, Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Climate Change
So, we've actually had a couple more authorities join Leasing Scheme Wales very recently. Of course, the very welcome uplift of the local housing allowance in April will really help, because the way that Leasing Scheme Wales works is that we guarantee the…
, Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, thank you, Jenny. So, we support local authorities to leverage Great Britain-wide capital funding into local communities by rolling out, as you say, the local authority Flex schemes associated with ECO4 and the Great British insulation scheme, which used…
, Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Climate Change
Under the optimised retrofit programme, local authorities have received around £28 million. ORP supports a test-and-learn approach to decarbonise homes in the most efficient and cost-effective way. The net-zero carbon hwb was recently launched to help local…
, Plenary
Short Debate: Fail to plan, plan to fail—Why Wales needs a planning overhaul
Okay. I'll try again. My computer is telling me I have full internet and there's no delay on my side, so I don't know what's happening, I'm afraid. Okay. So, I'll start again, Dirprwy Lywydd. I welcome the opportunity to debate the Welsh planning system…
, Plenary
Short Debate: Fail to plan, plan to fail—Why Wales needs a planning overhaul
Okay. I'll start again, shall I?
, Plenary
Short Debate: Fail to plan, plan to fail—Why Wales needs a planning overhaul
Okay, where did you get to? Was I just talking about the climate and nature emergencies? Did you hear that?
, Plenary
Short Debate: Fail to plan, plan to fail—Why Wales needs a planning overhaul
[Inaudible.]—policy intervention.
, Plenary
Short Debate: Fail to plan, plan to fail—Why Wales needs a planning overhaul
Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I very much welcome the opportunity to debate the Welsh planning system today, but I do not, however, accept the proposition on which the debate is based, or many of the comments, I'm afraid, that have been made earlier. The Welsh…
, Plenary
Debate on a Statement: The Draft Budget 2024-25
Yes. Why didn't you vote for the clean air Bill if you care about climate change?
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Thank you very much.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Pleasure.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, so that's a little bit more complicated, Joyce, because we have to make sure that the grid connections for those housing developments are there, so we've been doing it from that end. So, we haven't been saying that the house has to be fit-up already for…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, and one of the things we have been working with local authorities for, actually, is to make sure that they can charge up their own fleets at points using their own produced electricity. So, the committee will be aware that the food waste that we produce…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, there are a couple of examples of that across Wales. I visited one in north Wales in the summer—[Inaudible.]
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, we're very happy to share it. Yes.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
But I will say that you can now at most major filling stations find a 'tap and pay' one, which is a major improvement.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
All but five of the 19 rapid EV charging points on the strategic road network are in place. We've got some complex third-party issues that have emerged for the other five, and they're intended to get a charge point every 25 miles of the network by 2023. So…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
That will come with franchising, basically. The franchising arrangements will help the companies transition to decarbonised fleets, and that's partly what we want to drive as part of that process. Ruth's been doing all the work on that.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, and we can roll out the learning from that across local authorities into the fleet and so on. There are a couple of other things to say about this—the school bus network is an interesting one, because their model is to pick up older service buses and use…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Well, I do that all the time; you've got to stop in Aberystwyth and recharge. So, we've got a selection of things that we're doing to decarbonise the fleet. We've got the TrawsCymru network that we've been investing in in recent years, and they're all going…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes. It really works. We've been doing the waste vehicle fleet at the same time as this, and it's quite clear that, with the topography of Wales, electric vehicles are not the answer for some of those, so hydrogen clearly is the answer. So, if you've got a…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, thanks, Janet. There are a number of things going on here. As in the paper I sent in to the committee, we've got 94 battery electric buses operational in Wales, which is about 5 per cent of the 1,800 public service buses. That's to go up to 50 per cent…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
That's an interesting point, isn't it?
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
Well, yes, I suppose, if you want a really short answer, because we want an integrated travel plan. Yes.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Transport scrutiny with the Minister for Climate Change
We’re talking about people like me getting on a bike and going to work, not people who are hobby cyclists, and those are the people that we most need to attract onto these routes. So, the routes need to be designed for families, for people travelling to work…
