Meeting the Financial Challenges Facing Local Government in Wales

The Committee agreed on 20 May 2014 to undertake further work on the ‘Meeting the Financial Challenges Facing Local Government in Wales’ report. The Committee were keen to consider what planning had been undertaken in Local Authorities to meet the financial challenges and for the Committee’s work to feed into the Finance Committee’s scrutiny of the budget.

The work was undertaken in two stages.

Stage One –consideration of the working arrangements between the Welsh Government and WLGA regarding the Local Government settlement to ensure there is joint working to discuss and resolve their different views on the timeliness of information on the annual settlement, to establish areas such as a mutual understanding of what settlement is looking for, and time limits for the sharing of information.

Stage Two – to challenge local government leaders about the need to do more to address the financial challenges and consider whether the scope for further savings is being hindered by the lack of clarity on the future of local government boundaries in Wales.  This can incorporate consideration of the AGW’s forthcoming national overview report of the quality and effectiveness of local authorities’ financial planning arrangements, and aspects of the recently published AGW local government improvement study report on scrutiny arrangements.

During its meeting on 6 October 2015, the Committee considered the further response from the Welsh Government (14 September 2015) and noted it was unlikely to revisit this issue before the end of this Assembly Term.