, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Let me find it again. There we go. So, we've done the end-to-end review; we had ICF Consulting in to do it. We're going to publish the high-level findings next month, and we had just short of £300,000 allocated to undertake the review from the 2022-23 budget…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Yes. So, we've done the end-to-end review. I keep putting my page down, Chair, give me one second. I keep finding marine, and, then, putting it down again.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
I don't know, because we'll see what the consultation comes back with. But what I do want is transparency. So, if we decide to calibrate it or taper it—. And these are fees that have not been moved for 20 years; this isn't a sudden hike from last year's…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Part of the consultation is to ask exactly that question and part of the consultation is to understand which parts of our economy are most impacted by the changes. So, if you're talking about individual farmers looking at huge hikes, that's one thing. If…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Absolutely.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
And we've also got a much better understanding with NRW of what our resources can do and what their resources can do, rather than any kind of duplication over that. That's an ongoing process, absolutely. And we've also done a review of their fees and charges…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Yes, that's absolutely right, except there's slightly more nuance on it. Because of the baseline review and because of the way that service level agreements have been set out, we kind of have a menu. So, we can have this level of service for this much money…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
It's not just simplifying, though, because it's a complex set of things to deliver, and we've layered it over with another complex set of terms and conditions, which I think are unnecessary given the recalibrated relationship between us and NRW, which I think…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Absolutely. Really, we need to cover that off. So, I'm hoping that I can come back to the committee and tell you that we've managed to figure out a way to do that very shortly. And then, as I've already said, we're moving with NRW to have a complete cultural…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
We've got through the baseline review. We've already mentioned in this session that we've been trying to line up NRW's budget process with our own, because it was completely out of sync, which made no sense to anyone at all. The baseline review was delivered…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
I was beginning to wonder, Chair, when we were going to get to Natural Resources Wales.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
I went and opened the very last EU LIFE scheme in Wales. I cannot hide that I was very upset about it. They are great schemes. We've allocated £1.2 million in 2023-24 to match fund the final two EU LIFE projects. They always require match funding, and we've…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
That's quite right, Joyce. Part of the biodiversity piece is understanding what the effect of the different changes in the climate will be. We're already seeing species here that have never been seen this far north before. We've also got the species that were…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
We've also got Finance Earth procured to give us advice on the delivery of a sustainable delivery model for some of that, and the final committee report is due in March. I'm happy to share it when we've got it. There's £115,000 allocated to fund the advice…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
We've got a task and finish group, which I've already mentioned, and that task and finish group arose out of the deep dive. That isn't a Welsh Government thing, that's across the piece. That task and finish group has got Welsh Government on it, obviously…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Yes, one of you might have to help me out there. So, local places for nature is £60 million. The peatlands programme, I don't remember. Does somebody remember?
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
That's a whole mix of things. Dean might have to help me out here.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
I'm happy to write to the committee; it won't be right now. We are part of a global group that are looking at various financing models for this—I think I've mentioned it a few times now—from COP15. So, the officials who accompanied me there are now working as…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
So, there isn't any specific funding yet. We're using a very small amount of money, actually, to corral what is people giving us their time for free, which we have a huge wealth of in Wales. We have the group that Jane Davidson is now running for us as part…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Yes, and, actually, Chair, if you have a look at some of the lines in the budget, you can see the mix. Just because I was looking for the environmental one and didn't find it, I hit on the marine one here, for example. So, the marine budget BEL has marine…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Because we weren't geared up enough to do it is the truth of it. So, we've been gearing up slowly to do that. So, net zero is sort of embedded, and this is a global phenomenon as well, actually—the net-zero call has been really successful across the world…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Yes, so this is where it's important to remember Dean's 'this is a three-year budget' comes in. So, we'd already got plans in 2023-24 as part of our 2022-23 budget, so this is an ongoing programme. We've £160 million of investment there—I am desperately…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
That's the cost with the policy development and external research, and so on. So, we've got a work plan over the next 12 months that I've just been talking about, really, to get to where we need to be. So, that's just calibrated for staff costs, research…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Yes, so, we're in the process of having the conversation with the interim assessor about what her findings are. I just want to pay tribute to the great job that she's been doing. What we want to do is structure the oncoming environmental governance body…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24 - part 2
Yes, so, we want to create 43,000 hectares of new woodland by 2030 as part of the net-zero plan and as part of the biodiversity planning as well. It's completely dependent on landowners applying for the grants to do this, so we'll be working with landowners…
