21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
I think most of our response to omicron has had to be undertaken in this financial year, and we've been able to respond very quickly because of the way that we have managed our funding, to ensure that we have ability to deploy additional funding at this point…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
Yes, so through the course of the pandemic, we've provided in excess of £2.5 billion of funding to Welsh businesses, and our package of funding has been designed to complement and build on the support of the UK Government, identifying gaps that exist. And I…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
So, further changes to the arrangements for free-school-meal eligibility won't be introduced until after the 2022 pupil level annual school census data, which is published this month. And, as the 2023-24 settlement relies on the data from 2022, there won't be…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
No, as I say, I'm sure they discuss it amongst themselves, but I haven't had a formal request, so it's not something I would look to initiate without that request. But, that said, we do have lots of opportunities to discuss the formula. We've got the…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
So, on the review of the funding formula, I've said to the WLGA that if this is something collectively that they would like to do, or for Welsh Government to look at, then I would be open to that. But I haven't had that request from the WLGA; I know it's…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
Thank you. We do publish information on local authority reserves, and we do that annually. The purpose of that is to support elected Members in understanding the level of reserves their authority has reported in the context of other authorities in Wales. So…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
Chair, shall I just add at this point that I plan to do a statement in due course on reforming or changes to non-domestic rates—so, an update on our approach to things like appeals, for example—just to put that on the committee's radar?
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
I think it depends on—. I can see Andrew's got his hand up, but I was just going to reflect briefly on the arrangements that are in place for the individual businesses. So, one thing that we've seen in the pandemic is that there is a real range of ways in…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
We'll start off with business rates, and the most important thing to remember is that business rates are important in terms of providing £1 billion for the Welsh Government's budget every year. So, we often hear calls to just scrap business rates, but then…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
I'll ask Andrew to come in on some of this, but in terms of switching revenue to capital for suitable projects, we've used that facility extensively. We've done it in 2020-21 and 2021-22. One of the things I'm always mindful of when we do this is to ensure…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
So, the Wales infrastructure investment strategy, although I led on its development, is very much a document that is owned by all Ministers. I took it to Cabinet to ensure that we had cross-Government buy-in to it. I had individual meetings with those…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
Just to refer to that point about social services, I don't know if the ADSS had provided the evidence before the settlement in terms of social services, but we have provided significant additional funding in respect of what local authorities and the ADSS were…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
I'll take the hardship fund point first. There won't be a continuation of the local government hardship fund in the next financial year, and that's partly because there is no specific COVID funding for us in the next financial year. The only way, really, I…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
I have regular meetings with the Minister for health, and we discuss a whole range of things. I think we probably meet at least once a month to discuss various issues. We have budget bilaterals where we talk about the budget, but then individual meetings…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
The investment in recovery will achieve a number of things. There'll be a number of things that are supported, particularly in terms of supporting some of the high-volume services that may be better delivered in a regional context. They would be, namely…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
We worked really closely to ensure that the Wales infrastructure investment strategy, which is our new 10-year strategy, published alongside the budget this year, aligned closely with the Net Zero Wales plan. Both the plan and the strategy were developed in…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
Again, there's a lot of work going on within the budget in terms of green industries. The serious amount of money that we're investing in housing is going to be important, not only in terms of building our commitment for 20,000 social homes that are low…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
Yes, we'll take on board these comments as we think about our budget improvement for future years and the way in which we present information. So, that's helpful, thank you.
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
I hope we've increased the level of information that we've provided this year. So, there is some of that in chapter 4 of the narrative document with the budget, but then also within the infrastructure finance plan, which sets out the specific funding…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
This is a really important part of our budget. I referred earlier to the zero-based review and this is the culmination of that. You can see that the climate change MEG does have the lion's share of our capital investment. You'll see in the budget…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
So, the funding will be for the specific areas that have funding attached to them within the programme for government and the co-operation agreement with Plaid Cymru. That said, we'll be monitoring spend closely. We've had to, to some degree, provide…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
So, we've got the co-operation agreement, which has a number of elements within it that have finance attached to them. One of the big-ticket examples would be the decisions relating to free schools meals and childcare would be another. And then there are…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
I'd like to do it this year. We haven't got a date yet as to when we will launch that consultation, but I would hope to provide a written statement with an update before too long and then, hopefully, that will be able to set out a bit more of a timescale.
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
We haven't launched a consultation yet, but we will absolutely go to all possible lengths to ensure that people have the opportunity to contribute to the consultation when it is launched. It's important that we hear from all interested parties. We want to…
21 Ionawr 2022 , Finance Committee
Trafod Rheoliadau Treth Gwarediadau Tirlenwi (Cyfraddau Treth) (Cymru) (Diwygio) 2021
So, £244 million was added to the revenue support grant for the council tax reduction scheme in 2013-14, which is when this responsibility was passed to Welsh Government. It was passed with a 10 per cent cut, so it comprised a fixed budget of £222 million…
