Following this week’s Welsh Government announcement of a £90m investment in towns across Wales, Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government, Mark Isherwood AM, has raised questions over the timescale for the investment and also called for communities and third sector bodies to be involved in deciding how the money is spent.
Mr Isherwood, who is the Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government, raised the matter in the Welsh Parliament yesterday with the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government, Hannah Blythyn AM, following her Statement on ‘Supporting our Town Centres’.
Speaking in the Welsh Conservative Debate on Community Regeneration at the beginning of this month, Mr Isherwood said a Welsh Conservative Government would invest £200m in market and seaside towns over a five-year term, and that local communities would be given the opportunity to decide how the fund would be invested within their local area.
Questioning the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government over the Welsh Government’s fund, he said:
“You begin your Statement with the announcement, which, of course, we have been made publicly aware of in advance through the media, of a further package of support for town centres worth nearly £90 million as part of your Transforming Towns agenda.
“What is the timescale that that £90 million applies to? Is it one year, or is it projected into the next Senedd term?
“Having led a debate three weeks ago here calling on the Welsh Government to establish Seaside Town and Market Town funds to support regeneration in communities across Wales, and announcing that's exactly what the Welsh Conservatives would do, I could say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, although I suspect you'll of course flatly deny that this has anything to do with it. However, our proposals included the statement that this would enable communities to decide how the fund is to be invested within their local area. In other words, not just public bodies.
“As the Bevan Foundation has said, if people feel that policies are imposed on them, the policies don't work, and we need to therefore produce programmes with communities themselves.
“What consideration have you also given to the extensive work carried out by the Carnegie Trust on transforming towns and on the Enabling State? They state in their many reports, including 'Turnaround Towns', that ‘The future of our towns is about more than just the high street, it is also about residents' access to levers of change and their ability to influence local decisions’, and they state that the Enabling State approach is about 'moving us from the state as a provider of welfare towards a more enabling style of governance. Set within a shift in the relationships between citizens, community and the state', suggesting that 'government, alongside driving the performance of public services, should enable communities to do what they do best', where communities 'are best-placed to bring a wealth of local knowledge and collective energy to the decisions that affect them’.”
“The Federation of Small Businesses Wales said ‘it was time to start rethinking what a high street looks like’. So, how do you respond to … the suggestions they made, including publishing town strategies in every town, ‘ensuring the ownership is local and businesses and the voluntary and public sectors are engaged’; and rethinking the role of business rates in towns, ‘replicating the recently announced English relief for high street businesses’.
In her response, the Deputy Minister revealed that instead of putting real local ownership at the heart of policy, the Welsh Government is only “looking in terms of how we can take forward more of a communications approach with communities”.
