Agenda and minutes

View the meeting transcript.

1.1.      The Chair welcomed Members, the Minister for Local Government and Government Business and her officials to the meeting.

Minister for Local Government and Government Business, Lesley Griffiths AM

Reg Kilpatrick, Director, Local Government

Owain Lloyd, Deputy Director of Operations, Local Government and Communities

2.1. The Committee received evidence from the Minister.

Action points:

The Minister agreed the following:

·         to make arrangements for all the local authority equality impact assessments to be brought together in one place, if the Minister with responsibility for equality matters does not already do so.

·         to provide examples from previous years of outcome agreement funding being withheld from local authorities.

·         to set out how the CTRS element of the RSG has been distributed this year and how, potentially, it will be done next year.

·         to arrange for note to be provided clarifying which Ministerial budget the money for implementing the Active Travel (Wales) Bill will come from.

·         to provide a note on whether there are any restrictions on local authorities in terms of commercial sales they are able to make and, if so, whether there are any plans to review this in order to enable local authorities to generate more income.

The Chair agreed the following:

·         To circulate the review co-ordinated by the WLGA which looked at fees and charges across local authority services, if this was publicly available.

·         To share a letter from SOLACE—the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers—with the Minister, received as part of the Committee’s inquiry into progress with local government collaboration.

Minister for Housing and Regeneration, Carl Sargeant AM

John Howells, Director of Housing and Regeneration

Steve Hudson, Head of Finance, Homes and Places

3.1. The Chair welcomed the Members, the Minister for Housing and Regeneration and his officials to the meeting. The Committee received evidence from the Minister.

Action points:

The Minister agreed to provide the following:

·         More detail on the payback terms of Financial Transaction Funding being made available for the Help to Buy equity loan scheme when these terms have been negotiated with HM Treasury;

·         More detail on the long-term impact that welfare reform is having on communities, when that information becomes available (The Minister suggested this information would be available in 12 months’ time or less).

·         Details of the progress of the eight Local Authorities that had not completed their registers of accessible homes at the time of the Minister’s work on this last year.

·         An amended budget paper with details of the intermediate care fund in the capital budget.