-being of Wales both now and in the future.
3. The Act has influenced a change in the way we work in Wales, leading to more collaboration and involvement with our partners and citizens in a meaningful and effective way when developing policy, delivering services and projects.
5. It is also a testament to the transparency and accountability of the Act that in 2025 alone there have been statutory reports from the Future Generations Commissioner (“FGC”) and the Auditor General for Wales (“AGW”), as well as this post-legislative inquiry into the Act. Integration of the Act into scrutiny processes will ensure it remains alive and modern to current needs.
2. Long Term View
6. Long-term thinking is a significant feature of the Act, balancing the need to take action to address current issues with the requirement to meet the long-term needs of Wales. Long-term thinking is not intended to remove the ability of public bodies to take the short-term immediate view, but to ensure that in addition to this the impact on future generations are considered.
7. Implementation of the Act is also going to be long-term, and it is important to acknowledge that there is not one government in the world that has successfully embedded sustainable development across all its policy areas. At the foundation of the Act, it was acknowledged that it would take time to deliver its proposed outcomes and aims. That is why a 20-year programme of work was established to support the behavioural and cultural changes that would be needed and why the Welsh Government’s Culture Change Service was established in May 2012.
8. Senedd scrutiny of the Act and the use of it through various committees is also part of Wales’s long-term commitment to change. The Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) (Wales) Act 2024enables the constitutional landscape in Wales to shift to a larger Senedd and government which might present opportunities to move to a higher profile, cross-cutting parliamentary mechanism. Finland’s Commission for the Future might be an example of how to undertake accountability of Welsh Government (“WG”) under the Act and serve as a sounding board for issues across the whole governance framework established by the Act. Integration of the Act into scrutiny processes is important to the success of the Act, as demonstrated by this inquiry.
9. Linking of the Act to the SDGs means that Wales is increasingly becoming recognised as a global leader in well-being and sustainability, with the Act now acting as a form of soft power that puts Welsh politics on the map, and shapes international thinking. It has won multiple international awards, including the World Future Council awarding the Act the world future policy award in November 2024, and has opened doors for Welsh policymakers at international forums. Through the Act, Wales is building collaborations with international organisations such as the Wellbeing Economy Governments (“WEGo”) partnership and the World Health Organization (“WHO”), helping Wales influence global policy and practice, including by hosting the launch of WHO’s research findings into well-being investment in Cardiff in December. This further cements Wales’s reputation as a country that puts long-term well-being at the heart of it decision-making, and as a result makes Wales a country international organisations are keen to engage with.
"The adoption of the Declaration on Future Generations at the United Nations marks a significant moment for global governance... Wales has led the way in becoming the first country in the world to embed future generations into law." - United Nations Under-Secretary-General, Guy Ryder, 2015
“The Welsh approach provides important learning that other nations seeking to adopt well-being economy approaches can draw from." – Chris Brown, WHO Europe, 2024
Light Up the Future
The WG recently led a national plan for marking the 10th anniversary of the Act, acknowledging the success over the last ten years, as well as looking forward to the future of the Act. During this anniversary we delivered a national-day-of-action to focus attention on the Act across and outside of Wales called Light Up the Future where participants discussed everyday implementation of the Act, and the use of the 5 ways of working, from across all sectors of Wales. We have also seen the anniversary marked by the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and the Auditor General for Wales at their Action Summit on 29 April.
3. WFG Landscape
10. To ensure the Act can continue to deliver on its objectives it is right to consider the wider landscape around it. This landscape needs to be part of an understanding about the reach of the Act and the impact of its implementation. The maps at Annex 1 illustrate the scope of the Act which could be considered by a future evaluation.
Legislative Landscape – Map 1
11. The legislative landscape around the Act has an influence on its implementation and interactions can be found at Map 1 (Annex 1). Since devolution, legislation has influenced and used the framework of the Act to extend its reach and support its purpose. Map 1 shows the landscape of legislation prior to 2015, mainly influencing the Act; legislation during 2015 and 2020 (including the Act); and legislation during 2021 and 2025, which primarily uses or draws on its purpose and intended effect. The map does not seek to show every piece of legislation that has a policy relationship with the Act.
12. Welsh legislation has used the Act in several ways, drawing on the purpose of the Act and supplementing it; adding new public bodies; tapping into its operational mechanisms; and reporting or replicating its architecture. More recently two further pieces of legislation – the Disused Mine and Quarry Tips (Wales) Act 2024 and the Environment (Principles, Governance and Biodiversity Targets) (Wales) Billare or may add public bodies to the Act (these are not captured in Map 1).
13. This landscape is likely to contribute to the implementation of the Act and where other legislation has an enforcement mechanism, could be found to deepen the contribution. For example, interactions created by the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023 (“SPPP Act”) such as the Social Partnership duty, which uses the process of setting well-being objectives, could be a powerful lever in terms of public bodies seeking to maximise their contribution to the well-being goals.
Duties on Public Bodies – Map 2
14. Public bodies have a landscape of several other duties which they are required to discharge in addition to the well-being duty. Map 2 (Annex 1) includes an overview of these duties and the primary legislation that created them, including the public bodies that are expected to discharge these duties.
15. Each of the other duties have a different level of regard, not captured by the map, but each have a policy specific contribution to the well-being goals and are likely to play a significant part in how public bodies might set their well-being objectives or review those objectives.
16. It is not certain what impact the other duties are having on implementation of the Act, but determination of the extent to which these other policy specific duties are supporting the setting of well-being objectives to maximise a contribution to the well-being goals is key to measuring impact.
Relationships for Accountability, Assurance, Compliance and Transparency – Map 3
17. Map 3 (Annex 1) shows the general duties and powers of the FGC, AGW and the Welsh Ministers under the Act. Although these three are not typically referred to as regulators in the context of the Act, it is a helpful label for analysing the Act as a governance framework. Within the map are examples of the leading accountability mechanism the Act has shown, including Section 20 reviews and statutory reports. The Act was designed with accountability, assurance and transparency through several different mechanisms, but it is primarily managed by the ‘regulatory’ relationships governed by soft ‘regulatory’ powers rather than being enforced under the Act. By design the Act’s three ‘regulators’ are the Welsh Ministers, the FGC and the AGW who have joint and individual roles of setting expectations, providing guidance and support, and influencing change without the force of binding legal regulations.
18. Both Section 20 reviews by the FGC have led to the implementation of changes in the WG. The Section 20 review on procurement identified that whilst there were many examples of good practice in achieving well-being goals through procurement, these were not being targeted or achieved consistently by public bodies. The Socially Responsible Procurement duty in the SPPP Act has been designed specifically to address that concern.
19. The FGC’s statutory Future Generations Report 2025 is already leading to wider implementation of the Act in the WG. The WG has adopted, accepted or accepted in principle 30 recommendations from the 46 for the WG, rejecting only 1 recommendation. Other responses include “not applicable” and “considering positively for the future”.
20. The 2025 statutory report from the AGW – “No Time to Lose: Lessons from our work under the Well-being of Future Generations Act” – has also influenced WG delivery of the sustainable development principle, with planned actions agreed for the WG to work with public bodies to take a fresh look at the assessment of performance and impact under the Act.
4. National Picture on Well-being Goals
Well-being of Wales Report, National Indicators and Milestones
21. The Act requires Welsh Ministers to set national well-being indicators to assess progress towards achieving the well-being goals. In March 2016 the WG published a small set of national well-being indicators to measure progress against the well-being goals. The national indicators are designed to represent the outcomes for Wales, and its people that will help demonstrate progress towards the 7 well-being goals. They are not intended to be performance indicators for an individual organisation.
22. In 2021, the WG asked for views on possible new indicators based on the learning from COVID-19. Based on these responses and wider input, some indicators were updated, and 4 new national indicators were included in December 2021. Welsh Ministers will conduct a further review of the national well-being indicators to begin after the next Senedd election in 2026.
23. The Act also requires Welsh Ministers to set national well-being milestones to assist in measuring whether progress is being made at a national level towards the achievement of the well-being goals. Following development and consultation throughout 2021, the first wave of national milestones was laid before the Senedd in December 2021 and the second wave were laid in November 2022.
24. The Act created a statutory requirement to report against our progress towards the national well-being goals and well-being indicators through the Wellbeing of Wales Report, which concerns the collective progress of Wales as a nation. It is not a report on the performance of an individual organisation and the first report was published in September 2017.
25.As the Wellbeing of Wales report has been published annually since 2017, it offers the most comprehensive and accurate study of progress under the Act since its inauguration in 2015. Annex 2 provides an overview of some of the longer-term findings from the Wellbeing of Wales reports for each of the well-being goals.
5. Welsh Government Implementation
Continuous Learning and Improvement Plan
26.Learning and improving has been a big part of the Act’s implementation and in 2022 the FGC conducted a Section 20 review into WG’s implementation of the Act, concluding that:
“Significant progress has been made since the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 came into force. The aim and ambition of the Act has helped shift culture in public sector from silo working and short-termism towards a more integrated, long-term way of thinking, which considers the needs of both current and future generations. Welsh Government has shown ambition and improvement in the progress they are making towards achieving the seven well-being goals. However, there is more that must be done to achieve the ambitious vision the Act set out for Wales.” - Executive Section 20 Overview, 2022
27. In response to that review the WG published its Well-being of Future Generations Continuous Learning and Improvement Plan (“WFG CLIP”). The WFG CLIP brought together the actions that the WG have taken to strengthen the organisation’s understanding and application of the Act. In May 2024, an annual progress update was published and over the course of 2024-25 the WG completed 18 actions, with 15 embedded into everyday processes and other actions at various stages of progress.
28.From a policy perspective, the sustainable development principle has shaped the way we have developed policies such as the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan. Case studies of these can be found in Annex 3.
29.The next iteration of the WFG CLIP will reflect the actions the WG has committed to progress because of the 50 recommendations contained in the Future Generations Report 2025 and the 4 recommendations in the AGW’s statutory report.
Learning through training
30. There is a leadership challenge for people across the public service in Wales to think about the long-term and lead the way in working differently both within the spirit and letter of the WFG Act. Training and learning opportunities have been developed over the last 10 years to support implementation of the Act, including:
§ Academi Wales’s programmes and masterclasses support future and current public and third sector leaders across Wales through a wide range of leadership development interventions. This includes its annual One Welsh Public Service Summer and Winter Schools.
§ The Future Generations Leadership Academy, which was established in 2019, has been successful in bringing together young people from across Wales’s public, private and voluntary sectors to train them in leadership development and in the Act. This has led to young leaders delivering the Act within their organisations across the WG and wider public, private and third sectors.
§ The WG has published the Building culture for co-production: A manual for applying the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. This document promotes a selection of the most successful and popular practices for delivering the sustainable development principle, based on the latest scientific evidence and over a decade of experimentation. It provides a toolkit for new and innovative ways of delivering the Act.
§ Hwb Dyfodol was launched this year by the WG, FGC, Natural Resources Wales (“NRW”) and Transport for Wales (“TFW”) to embed futures thinking across all public sector organisations in Wales. It involves sectors and multiple generations, and it is working to unlock ideas and solutions that will lead to integrated preventative action. It is intended to build skills around long-term thinking and is being utilised to support robust futures analysis for PSB well-being assessments and the next iteration of the Future Trends Report.
§ The Hwb Dyfodol, in collaboration with Cymbrogi, has created a new futures module for secondary schools. This module will lead students on a time travelling journey helping them imagine different and better pathways to the future and linking them back to our challenges in the present. This is an important step to making Wales the most future-literate nation in the world and is enabled by the Act.
6. Wales Wide Implementation
Public Bodies
31. Since the Act came into force all 44 bodies set their well-being objectives and reported on those objectives and continue to do so whilst reviewing their objectives. Annex 3 provides case studies of public bodies implementing their well-being objectives.
32. The Public Accounts Committee (5th Senedd) held an inquiry into the barriers to the implementation of the WFG Act. As part of this inquiry, the Committee asked public bodies whether it was clear to them what good implementation of the WFG Act looked like in practice. Their report, Delivering for Future Generations: the story so far, found that overall public bodies did have this clarity. It also made several recommendations to address the barriers to implementation which the WG responded to, including the review of public bodies subject to the Act.
33. The Future Generations Report 2025 found there to be strong support for the Act across the public sector in Wales and that some public bodies have embedded the Act into their corporate process. It also states that:
“Over the last decade, there has been a fundamental shift in how Welsh Government and public bodies operate, leading to the creation of dedicated sustainable development teams, and new decision-making processes aligned with the five ways of working and the well-being goals.” – Future Generations Report 2025
34. The AGW’s statutory report found that the Act has increased prominence, changed conversations, is influencing longer-term planning, and impacting day-to-day decision-making and working practices across Welsh public services. However, it states that there are instances where public bodies have given little or no explicit consideration to the Act and that action is required in specific fields such as workforce planning, asset management and financial planning.
Public Services Boards
37. The group is now progressing work in three key areas:
§ Monitoring & Evaluation Guidance: Co-producing tools and guidance to help PSBs report on medium- and long-term outcomes and demonstrate how the five ways of working are being applied.
§ Communications & Visibility: Developing resources to clarify the role of PSBs and increase their visibility locally and nationally, including elevator pitch toolkits and case studies.
§
Learning Spaces:
Designing and testing spaces for PSBs and partners to share
learning, strengthen relationships, and build trust across
sectors.
7. Value for Money and Enforcement
Welsh Government Funding for the Act
38.The WG provides funding for specific aspects of the Act, as demonstrated in Table 1:
Table 1 – Welsh Government Direct Funding for Delivery of the Well-being of Future Generations Act
|
Function |
Purpose of Funding |
2024-25 Final Budget (£) |
2025-26 Final Budget (£) |
|
The Office of the Future Generations Commissioner |
Final baseline resource funding for the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. |
1,610,000 |
1,700,000 |
|
Public Services Boards |
A regional funding grant to aid support with PSB assessments of well-being, and the development and delivery of PSB well-being plans. This also includes funding for wider Welsh Government PSB activities including staffing costs. |
530,000 |
585,000 |
|
Total |
2,140,000 |
2,285,000 |
|
39.Smaller amounts of ad hoc funding are used for other activities such as research and events.
40. In addition, the WG has 7.8 FTE staff in the Sustainable Futures Division working directly on the delivery and implementation of aspects of the Act.
The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales
41. The FGC and his office provide multiple services within their budget. Their annual report 2024/25 demonstrated the breadth and depth of their delivery on the Act. Notable delivery includes:
§ Analysing 238 well-being objectives and 2155 steps.
§ Impacting and influencing key policies including river pollution and the community food strategy.
§ Delivering the 4th Future Generations Leadership Academy to 36 young people.
§ Helping 36 public bodies deliver the sustainable development principle through undertaking the Ways of Working Progress Checker.
§ Hosting 10 ministerial meetings and attending a Senedd committee. This year has seen these numbers increase with the Commissioner attending several Senedd committees.
Public Bodies and Public Services Boards
42. As part of the consultation for additional public bodies, feedback was sought on resource implications and the many public bodies added to the Act in 2024 indicated that costs would be absorbed into current resources with no increase in staffing costs, with some indicating that costs would be minimal.
43. The AGW’s statutory report stated that public bodies can achieve more value for money by using the sustainable development principle and that public bodies should be held to account for delivering on well-being:
“Public bodies are often not able to demonstrate the impact of various plans and activities, or the value for money they are achieving”.
”public bodies need to work together to respond to complex challenges and achieve value for money. Collaboration can realise economies of scale or avoid duplication. It can mobilise partners to manage demand and stop problems from getting worse. Collaboration can also help deliver wider benefits. It is not just about working together to address short-term problems”.
44. The Welsh Government’s policy on funding has been that it is for the PSBs to decide how they collectively resource their work – including pooling resources and funding. However, there have been varying degrees of success when pooling funding or drawing on funds outside of members’ budget.
