As the race for election gets underway at the National Assembly for Wales, today the WLGA publishes its five year Manifesto for protecting Wales’ communities as far as possible from austere cuts in public finances and from bearing the brunt of the recessionary fallout.
‘WLGA Manifesto for National Assembly Elections 2011-2016- Responding to the Challenge’ makes a realistic assessment of the challenges that lie ahead for public service delivery in Wales across each of local government’s key responsibility areas:
- Improving skills and educational attainment;
- Supporting vulnerable people;
- Managing waste;
- Addressing housing need;
- Making communities safe;
- Developing sustainable transport; and
- Managing local government finance.
Launching the document, Steve Thomas (CBE), WLGA Chief Executive said:
“Local government’s aspiration is to protect communities as far as we can from the impact of budget cuts and to ensure that Wales does not bear the brunt of the recessionary fallout as it has done in the past. This manifesto is local government’s blueprint for doing business differently over the next five years and finding different solutions to the difficult challenges that lie ahead.”
“Our manifesto contains ambitious and innovative plans for delivering improvement of local communities. For some time local government has recognised that to achieve the major innovation in public service delivery that is needed then we must sharpen our priorities and re-invent our way of working. This ethos is at the heart of our manifesto.”
“The scale of the challenge facing Government in Wales, both national and local is significant and cannot be washed away by wishing for more money from the Treasury. Positively, the Referendum signalled that the people of Wales are keen supporters of the “Welsh way” of doing business. Therefore, by working across all levels of Government in Wales, developing the partnerships and with all sectors sharing the responsibility for delivering a better Wales, we can achieve the improvements needed by ensuring that our responses are fully integrated and harness the potential engagement and energy of our citizens and communities.”
“We are committed to delivering a strong and effective local government which can complement and balance a newly empowered National Assembly for Wales. Whilst our manifesto sets out how we will ensure that our own house is in order over the next five years by increasing the pace of collaboration, improving services through more intense peer review and self assessment and making clearer arguments to the Assembly Government for services currently funded through specific grants to be properly consolidated, we are calling upon the newly elected Government to also play its part by having a more defined strategic role focused on delivery and giving local government the flexibility to innovate and the ability to integrate resources across programmes as funding streams become fewer and less complex.”
Over and above local government’s policy agenda, local government’s Manifesto also calls for a number of pieces of legislation:
- A draft Bill to promote a general power of competence to local authorities in Wales as applied in Scandinavian local government
- A draft education Bill which would seek to enhance the powers of local education authorities in their employer role
- A draft Bill to promote devolution and devolution of the youth justice system to Wales and the establishment of a Blue Ribbon Commission to examine the devolution of the criminal justice system
- A draft Bill seeking broader powers on food hygiene
