Y Pwyllgor Newid Hinsawdd, Amgylchedd a Materion Gwledig - Y Bumed Senedd

Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee - Fifth Senedd

15/10/2020

Aelodau'r Pwyllgor a oedd yn bresennol

Committee Members in Attendance

Janet Finch-Saunders
Jenny Rathbone
Joyce Watson
Llyr Gruffydd
Mike Hedges Cadeirydd y Pwyllgor
Committee Chair
Neil Hamilton

Y rhai eraill a oedd yn bresennol

Others in Attendance

Jon Fudge Llywodraeth Cymru
Welsh Government
Julie James Y Gweinidog Tai a Llywodraeth Leol
Minister for Housing and Local Government
Neil Hemington Llywodraeth Cymru
Welsh Government

Swyddogion y Senedd a oedd yn bresennol

Senedd Officials in Attendance

Andrea Storer Dirprwy Glerc
Deputy Clerk
Elfyn Henderson Ymchwilydd
Researcher
Elizabeth Wilkinson Ail Glerc
Second Clerk
Francesca Howorth Ymchwilydd
Researcher
Marc Wyn Jones Clerc
Clerk

Cofnodir y trafodion yn yr iaith y llefarwyd hwy ynddi yn y pwyllgor. Yn ogystal, cynhwysir trawsgrifiad o’r cyfieithu ar y pryd. Lle mae cyfranwyr wedi darparu cywiriadau i’w tystiolaeth, nodir y rheini yn y trawsgrifiad.

The proceedings are reported in the language in which they were spoken in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous interpretation is included. Where contributors have supplied corrections to their evidence, these are noted in the transcript.

Cyfarfu'r pwyllgor drwy gynhadledd fideo.

Dechreuodd rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod am 14:20.

The committee met by video-conference.

The public part of the meeting began at 14:20. 

2. Cyflwyniad, ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau
2. Introductions, apologies, substitutions and declarations of interest

Can I welcome Members to the meeting of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee and can I ask if there are any declarations of interest? There happen to be none. 

3. Fframwaith Datblygu Cenedlaethol drafft: Cymru'r Dyfodol - sesiwn dystiolaeth gyda Llywodraeth Cymru
3. Draft National Development Framework for Wales: Future Wales - evidence session with the Welsh Government

Can I welcome, for the scrutiny of the national development plan, Julie James MS, the Minister for Housing and Local Government; Jon Fudge, head of planning policy; and Neil Hemington, head of planning? Welcome and thank you for coming along. 

If I can start off, the first thing, with a thank you, can I thank you for going for the four-region model? It makes a lot more sense and I think it's made an awful lot of people in west Wales and mid Wales very happy. So, can I thank you for that?

Can I ask you on post-COVID recovery? We seem to have developed into a world where a lot of people are working from home at the moment. Will that affect—or do you think it will affect—where people are going to end up living? I mean, everything's been built upon people living in commuter Cardiff in south-east Wales. If people can work from home most, if not all the time, then the need to go to either Cardiff or Bristol disappears.

Yes, absolutely, Chair. So, I concur. Fortunately, it seems that we were quite prescient in looking at both 'Planning Policy Wales', which, as you know, was issued a short while ago now, and in developing the draft national development framework or 'Future Wales' because, of course, one of the things that we've emphasised all the way through this document and the previous 'Planning Policy Wales' document, as summed up in a document called 'Building Better Places', which I hope the committee has seen, which is that all of this is about placemaking; all of this is about our local communities; all of this is about making sure that we have a healthier, more equal and more environmentally responsible Wales, and all of these documents together provide a planning framework for us to enable people to do just that.

What's happened in the pandemic is it's accelerated that process. So, we expected that process to take longer than it's taken, but the documents anticipated the process, and, in fact, the pandemic has just proved that it was the direction of travel; it's just gone an awful lot faster than any of us would have thought. But we're pretty confident that 'Future Wales' builds on the approach that we set out back in 'Planning Policy Wales'. The vision includes having a large number of places where people can live, work and play in their local communities, and, as I say, this has just accelerated the process, really.

Thank you, Chair. Just developing that, I mean, there are a number of areas, aren't there, it isn't just population mobility and where people choose to work? There might be quite negative impacts for public transport, certainly short to medium term. But I noticed in the integrated sustainability appraisal that there's reference to the fact that the NDF could more closely consider the potential impact of dense development in urban locations. That was specifically focusing on air quality, but of course, we know that densely packed populations aren't great when it comes to the spread of COVID and these kinds of pandemics. So, we need to, sort of, I think, take that step back and take that broader view in relation to what we're experiencing now. Likewise, with access to green space, of course, and the report that was published, I think, today, about the importance of housing offering that to people. So, I'm just wondering, whilst I know you're making the point that we're moving at a quicker pace to maybe where you envisaged we would be longer term, is there sufficient flexibility within the NDF to accommodate some of those changes now and not wait for a five-yearly review?

Yes. So, the NDF is a broad outline planning framework; it's not a detailed delivery vehicle, and we're very confident that the broad outline planning framework could accommodate some of the issues that you've just set out, Llyr. I mean, this is a living document that's meant to cover us for 20 years and I'd be very disappointed, actually, if it needed to be revised in the teeth of what, let's face it, is a pretty bad storm we're in at the moment, but the whole point about it is that it's a resilient document that provides that framework for us going forward. Actually, I think, in some ways, the pandemic has proven its ability to do that, because, as I say, we set out a vision of Wales that, actually, the lockdown showed us is even more necessary than we thought it was in the first place, and the framework is there, in our opinion, to do just that.

In terms of very specific issues around density and air quality, I don't know if one of my officials wants to add anything more in terms of the detail of that.

14:25

To go back to address the point I was trying to make: I understand exactly what you're saying, and I largely agree with what you're saying, Minister. It's just that the integrated sustainability appraisal specifically says that

'the NDF could more closely consider the potential impact of dense development'.

So, clearly, there is work that needs to be done in terms of addressing those kinds of issues that maybe we should be addressing now, because it's not just in the context of air quality, but in all these other contexts that we're sort of realising and, of course, there will be other impacts that we don't know what they are as yet.

Yes, and that's—I'll get one of my officials to come in and talk about the detail of the integrated impact assessment and so on in a moment, Llyr, but that's exactly the point I was making. So, first of all, COVID, we hope, is not forever. Clearly we have dense, populated cities, so the plan needs to have a plan for both sparsely populated, rural parts of Wales, and densely populated cities in Wales, and we both want our rural communities to stay vibrant and sustainable, but we also want our cities to grow and be global players. So we want a set of apparently contradictory things, and the document is about how they can be made to live in harmony across Wales in a sustainable way that makes all of those places places where people want to live and work. But in terms of the detail of the air quality and the integrated impact assessment, I think it's Jon, is it, who's going to come in on that?

Yes, Minister. Just to follow on: the correlation between density and how we've responded to the pandemic is far from clear. If you look at the situation around the world, there are some quite densely populated countries who have had different experiences to the pandemic than we are, so you can't lay the sort of health issues solely at the density issue. The ISA is there to give us a whole understanding of the impacts of the proposals in the NDF, and that, I think, is just one element of it and it needs to be read in its entirety.

The ISA was produced in order to test the policies that we put forward. It was clear in highlighting some of the problems that we encountered early on, and we have changed the policy as a consequence of the ISA, so I don't necessarily accept that.

The ISA says that more mixed impacts were identified for the objectives relating to protecting

'the natural environment, including energy and GHG emissions, air quality, flood risk, water, landscapes & townscapes, cultural heritage, biodiversity & geodiversity as well as natural resources. For most of these, it is unclear whether the positive or negative effects would outweigh the other'.

So, is that robust enough, do you think?

Do you want to get—? Can I bring Neil in for a moment there, Jon?

You're muted, Neil. Always once in every committee.

I think what we're talking about there in terms of clarity, the clarity increases as we have more knowledge of what we're seeking to develop, so we're talking here about a very, very high-level plan. Obviously, we're getting more clarity as we go through the phases of the local development plan, then ultimately down to the planning application. So, I think that's where we're talking about levels of clarity that we can undertake through an integrated assessment process at this level. Obviously, you can do it a lot more fine-grained when you get an LDP, and again, when you get the actual proposal.

We could be here talking about developments that are talking about place—broadly talking about place—we're talking about national levels of growth. When you know it's that field that is on a congested road already, you know there are going to be air-quality impacts. So, I think part of what you picked out there is just the scale that we're dealing with here, because we're at a high level.

Yes, I understand that these processes would be more valuable when you're looking at a specific, and the only thing that's left in my mind there is whether this exercise, therefore, could be done in a different way to be more valuable at this overarching level. But, we're not going to go there today, are we?

So, just to ask, and I presume you're going to give me a very civil answer: Brexit is—well, has happened, but the transition period is coming to an end, there will be consequences and impacts, are you confident that the flexibility is there as well to deal with those kinds of outcomes or eventualities?

14:30

Yes, and exactly, Llyr, the answer is very similar, isn't it? Brexit is something we knew we were dealing with in the development of this document, a pandemic wasn't—the very specific pandemic wasn't, but, obviously, pandemic planning has been part of Government strategy for years and years and years. You might say that it hasn't been a great part of Government strategy, but, you know, it's been there. And so, obviously, we knew Brexit was coming when the framework was put together, and, as I said, I cannot emphasise enough, and what Neil's just said, about the planning process in its entirety is important in this regard as well.

So, I suppose I should start by saying that we believe in a plan-led system. We believe in a plan-led system because we believe that the democratic participation of the public of Wales is very important in having their voice heard in what their places should look like. But, we also want a little bit of certainty for our developers and for our industries and for our public services and so on. And if you were going to have a plan-led process, you wouldn't have started from where we started at the bottom end, you'd have started from here, but we have to cut into the circle somewhere, and we are where we are. So, what this is doing is it's looking at the LDPs, it's looking at a number of things that we've been looking at in terms of Government strategy, 'Future Wales', the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015—all those kinds of things—and it's putting that national strategic layer in, in conjunction with 'Planning Policy Wales', by the way. I anticipate that the committee's likely to ask me later on why I haven't put this in here, so I just want to say at this point that this is a suite of documents you need look at, otherwise we'll just be repeating ourselves.

Then we're also, Llyr, you'll be aware, looking to put a strategic regional level of planning in as well. One of the reasons that we've been looking at the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Bill is to put the mechanism in place for getting the regional arrangements to put that strategic level in. So, what you need to do is look at the system as a whole, in a sense, of how it holds together.

And then in terms of planning for things and shocks in the system—Brexit being a shock, whether you think it's a good shock or a bad shock, it's a shock; the pandemic was a shock; there will be other things, natural things, floods, storms, other disasters and so on—the idea is to have a framework in place that is resilient to that and allows both planned building and rebuilding and renewal. It'll be reviewed every five years, but it's intended to be a 20-year document to allow those LDPs to function at the—I don't know what you want to call it—granular level or local level or whatever it is you want to—. And I do think, unless you see that framework as a whole, it's quite difficult to talk about bits of it in isolation.

Back to me and affordable housing. Minister, you rejected the committee's recommendations. I'm not going to ask you why you did that, because I'm sure you had your reasons. But, do you accept that the only time we've had sufficient housing built in Britain was when council housing was built at scale? And that since 1979, when council housing has either not been built or built in very small numbers, we've had a continual housing crisis? And if you agree with those two points, doesn't it follow that we should be looking for large-scale council house building?

So, I do agree with that, but I want to be able to caveat it as well, Mike. So, absolutely, we built an enormous amount of housing as a nation after the ravages of the second world war, and I grew up in one of those estates, as you know. But, we have to learn the lessons of those as well as the—the bad lessons as well as the good lessons. So, there are good lessons to be learned about the scale and pace at which you can put social housing in place to meet a need, but there are also lessons about sustainable communities, infrastructure that's needed to make those communities sustainable, mixed tenure arrangements and so on. There's also a big issue about local diversity, the ability of individual communities to say what they want to have in their area, what that should look like, and a whole series of other things.

We've also had a number of reviews done to determine our policy on housing, not least the independent review of affordable housing supply, which fed into the preparation of this plan. That's all about how we get the best way of supporting the maximum number of people into the affordable housing they need across Wales in a variety of tenures. And I'm not at all disagreeing with you that the biggest of those tenures should be social housing, of course it should, but there are a number of other tenures that are also required—a long list of them: co-operative housing, community trust housing, shared equity housing, Rent to Own, Help to Buy. There's a whole range of other things that we need to make sure that we have in any sustainable housing supply and sustainable community. 

14:35

But we'll increase sustainability of the housing supply if we end up with a situation where people aren't moving into the very low-cost privately rented sector, which used to be owner occupied and which has been bought up in huge quantities by some developers. This has removed the bottom end of the owner occupation market away from those who would have, 30 years ago, bought a house. They're now in a situation where they are trapped in rent.

Yes, and I'm not disagreeing with any of that. One of the things we absolutely want—. There are a range of interventions that we could talk about in a housing context, but this is about the framework plan that guides where those houses will be best built and how they best connect into the infrastructure that goes with them, as I was saying to Llyr just now, right through the planning system down to the local end, which is where you'd get the individual applications for the new housing estates or developments, or whatever you want to call it. As I say, we have to learn both the good and bad lessons of the past. I'm not disagreeing with you at all that the Atlee Government showed us how we can build at scale and pace, and we certainly need to do a lot of that in the future. 

And the Macmillan Government did exactly the same.

Thank you. You're absolutely right, Minister, but isn't it all down to the quality of the design? The housing that Aneurin Bevan approved to the standards that he insisted on—they're all still being lived in and loved by the people. People want to live in those sorts of housing. It was the poor standards and the lowering of standards in later years that led to the instant slums and all the social problems that went with it.

So, isn't the key to all this good design standards that are upheld by the planning system? I want to probe how much you think this framework enables local authorities to reject bad, ugly developments that have just been devised by somebody who wants to maximise their profits and has no intention of living in them.

So, again, this is a framework document, and it's got to be read alongside a suite of other documents. So, there are a whole series of other things in the build and planning regulations that allow us to control size, quality, insulation standards, sprinklers in new build, layouts, energy systems—all kinds of stuff.

You'll know as well as I do that I'm very regretful that, as a result of the pandemic, we've lost the amendments to Part L of our building regulations, which will control some of those things. But we need to put the whole system in place and say, 'This is the top-level framework that sets out how the rest of the documents hang off it.'

The other thing to say, of course, about the planning system is that there's a lag in it. So, we are still having new build houses built without any sprinklers in them, despite us having changed the rules a very considerable period of time ago. If you have an extant planning consent, you can develop it for five years, and, if you've done preliminary things, or you've started the build across a particular big estate, then you can carry on building it.

One of the things—not for this conversation about the top-level plan, but one of the things that we've discussed with planning colleagues over the years is how we can shorten the lag and circumvent the lag in certain circumstances, with building regs and other building safety-type provisions. But this is about the framework that allows us to hang the rest of the documents off it.   

I'm well aware of the lag that necessarily occurs, whatever the regulations are. That's why I'm just so horrified that we're not able to find time to amend Part L of the building regs in this Parliament. By how much would it set back the provision of the sort of housing that we really need to see being built by the private developers, assuming that we introduce it in May/June after the elections?

So, we are consulting as we speak on what's called the DQR standards—so, the spacial standards for housing. So, that's extant at the moment. The Part L—we are about to put a White Paper out, Jenny, setting out what we're trying to achieve with all of those parts of the building regulations. As I said in Plenary—yesterday, I think it was; I don't know, my days all blend into one sometimes—I don't think it's contentious. I think virtually every Member of the Senedd is going to agree, largely, with where that's going. The issue isn't just the time in the Senedd, it's the time of the lawyers and policy officials to actually put this stuff in place that we can actually consider in the Senedd, and, currently, we have 70 per cent of all of our capacity dealing with either the pandemic or Brexit. So, there's just absolutely no possibility of us getting the bandwidth to be able to do that, and nobody's more sorry about that than I am. We're really pushed. Officials are at breaking point in quite a large part of the Government, having had no break and 24/7working for quite some time. I don't think we should underestimate the toll this is taking on our ability to do these things. But the White Paper will come out, we will be able to—. Whichever the Government is after the election, I don't think it matters; I think there's a broad consensus that whoever forms the next Government will want to do that and that it will be pretty consensual. So, we've done as much as we can without having the detail of the regulations in place, because we just don't have the officials to be able to do that.

14:40

Okay. I accept what you're saying. So, how much could we drive improvement in the quality of private developers if we were able to demonstrate that the innovative housing we're producing in the social sector is the sort of thing that anybody should want to live in? Because it seems to me that people who save huge sums of money in order to buy a house are being short changed because they're simply not getting value for money.

This is slightly off the NDF, but I'll set it out for the committee anyway: so, I have a liaison meeting with the Home Builders Federation of Wales, which I meet very—. Again, it was just earlier this week that I met with them. And one of the things we're trying to do is that we're trying to persuade them that, if they build houses to the social house standard, DQR standards, then, in the coming recession, we will be able to allow councils and RSLs to buy those houses off plan. So, we will be able to assist them in making sure that their cashflow stays good and that the building firms stay in business, because we will be able to assist them commercially in that way. So, there are other levers, not just planning levers, that we can use, and one of those, of course, is the way that we can leverage Government spend, Government money, in particular areas to incentivise small builders and so on to bring their own houses up to that standard.

But, in the end, I would like to make sure that no house can be built in Wales at all unless it complies with various sets of standards, and, to do that, we need to change the regs, as we've just said. What this framework does is set out the parameters that anyone has to consider in looking forward at a planning system, in considering what their business model might look like and how that might fit into the next 20 years. And this document, 'Building Better Places', and 'Planning Policy Wales' together, will be telling people—well, it is telling people, I know, because we know from the comments we get back; it's telling them unequivocally that this is the direction of travel and they need to shift their business model accordingly.

Thank you, Minister. Two words, really, come to mind with me: Parker Morris for standards.

We're moving on to the mid Wales region—Neil wants to start and then Joyce also has some questions. Neil.

Good afternoon, Minister. I didn't declare an interest earlier on, because I'm not sure it's declarable, but I am a strong member of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales, and we've made written responses to consultations on this document. It's not my purpose today to question the Welsh Government's aspiration to have 70 per cent of electricity consumption in Wales generated by renewables by 2030, but I would like to look behind that and question the emphasis within this document on production by onshore wind turbines. Section 26 of the 'Future Wales' report, 'amazing growth', refers to the outstanding landscapes of Wales and how critical they are to growing the economy and providing a high quality of life, and the local development plan in Powys also cites rural landscapes as their greatest asset, and it has robust planning guidance for its protection. So, what I'm wondering is why we would despoil this huge asset when there are more productive and less destructive, ultimately more cost-effective, methods of creating renewable energy and jobs. So, it's the emphasis, I think, on onshore wind that needs to be justified.

Right. So, I think there are a number of base assumptions in your question there that I probably just need to say that I don't entirely agree with. So, first of all, of course we value the landscape of Wales. We all want to protect our beautiful landscape—it's very much one of our major assets. We also want to decarbonise Wales and the world, and we want to find a methodology of doing both of those things in harmony.

In the designated pre-assessment areas, the Welsh Government's already modelled the likely impact on the landscape and found them to be capable of accommodating development in that acceptable way, and, in saying that, I really want to say that we need to bring our communities with us in this. So, we need to be able to lever in the right amount of community benefit, community ownership; we need to understand what people have in their minds as an impact that is or is not acceptable.

There's a whole issue around the way that the electricity is taken away from windfarms; it's not the windfarm itself, often, that's the problem, it's the overhead power cables and all the rest of it. So, what this document does is allow us to start the conversation with the grid and with Ofgem about what we propose Wales should look like, so that we've got a place to hang our hat in the conversations with grid and Ofgem about undergrounding of electricity supply, impact on communities, local community energy grids, Neil. So, one of my major bugbears in life is—. As I'm sitting talking to you now, I can see a windfarm out of my window; I'm on oil. So, how do we make sure that people who can see a windfarm are benefiting from its energy? How do we make sure that we get that community buy-in? 

So, I agree with you, I think, in your fundamental assumption that we should be protecting the landscape. We have to do that, though, in a way that also allows us to decarbonise that landscape and make sure that it's not suffering from other effects of climate change and so on. We also have to make sure that our communities have the energy that they require, going forward. We've just been having a conversation about making sure that people can live and work in every part of Wales. To do that, you need broadband; to have broadband, you need electricity, you need to have all the supply lines and all the rest of it. So, this is about us setting out strategically where our pre-assessed areas are. That will allow other developers who want to come in and look at Wales as a way to develop renewables to understand what we're talking about, but it also allows the Government to have those essential conversations with things like the grid and Ofgem about how to plan the grid in Wales. You'll know how bad the grid is in mid Wales, and it's not too great in north and south Wales either. Without a framework to do that, it's impossible to have that conversation, because it's too nebulous to even begin.

So, this is a document that allows us to develop that in a number of different ways, and, as I say, this isn't about the specifics, this is about the national framework, and then we have the strategic regional framework to come, and then, ultimately, of course, the local development policies of Powys or Ceredigion or Brecon Beacons national park or Snowdonia or wherever it is that's looking at the very specific thing. 

So, I do think it's about the balance. I personally think we've got the balance right here. There's a long way to go before we get those developments up and running.

14:45

You started off by saying that the incompatibilities that exist between wanting to protect the landscape and have large-scale wind turbine developments have been examined and they've been found capable of accommodating development in an acceptable way, but, obviously, that's subjective. The plain fact is that onshore turbines of up to 250m tip height on upland plateaus are going to be visible for miles and miles and miles around, maybe up to even 15 miles away, which has an impact upon the immediate neighbourhood and, even if a development takes place within a pre-assessed area, it may well be visible for miles and miles outside it. Now, given the importance of tourism to mid Wales in particular, this threatens the future tourist potential. This is an argument that is put up by Members who are worried about this presumption in favour of large-scale wind turbine developments, and there are very few jobs that are generated by onshore wind, as opposed to offshore wind, and yet tourism is a very, very important part of the mid Wales economy. Powys says that it's the second highest producer of GDP, around 11 per cent. So, we must be very careful not to prejudice these important aspects of local economic life.

Offshore wind is, in many ways, preferable to onshore wind development, because, obviously, the winds blow more offshore and more strongly than onshore. Larger turbines can be used; you don't need to worry about the noise potential of the turbine developments offshore. The load and capacity factors onshore are in the region of 25 per cent, but offshore about 45 per cent, so it feels to me that the Welsh Government ought to give more priority than it promises in its framework document to offshore wind and less priority to onshore wind. That way, I think you can possibly square the circle that I've been describing.

14:50

Two things immediately to say: so, first of all, this is the national spatial plan for the land. It has to be read in conjunction with the marine plan, which would have the offshore. You wouldn't expect to see offshore wind in this—this is the land plan, so just to be clear that just because it's not in this doesn't mean we're not considering it, because of course we are. We think that Wales should exploit its natural resources, land and sea, in order to do this in a sustainable way. There are just as many marine conservation concerns for the marine plan as there are for this.

The second thing is just to disagree with some of the assumptions you made there in terms of the tourist offer. I just told you I can see a windfarm out of my window. I am lucky enough to live on Gower, which is one of the big tourist areas of Wales. It is not affecting the tourism. One of my favourite places to go before the pandemic was the Algarve. The Algarve is completely covered in windfarms, and it has not experienced a drop in its tourism one bit. So, I understand that people fear it, but there's not much proof of it anywhere in the world that's exploited onshore wind to great effect. In fact, you wouldn't know this, Neil, but in a previous Assembly, some other colleagues on this call might remember, I deliberately climbed up two big turbines in the Algarve, myself and my husband, and we had a conversation on our mobiles phones between the two of them on the Algarve, and you could not hear anything apart from us talking. It was very beautiful and the windfarm was generating very nice renewable energy all at the same time. So, I do think there's a perception issue going on there. As I say, I can see one out of my window, and I am lucky enough to live in a very beautiful part of Wales.

So, I think it can be done in that sensitive and tourist-enhancing way. Many tourists will actually go and view the windfarms. Gwynt y Môr off the north coast, which I'm sure Janet in particular is familiar with, is a big tourist industry thing. You can hire a RIB and go out to look at the turbines if you want to. I've done it myself. Lots of people don't like the way it looks off the shore, lots of people do like the way it looks off the shore—these things are very subjective, you're absolutely right. But we need to have renewables in order to do our decarbonisation, so I just reiterate what I said at the beginning—we think this is a good compromise.

Chair, with your indulgence, I would quite like to bring one of my officials in to just explain the methodology of the work that we did to identify the pre-assessed areas, and the change in the NDF from its pre-existing draft. I think the committee might be helped by an understanding of the methodology that was used.

When we were devising the spatial areas for the national development framework, we commissioned work that essentially took wind turbines of between 150m and 250m in turbine height, and we modelled the visibility of such turbines from our protected areas, and there was a threshold of a certain percentage of the landscape being dominated by those turbines that was deemed to be unacceptable, and that was used to frame the areas. So, the areas that we have identified as pre-assessed areas are areas that are largely invisible from our protected landscapes, and that has been the sort of approach that we took to protect our protected landscapes.

We have turned the policy context on its head from the consultation version that you saw last year, and policy 18 of the NDF now has a list—quite an extensive list—of criteria against which applications and proposals for wind projects, renewable energy projects, will be assessed, and the list is intentionally extensive because all of the impacts need to be considered through the decision making process. So it's not a given that, in any part of Wales, applications will be successful. They have to be determined and found to be acceptable in accordance with the list of criteria that we've clearly set out in the NDF.

Well, thank you for that. That's very interesting, and a valuable contribution to today's proceedings. I have to say that the decision that was taken in relation to Hendy windfarm doesn't fill me with confidence that your splendid aspirations are going to be met, because the local planning authority opposed that, the planning inspector supported the local authority, and then the will of the Minister was imposed upon everybody. So, we really have to—if we want to, as the Minister said earlier on, carry the people with us, then we've got to be more sensitive to their views, and so far, I don't see a great deal of sympathy for it. But I don't want to question, as I said at the beginning, the Government's commitment to 70 per cent of electricity being generated by renewables; this isn't the forum for that debate. All that I'm concerned to do is to adjust the way in which that target can be met. 

And also in the context of the economic potential of renewables, we are world leaders in marine turbine technology and construction plants, and coastal areas have, as the Minister pointed out, have already benefited from substantial employment resulting from developments such as Gwynt y Môr. But conversely we trail behind other countries in construction technology and cost of onshore wind, so wouldn't it be better on a variety of grounds to seek to expand the offshore element of this and to, therefore, reduce the degree of dependence that we foresee in relation to onshore wind?

14:55

So, as I said, Neil, this isn't a competition between onshore and offshore; the offshore wind is dealt with in the marine plan, which is a different document. So, just to be absolutely clear, we're not suggesting that onshore wind has some sort of dominance over offshore. Actually, I think that Wales need to look at ensuring that it can exploit all of its renewable energy power. So, one of the things we're very keen to do is we're keen to look at exemplary sites, in the way that we have with housing for renewables—onshore wind, hydro, solar, a whole pile of other things—and to look to see what, with Government assistance, on Government land, probably, but other land—we have yet to identify the sites, I hasten to say—that we can show an exemplar project of what can be done, including what benefits can come to a local community that hosts that windfarm, both in terms of free or greatly reduced energy bills and so on, but also actually in terms of ownership, overage, or leverage of one sort or another. Public ownership schemes of one sort or another, the Government owning it or actual individual communities owning it, have been very successful elsewhere in the world. So, that's the first thing to say. 

The second thing to say, of course, is to make sure that, unlike the first time we developed wind energy in Britain, this time, with the development of the next generation of turbines, we do of course get a slice of the pie of actually constructing the turbines themselves. And one of the reasons that we're so keen on getting pre-assessed sites in—and I absolutely accept the point about wanting to take communities with us, but it's not just about what communities think now, it's what communities can be persuaded to see with a correctly constructed deal for them, both in terms of visual amenity, of course, but also in terms of what the community benefits might be. And absolutely, we don't want communities that only have disbenefits, so they have the inconvenience and trouble of the construction but they don't have the benefit of the energy. As I said, I can see one but I'm on oil, and that's a commonplace problem across Wales.

So, there are lots of things that can be done here, and we're very keen to work with communities to do that. But this is about the framework, and without the framework, as I say, we can't start the negotiation with the various other regulators and with the industry itself and so on about where these sites are, because otherwise we're just out of the game again. So, I absolutely agree with you, but I would turn that on its head: unless we're able to put this into our national development framework, we cannot have those conversations with the industry and we will once again be looking to import a whole industry from elsewhere. And I'm determined that that's not going to happen. So, I would sort of agree with you, but I'm going to turn it around the other way and say that we need to be upfront about doing it in order to get our hands on a very large part of what is, after all, a lucrative worldwide industry.  

Well, I'm sure that's a note on which we can broadly agree, because most of the development companies that are going to be involved in the construction and design of these proposed developments of course are not based in Wales, and the profits generated from the generation of electricity, or not, as the case may be, will not principally be coming to Wales. And so there definitely needs to be a buy-in on the part of the local communities and, indeed, Wales in general, to benefit from the profits that are going to be made from these developments, and I think, if that can be achieved and people can be convinced of that, then this is going to be a less controversial policy than it now appears to be. I have to say that, as—as Joyce is—a Member for Mid and West Wales, the largest postbag I've had has been about protection of the hen harrier recently, but this is second only to that, in terms of the amount of adverse comment that has been generated. 

15:00

Thank you, and that's a good point to call Joyce in. Joyce. 

Thank you. And I'm really pleased to hear all you've said about energy and local involvement, because I've been here before. It's where I came in in 2011, and it was hugely controversial for all the reasons that you've outlined. But I suppose the final question on this: this is the strategic plan, this is the plan that's going to deliver energy needs right across Wales, and you did talk, of course, about the unexpected outcome of all plans, and one, of course, of the unexpected outcomes I suppose, when this was being drawn up, was that we were expecting a nuclear power plant to be built to deliver energy needs across Wales—I think 5 per cent, if I remember right—and it is on hold. So, I suppose, that's where, looking at energy needs—. To try to secure the energy needs across Wales, in the event that that proposal doesn't come forward, that it stays where it is—are you then satisfied, is the question, that these proposals will meet the energy needs—I know these are only the land ones and, you're right, the sea is elsewhere—of Wales, should it be the case that we don't get the nuclear power station that people thought they were getting? 

So, Joyce, that's a very good point, and the point about this framework is that, of course, it would allow the development of that kind of development on Ynys Môn. The plan takes into account the possible development of a nuclear or a large renewable facility on Ynys Môn. And just slightly harking back to the conversation I just had with Neil Hamilton, it's very interesting that the impact of the nuclear power plant on Ynys Môn is enormous in environmental and other terms, but, of course, the people there are very keen on it, because it has provided for many years large amounts of very good employment, and they see the benefit, as well as the disbenefit, of having that facility there. So, that's a very good example of a community the other way around, where they're actively looking for something that, in many other communities, it would be a real big problem, because that community is used, of course, to hosting such a facility, and very much welcomes it. I think that's a very interesting behavioural science-type experiment of what happens when a particular industry has been in a place a very long time. 

But in terms of your question, yes, because what the national development framework is doing is facilitating the development of renewables, as much as is possible, in that balance with good environmental protection across the landscape, and we are very satisfied that, over the 20 years, it will be able to do that. Obviously, the specific project in Ynys Môn is being put on hold, for the moment, but that's not to say that another one won't come forward in the 20 year-span of this plan, and the plan allows for that kind of flexibility. I don't know if either of my two officials want to add anything to that—don't feel you have to. [Laughter.]

No, other than the proposals for large-scale nuclear, as they currently stand, are not a devolved function, but the NDF seeks to make space for the proposals in Wylfa, as the Minister says, should they be started again. And there'll be a lot of local consents that would be required, which are Welsh responsibility, either the Welsh Government or the local authority, and so we are making the case, should that project come forward again. 

Right, thank you. I was just trying to ask the broad question, because it's about broad questions. So, another broad question here is, and I welcome it—. Originally, there was going to be a three-region model, but now it's gone to four, and the new one consists of Powys and also Ceredigion. I know they're already working together anyway, because I've had meetings to that end. So, the question is pretty obvious: why those two? And then I'll ask further questions behind that.

15:05

The very short answer to that is because they've self-identified. So, as part of a completely different piece of work—the election and local government Act—as you know, we have some regional models in that for regional working for local authorities. During the consultation with local authorities on that particular model—so, nothing to do with the NDF as such—a lot of arguments were put forward by Ceredigion and Powys as to why they did not fit well inside a Swansea city bay region for a number of reasons, and it became increasingly obvious that those reasons overlapped our NDF thinking. So, not wanting to be able take full advantage of a consultation on something else for the purposes of the NDF, we mentioned that fact to NDF colleagues, and we looked again at some of the reasoning behind the three-model approach that we'd had as against the four-model approach, and, as you can see, the balance was felt that the four-model approach offered a better focus for the regional issues that we also outline in the NDF, and in particular for the regional planning model that we're very keen on seeing hang off this.

So, the corporate joint committees, when they go into effect, if the Senedd sees fit to pass my Stage 3 legislation on 10 November, which, obviously, I very much hope it will, will be responsible for delivering the strategic development plans. We expect them—in fact they will be mandated—to deliver those plans, because one of the frustrations of the planning Act in Wales has been that, with the exception of the Cardiff region, which has very belatedly come to the table, other regions have been very slow to come forward with those regional strategic plans. So, this gives them the vehicle by which they can do it, and it allows us the mandating powers to make sure that those plans come forward, because they are an absolutely essential part of the plan-led planning policy in Wales.

You pre-empted at least two of my questions, so that's good. That's fine—it shows that there was some logic in the questions and, obviously, undoubtedly, in your answers. One of them was, quite clearly: do you expect the strategic development plans in all the regions? Is that your expectation?

What would the relationship between the SDPs and the growth deals be? What would you expect those to look like?

I would expect there to be a close relationship. So, we would expect the regional strategy for each of the four areas to take into account growth expectation and demand. Obviously, it fits inside the national development framework to do that. The whole point of the strategic part of the framework is to do exactly that—to plan out the infrastructure in a little more detail on that regional basis, to ensure the interconnectivity between the regions and inside the region, and to put a bit more granularity, to use the phrase, into the overarching framework of Wales.

Forgive me, colleague members of the committee, in saying this: the comparison isn’t meant to be pejorative, but I've spent a lot of time explaining some of this to sixth formers around Wales, and I don't know how many of you are familiar with computer games, but there's a lovely computer game called SimCity, where you start off with a nice plain map and you're able to map out the big infrastructure and zones for housing and industry first. Then you zoom in a little bit and you put the actual roads and schools and hospitals in, and then you zoom in a little bit more and you put in the small local developments and parks, and so on. I was likening the plan-led approach to that. So, you start off with your map of Wales, you have a look at the spatial aspects of it are overall, what sorts of industries you'd like to see, what fits nicely where on the topography and the natural resource and where the people are and so on, and then you zoom down a little bit more and you make the connections. And then, at the local level, of course, local, individual people get to say what their actual town, city, area looks like, because we don't want a whole series of clone towns that all look exactly the same—it really matters what those local, individual areas look like. We all know how lovely it is to go to a place with a lot of independent, different shops, places, parks and so on, and so that's kind of where we are, Joyce. That's what we're trying to do, and the strategic tier of that is very important to make sure that we have that interconnectivity and that the regions hang together as a strategic whole.

15:10

And just one final question from me: in terms of that strategic interconnectivity, and I know you might not be able to give the answer right now, is consideration being given to pre-existing train lines, for example, that were serving industry—heavy industry mostly? They do exist right across Wales. So, in terms of trying to achieve what we're trying to do within the bounce-off of the plans that are coming forward but without having any additional or unnecessary impact on the environment in terms of the future generations Act, it's just a question that may or may not have come your way, but we had a discussion before this meeting and we agreed that that was a good way forward in terms of that interconnectivity and the way that this Government wants to go forward with public transport.

Yes, exactly that. So, what you've got to do is you've got to have a strategic framework for things and then you've got to have a set of regional interconnectivities and they have to be interconnectivities for a range of things, actually. So, transport is the obvious one—public transport, other kinds of transport, rail, road, planes, actually, all kinds of stuff—but you also want to have interconnectivity for a range of other things, travel-to-work areas, digital connectivity, school catchment areas, hospital catchment areas, specialist hospital catchment areas, which are obviously very different again. There's a whole range of interconnectivities.

You started this group of questions by asking about the growth deal and the SDP interconnectivity, and I started the whole session by saying that if I'd started to plan that process I wouldn't necessarily have started from where we are now; I would have started the other way around, and I guess I could say the same thing about the growth deals. So, we have those and they're advancing in Wales. We're going to put an SDP in over the top. Actually, I would have loved to have done that the other way around, but we are where we are, and, in the iterative process as we go forward, you'd expect them to have better interconnection. So, I guess the short answer to your question, Joyce, is yes, that is what it's intended to do, but there's a complex web of things that we're trying to plan and we're trying to also allow local people to have a big say in what their local area looks like inside that interconnectivity, if that makes sense.

Thank you, Chair. So, when you mandate local authorities to bring forward strategic development plans—because I presume it's something you intend to use if you need to—will you be asking them to bring forward strategic development plans that cover the whole of the region, parts of the region —?

So, there'll be one strategic development plan, for example, for the north Wales region? Would you consider other regions overlapping in terms of strategic development plans if a part of another region felt it was more appropriate to be part of a strategic development plan for another region? Would you—?

So, we expect them to fit together like a jigsaw, and, like a jigsaw, there will be knobbly bits, if I can put it that way.

You're not very good at jigsaws, then, Minister, are you?

So, my analogy function is high today, I think. I must have had too much coffee. So, we expect the CJCs—or I hope they'll be called something slightly more customer-friendly than that by the time they get put in place—to co-operate together to make sure that areas just outside their borders are incorporated properly into the right kind of strategic plan for their area. So, let me give you an example from one of the areas of Wales I know slightly better and one of the ones that's slightly controversial, and with apologies to colleagues who cover the area themselves. There's a lovely little place called Ystradgynlais, which is in Powys, but very large numbers of people in Ystradgynlais feel that it's part of Swansea, and that's been an ongoing conversation probably for 600 years, which I fear to tread into the middle of. But, in terms of spatial planning for that town, you have to absolutely be certain that its connectivity into the Swansea city bay region is as good as its connectivity back into its own regional or strategic area. So, I can use that as an example, Llyr: you would expect the strategic plan for Ceredigion and Powys to take into account the edge bits where the connectivity needs to be great between the two strategic plans as well. So, 'I expect them to co-operate' is the short answer.

15:15

You know that one of our aspirations in terms of party policy is around Arfor and the sort of entity that isn't recognised in the NDF, clearly, but we feel there's great value in looking at developing that kind of entity in a sort of economic sense, cultural and linguistic sense—all of those layers, really. Where would that aspiration sit now, then? Is that gone? Is that feasible?

No, not at all. So, exactly that—what we're doing here is putting a framework in place that would allow exactly that to happen. So, you would expect that, inside the frameworks that we're talking about, at a local level, you would develop a place-specific plan, if you like, that fit inside the framework, and you'd expect the strategic frameworks to take into account the aspiration to do exactly that. They feed each other in both directions, and you'd expect a large democratic voice in that as well, so the strategic development plans will need to be consulted on in their area and people will need to be able to put forward those kinds of local issues. That's not dissimilar to the Ystradgynlais example I gave you, actually.

And just picking up on the relationship between SDPs and the growth deal again—which is the point that Joyce raised earlier—the NDF says that SDPs should support the delivery of growth deals, but it doesn't say that growth deals should reflect the SDPs. I know you're going to say, 'Well, you're coming in at an angle, and these hares have already been running for a while,' but when it comes to the democratic voice, and I know growth deals are largely driven by local authorities, but there are other parties involved, and I'm just thinking whether it should be a bit more reciprocal in that respect.

So, I think the first group of strategic development plans are bound to take into account the current iteration of the various growth deals, because how could they not? Those things are much more developed than a brand-new strategic development plan. And so, of course they will have to take into account what work has gone into those plans, and reflect them to some extent. But you'd also expect them to then turn that on its head and become the driver for that into the future. So, the growth deal is now, if you like, and the SDP is future. So, we've slightly put the cart before the horse. My analogies are all over the place today, but you see what I mean. But you would expect them to reverse in the next iteration, and you would expect the SDP in its first iteration to start to drive the direction of the city growth deals and the local growth deals.

Neil, I think, is desperate to come in and put into the proper planning language the desperate layperson's mess I'm currently making of it, so I'm going to indulge him, Chair, if you don't mind, and let him do that.

No, sorry, Minister, I think you're making a really good job of it. I think the issue going forward will be the opportunities to actually align things better and use a joint evidence base, because the strength comes through bringing together not just the land use but also bringing together the economic side of things and also how you get between the two to transport. So, we see a real opportunity about bringing together at a regional level the economic, the transport and the land use. It's just where we are at the moment; we need to do some work to align that. Of course, the evidence base will be the same for the three in many cases as well.

Just finally, then, from me, if I may, very briefly, Chair, go back to energy, and this has been raised previously. On the pre-assessed areas, you will know that those in the renewable energy sector are saying that only around five per cent of the pre-assessed areas are theoretically developable, and I'm just thinking, if you were playing SimCity and you wanted to develop in a pre-assessed area and the computer said 'no', what would you do?

We've consulted widely with the renewables industry, and we've changed the NDF quite a lot, in fact, in terms of some of the feedback that they've given us, and you'll notice the language and the areas themselves have shifted considerably as a result of that liaison. And I don't want to be disrespectful in saying this about renewable energy colleagues and consultees that we've had, but they're very very good at telling us what they don't like about the plan; they're very reluctant indeed to tell us what they do want in the plan, because, of course, that then starts to reveal some commercially sensitive things that they don't want to tell everybody about at this point. So, it's a little bit frustrating to deal with them when all they can do is tell you what's wrong, and then when you say, 'Well, what would you like to see?', they're a little bit more silent on what they'd like to see. So, we've struggled a little bit to entirely understand quite where they're coming from, and I understand why that is, Llyr. I'm not criticising them really, because those are commercially sensitive things. Whilst they can get together and agree as an industry what's wrong with the plan, they're very reluctant to agree together what's right with the plan for fear of revealing land options and various other things that they may well be discussing with people on the ground. So, that's been quite a difficult act for us to try and reflect what they're complaining about without being told in no uncertain terms what they really, really want. Dear me, I'm having a long—I'm going to lapse into pop songs any minute now.

15:20

But that doesn't change the fact that the pre-assessed areas are largely or potentially redundant to a large extent, if that's what they're telling you.

What we've tried to do here is we've tried to make it easier in some areas that are pre-assessed to—for a presumption, if you like, in favour of renewable development. It doesn't rule out completely and forever and a day all other areas, it just means that there are more hurdles to jump over in order to develop in those areas. I think it's really important to say that. Nobody's saying, 'You can't apply for any of these things anywhere in Wales at all', but, obviously, there will be more and more hurdles, depending on where you are. So, I think that's the first thing to say. And the second thing to say is that it's an iterative process. If it becomes obvious that that's the case as a result of various planning applications and so on, then, at some point, we will renew and review the plan. But, at this point in time, this is our best estimate of what they were saying to us. 

Thank you. Good afternoon, again, Minister. How do these policies differ from their predecessors in the previous draft, specifically in terms of the relationship between spatial-based and criteria-based policies? 

So, that's quite complicated in terms of—. I don't know if you want me to go through each individual aspect of change, because it's quite considerably changed, and that's quite a long conversation. But what we're broadly doing is responding to what the industry was telling us would be a better basis for the policy. I didn't have individual conversations with them, the officials did, so I'll hand over to one of the officials—I don't know which one—to tell you a little bit more about the process of change.

Yes, Minister, I can do some of that. As you say, we've had extensive conversations with stakeholders involved in the renewable industry. They were, I think, confused by the messaging that we were putting out with the draft consultation that we issued last year, so we've very much taken their comments to heart, and we have reorientated and simplified the policy. So, there are, essentially, just two policies now: one that sets out the Welsh Government's need for renewable energy and a criteria-based approach, which says the types of things that need to be considered in consenting these developments. So, the pre-assessed areas are part of the argument, but we were clear that we wanted to allow developments in the right place, outside pre-assessed areas, to come forward as well. So, we've gone from the traffic light approach, which was confusing people, to a simple, binary policy: one that sets out the need, and one that sets out the criteria by which developments will be considered. 

Thank you. A concern I raised in Plenary was that in the schedule of changes—that policy 20 in the schedule should be amended so that the whole of north Wales benefits. There's this big emphasis on Wrexham and Deeside, but what about Caernarfon, Bangor and the Menai strait area? There's huge potential there.

So, again, what we're trying to do is set out areas of concentration of particular types of development. We're not saying that a particular area of Wales is more important than another area of Wales. What we're trying to do—

Sorry—that's how it appears, if you know what I mean. 

Well, that's unintentional, Janet; we're certainly not giving that out as a message. What we were trying to do is recognise the role of market and county towns for example, recognise the different local allegiances, travel to work patterns, industry areas and so on, and set out a plan that enabled development of the right sort in the right place, along those lines. It's not in any way intended to be a hierarchy of, 'If you got mentioned in the NDF, you're important, and if you didn't, you're not'. That's not it at all. 

15:25

Everything has changed since COVID, so how has this been adapted now to take into account COVID-19? Because I would imagine that this has been in the mix and in the making for quite some time. But, even now, as we speak today, my concern is that this will go—. Really, it needs tweaking along the way, somehow, doesn't it, so that it fully incorporates this whole new life that we're all going to have if and when we get out of COVID.

Well, as I said at the beginning, Janet, we think that, actually, it was pretty prescient in what it was setting out in the first place. What the pandemic has done is accelerated us along a route that we could already see coming—so, more remote working, people being much more entrenched in their local community, the local community being much more important to you than perhaps it otherwise seemed. All the things that happened during the pandemic have just accelerated progress towards what we had already thought was the likely outcome. Indeed, actually, all the consultations that we've been doing for several years—'The Wales We Want' that we did for the future generations papers, for example—all pointed in those directions. So, I think that the pandemic has accelerated it, but I'm not sure that it's changed it that much. We had quite a long conversation at the beginning of the committee, didn't we, about some of the things that have happened and how they are reflected in the NDF. I think the fact it's a high-level strategic document has meant that it doesn't need tweaking in that way. 

All right. Okay. We might have to beg to differ on that one, because I still think that there are a lot of unknowns out there. How have the renewables sector and communities been engaged in revising these policies?

Well, as Jon said, we had a whole series of stakeholder events. I've done a whole series—

Can I just ask: how were they advertised? What kind of percentage uptake did you take? I've seen many consultations and things where the uptake has been quite poor.

No, we've had a lot of interest in the NDF. Again, I'll hand over to Jon to set out for you exactly how we went about it. It's been quite an extensive set of engagements.

Janet, this will go a lot better if, when somebody starts answering your question, you don't cut in again. I'm not going to stop—

No, I was just—. There's a bit of a delay as well on mine. Sorry. 

I won't stop you asking subsequent questions, but let's have question and answer, question and answer, rather than question and part answer, question, question, part answer—

As far as the consultation and engagement with stakeholders and communities is concerned, we have undertaken extensive consultation across Wales—face to face and online. Ministers met with the renewables industry. I have been to communities up and down the breadth of Wales, where we have made ourselves available at libraries and community centres. They have all been advertised. People have been in to see us. We've totalled up about 70 or so individual events, where we have explained the thinking on the development of the national development framework.

Allied to this, we've done a lot of work on online. We have issued newsletters at every turn. At every salient point within the development of the national development framework, we've published a newsletter. We have a database of well over 1,000 organisations and individuals to do it. Ministers met with CPRW as well. So, we've really—. Whilst we can never get everybody, because it is a big country, Wales, we have done everything that we can. We have taken the spirit of the well-being of future generations legislation about being inclusive and co-operative, and we have very detailed engagement records of all the work that we have done in order to support this.

Okay. My final question: what assurances can you offer stakeholders that, should new grid infrastructure be built across mid Wales, funding will be available to put this below ground? There are many campaigners, including myself, urging that you perhaps replicate the Prime Minister's recent commitment to increase the amount of land designated as AONBs or national parks. Your views on that, please.

15:30

In terms of the undergrounding of energy extraction, as I was saying in answer to Neil Hamilton earlier, one of the reasons that we want to have an NDF in place is so that we can have a conversation with National Grid and with Ofgem in terms of the pricing policies, which are currently ludicrous in terms of if there's no grid it's very expensive et cetera. That's not going to assist anybody in trying to bring forward any kind of renewable or community-based project, as I'm sure all of you know if you've tried to do that. And the second is to have the conversation with the grid itself about its own duty, actually, to have proactive infrastructure development. If you speak to National Grid, they will always tell you that they need a commercial person to negotiate the cost with, but actually the grid has some proactive, forward-looking obligations, which it's very reluctant to place in front of anyone. So, we need to be able to have a strategic development framework with which to have that conversation. And of course, Janet, as I said in answer to the earlier question, one of the conversations we want to have is about undergrounding the energy extraction, because we absolutely understand that a large part of the issue in mid Wales is not the farm itself; it's the high-voltage energy transmission coming off it. So, that's very much part of the conversation, but at the moment we don't have a place to hang our hats, because we haven't got a basis upon which to have that conversation. That's part of why we want to do this. That's for the future conversation with them.

Obviously, each individual renewables developer will also have that conversation with the grid, so it is a question of us trying to corral some of that as well, for the benefit of the people who live with that. Can I just say, though, just for the committee, that the grid isn't just about new onshore wind development? The grid is a real problem across both the north and south Wales populated corridors as well. The grid in south Wales, in Swansea—Mike, I'm sure, knows very well—is extremely volatile and could seriously do with some renewing. So, there is a conversation to be had with the grid at UK Government national level, as well as in the devolved nations, about sorting it out. And Janet, anything you can do with your own party to support some of that would be much appreciated, because it's not exactly working as it ought at the moment for the benefit of a large number of us. So, I just make that point, because this is not just about onshore wind; it's about a whole series of grid issues across Wales. If you see a map of where the grid is in Wales, you can immediately see the problem. So, we need to have that conversation with them upfront and, as I say, with Ofgem on board as well, because the pricing policies make a huge difference to some parts of that as well. 

I've completely forgotten what the second part of your question was—I'm sorry.

I've got my notes here somewhere now. Here we are. Oh, yes, about national parks, and a bigger commitment, really, like the Prime Minister has done, about increasing the amount of land designated to be—. 

We have a very large part of our land mass, of course, designated as national park and AONB, and I'm lucky enough to live in one of the AONBs. It's very much a part of the landscape of Wales. We're always open to looking at, particularly, protected landscapes, and it's one of the things we like to bear in mind all the time. As I said, this is always about a balance between people wanting to live their lives, farmers wanting to diversify, various things wanting to happen, people needing to earn a living, and the protection of our beautiful landscape. So, it is always that balance, isn't it? In previous situations with myself as a Minister, Janet, we've had long conversations about broadband and the need for masts all over various bits of the land mass. These things are always about a balance of what people need to live their lives, and what we need to do to be able to protect our much-valued landscapes.

Thank you. I wanted to pursue the National Grid scenario. This is a private monopoly, of course. In the fourth Parliament, I was part of the predecessor committee that did an investigation into a future energy policy for Wales. We went to Germany, and we were reassured that they would buy absolutely everything that we could produce in the way of renewable energy, because the land mass of Britain has about nine times more wind than Germany does. It's our good fortune that we have so much wind, and I just wondered if the situation we have with the grid is really preventing us exploiting it for the prosperity of our nation. Could you just tell us a bit more about the conversations you've been having with the National Grid and Ofgem to ensure that we have proper incentives to generate as much renewable energy as our communities will permit in order to generate wealth?

15:35

Jenny, I'm not the Minister in charge of energy policy—that's Lesley Griffiths. What this national development framework is doing is laying the groundwork for us to be able to have that conversation in better order. So, I don't disagree with you at all that it's a private monopoly inaptly named the National Grid—it's not national.

Okay. Okay, but I'd be keen to test a little bit whether we have the right framework to enable our communities to benefit. In Germany, we visited villages of 2,000 people. They had 52,000 customers for their renewable energy, because the structure enabled them to do that. The problem we have with our grid system here in this country is that everything has to go up to the National Grid and then come back again, instead of selling it to the next door village. So, have you made any progress on getting a grid system that's more fit for purpose?

Right. So, as I say, it's not my portfolio to negotiate with the National Grid, but I can tell you that one of the things that the NDF is doing is laying the groundwork not only for the conversation with the National Grid about where the National Grid should go, both in terms of its obligation, actually, to forward plan the grid, which it's not terribly good at, in my humble opinion, but also so that we can look at community energy schemes. So, those are not necessarily energy schemes connected to the grid. There's nothing to stop you having a community energy supply that is not connected to the grid, but one of the things we want to do is explore that, and this is the framework by which we can do that. As I say, all of us have been involved, I'm sure, in this committee in trying to get local energy projects off the ground, and, if you're looking for a grid connection, that's pretty much the death now of it, generally speaking, unless you happen to have a grid node nearby. So, this is the framework by which the strategic development plans at regional level would be able to accommodate those kinds of community loop grids, if you like, and close the circuit grids.

Okay, but I'm looking at this in relation to it being a planning matter in the sense that, clearly, the German planning structure enables this to happen in a way that isn't possible in Wales.

Yes. Although their grid is run as a public service.

Yes, it won't do it—there, it's gone.

Just to quickly say that there is work ongoing on local energy planning, so, how local energy planning links with land use planning, and there has been some support to the energy side of Welsh Government towards that. So, there are ways in which we can start to bring these things together and there is some initial work starting in that area.

Although it's important to say, Jenny, that that's not a planning issue.

Okay. All right, fine. Finally, I just wanted to ask about the national parks and the areas of outstanding natural beauty, because whilst I completely understand and agree with the idea of not allowing large-scale wind and solar to be permitted there, nevertheless we can't let these areas off the hook. What expectation is there that they will do other forms of decarbonisation, whether it's ground source, air source, heat pump, small solar—things that don't have massive impacts on the appearance of these areas?

So, again, this is the national development framework; this isn't the local planning policy framework. In the local policy frameworks, you would expect to be able to see small domestic-scale renewables and small community-scale renewables as part of the local planning policies, assisted by some of the strategic development plans and then inside the national development framework. So, this doesn't rule it out; what it's ruling out is large-scale development in areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks, for obvious reasons.

Okay. So, in the SDPs, you would expect to see how all areas would be making their contribution to decarbonising.

Well, it depends on the scale—so, either in the strategic development framework, but, actually, I think much more likely in the local development plans or specific area planning policies, actually.

15:40

Okay. But the NDF gives you the powers to ensure that those local plans do reflect the national objectives.

Yes. So, eventually, once the entire planning system is in place, you'll have those plans at every level, and it will be much more obvious than it is now, while we're putting the plan in place, which bit of the plan supports which bit of the kinds of development you're talking about. But what you're talking about there is very local development.

Oh, I haven't got—. I'm not down for that one. Hang on. Let's see what we've got here already.

It doesn't matter; we can move on. I can ask the question about rural depopulation.

I'll ask you a question on rural depopulation, Minister. We talk about villages, and you've mentioned Reynoldston, where you're living at the moment—well, that's basically commute to Swansea, isn't it? You also have villages like Llandeilo that also commute to Swansea. But you also have villages in very rural areas like Llanfihangel down in Carmarthenshire, which are very much a 'rural' rural village, and actually distinguishing between the rural villages that are 'commute into city' and villages that are themselves predominantly rural—has any work been done on that?

So, the NDF addresses rural depopulation, and we expect both strategic development plans and local development plans to address that in finer detail. And then—. I think I take the point you're trying to make is that, basically, villages that surround towns and are slowly being absorbed into suburbs, if you like, tend to become dormitory villages; I think that's where you're coming from. So, we're very keen on making sure that rural towns are sustainable—so, actually they have some employment, they have good broadband connections, they have the ability for local people to stay there, live and work there. This will be a much more general issue in terms of the LDPs, actually. And one of the things outwith the NDF framework—but, obviously, I'm also the housing Minister—that we've been looking at is the development, as I said, of good rural social housing policies and shared equity and rent-to-own policies that allow local people, particularly in areas of high land value at the moment, to be able to stay and live and work in their area.

You've all heard me saying this in Plenary. I live in a very beautiful place; I'm very lucky to live here. My children will never be able to buy a house in this village unless we do something about it, so I should declare an interest, Chair, I suppose. But, you know, that's the case in large parts of Wales and we need to do something about that. We need to be able to ensure that there's a sustainable lifestyle available for people in our outstanding rural areas, and that may well be because they have a broadband connection and can work all over the world from their home, or it may well be because they're providing a service very much needed locally, or they're farmers, or whatever it is, but we need to make sure that the plans reflect the need for those kinds of sustainable communities. So, the policy—'Future Wales' doesn't repeat, for every region, the policies set out in chapter 4. We identify the issue, we require it to be taken forward and then we require it to be taken forward through the strategic development plans and the local development plans. So, that's how the framework cascades.

I think you mixed your Js up, because I put in for this. But, anyway, if I can go back to the national development plan, one of the areas that you will have plenty of evidence that it's depopulating is the heart of mid Wales, and it's been depopulating for some time. But, of course, as you said, system change happens overnight. So, what we're actually seeing now is a reverse of people wanting to live in highly populated areas and actually seeking out where they can live and work, because people have also worked from home now, so they've realised they don't need to always, so they're seeking out the areas that are desirable, or suddenly becoming desirable. So, there are two parts to this question. Whilst this focuses very much on how do we manage to keep people and increase the population, and I'm hoping that there'll be some link between the energy that we talked about just earlier on—. So, that's one part, and then the other part is: do you think that there's adequate protection in the national development plan to secure—and you've sort of touched on it—those people who want to live in those areas from the unforeseen price hike and desirability through that NDF process?

15:45

So, yes, Joyce, as I said, the issue is identified in the national development framework, and then the framework sets out how we expect it to be dealt with at the other levels of the plan, where it's more appropriately looked at in its detail, if you like, and then those local policies are able to frame where particular types of housing should be and all the rest of it. But then it falls to other policies, not planning policy—social housing policies, allocation policies, priority need policies, all those kinds of policies, to make sure that that housing is available to the people who live and work in that area. So, it's a mix of the things, isn't it? You can't solve everything with planning. Some of the other things are social policies or environmental or employment-type policies. What the NDF does is put the framework in place to allow those policies to come forward at different levels.

If I can, just one final question. The other thing that perhaps is needed in the national framework—. And we come back again to energy—if more and more people are going to start working from home, and more and more people are going to start driving electric cars, we come back full square, don't we, to the national grid and the availability of the energy that people are going to require as individuals, rather than office blocks. And are you satisfied—? Because it feeds into the same thing. Are you satisfied that those plans for national energy will be able to sustain those communities that have the potential—and the indicators are it's going to happen— to grow in what are now currently quite lowly populated areas?

So, again, this is going back to enabling a conversation with grid and other people about the proactive planning. I'll try and illustrate it by just one small development. So, say you're a housing developer and you want to build a small housing development in, I don't know, rural Powys, for the sake of argument. You also want to make sure that those houses can all charge electric vehicles outside of their house overnight. Then, in putting that development to Powys, as part of your planning application under its local development plan, you would have to show how you would secure the right amount of electricity supply to that site in order to be able to drive those developments, and, in order to do that, you'd have to make sure that the grid connection to that site was sufficient, or the main connection in the main road that you were connecting to was sufficient, and so on. So, the whole thing feeds back up to what the infrastructure looks like in the first place.

You can illustrate it really easily with broadband. So, we are now insisting that all new housing developments are broadband ready, so they're all wired, the piping is in the road and so on. What we're not able to do is insist that the broadband is the main road outside, but we are at least able to insist that the whole thing doesn't have to be retrofitted when the broadband finally gets there. So, you're doing a similar thing; you're basically saying, 'You have to put the infrastructure in,' and then we have to negotiate with the grid the main grid connections. It's a very similar type of thing, and you'd expect the plans at national level and strategic level to allow the LDP to put those kinds of considerations into it for future developments. So, do you see? It just has to hold together as a single system in that regard.

I just wanted to come back to other types of connectivity, because I know that the railways aren't in ascendance here at the moment because of the pandemic, but that will pass in due course. At the moment, most of the traffic flows are east-west. Do you think there's more that could be done by the NDF to promote more north-south and inter-regional connectivity?

15:50

Well, I suppose 'yes' is the answer to that. One of the reasons that you want to put a strategic plan in place is that you want each of the strategic regions to think about the kinds of connectivity that we want. So, absolutely, because of where the population is in Wales, you get an east-west flow along the south and along the north. There isn't that much population in the middle, and so you don't have a good north-south connection for obvious reasons. But what you want to do is you want to be able to signal to those areas that, in planning for those kinds of connectivity, they should be planning for the infrastructure that allows that. So, I don't know if that's an answer to the question, but that's how it's supposed to work, effectively, and at the moment we lack that strategic middle tier that does that. We've got the local policies, but that's not really what they're designed for, and that's the whole point of putting the plan-led system in place, really, to aid with those kinds of planning—

Excellent. I think your maps are really excellent at helping people understand (a) the purpose of all this, and (b) what possible opportunities there might be. But clearly if we don't have good north-south connectivity, we will continue to have a certain disconnect amongst people in north Wales who feel that everything that goes on in the Parliament and in south Wales is somehow completely disconnected from them. So, it would be good to see if there was a bit more strategy around how we could improve those north-south links. For example, Neil Hamilton, who's more of a railway buff than I am, indicates that the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth line could be reinstated without too much difficulty, because it has not been built on, and the Waverley line in Scotland was reopened a few years ago, and has been hugely popular and very well used. I just wondered whether there's no ambition to do that sort of thing that might be indicated in the NDF.

Again, this is a document that has a whole series of sister documents associated with it. So, for example, the officials who've worked very hard on the NDF are also contributing to the transport strategy for Wales as we speak, and as the transport strategy is developed, we can make sure that there's an iterative circular feedback between the two. So, if the transport strategy as developed is starting to emphasise the resurrection of the old Beeching railways and so on, which I for one would be all in favour of, then obviously we can facilitate that as part of the iterative planning process. So, this isn't a single document; this is the overarching document for a suite of documents that then iteratively feed each other. So in a review of the NDF, if such a transport strategy comes forward, the NDF can be reviewed to facilitate that. It doesn't unfacilitate it now, but it could be strengthened if that's what the transport strategy was to come up with. And then again, we're putting, in a linked set of priorities, the regional structures in place for our local authorities, and of course they will be able to look at the transport strategy for the region that will feed back into these policies as well. So, there's a set of interlinking documents that allow that kind of planning to come forward.

Thank you. Lastly, I just wanted to ask you about the role of universities in national and regional development, because they clearly already do have a very important role in setting economic and environmental strategies for their local areas. But could they be doing more, and is their role at risk, potentially, with the loss of European regional development funding, which was very much needs based, and we have no idea what might replace it in terms of research? So, I wondered what you see as their role, particularly as regional leaders.

So, exactly that, Jenny—you identified them exactly right. They're very important in the regional frameworks. They tend to be big regional employers, big regional influencers, so when you're looking at the strategic regional development plans, you'd expect the universities and their policies—and they're important to the local economy and community—to be reflected and developed inside the strategic plans at regional level, and then obviously again in the local development plan in terms of expansion of the university and so on, which you can see in Cardiff and in Swansea at the moment. Forgive me, I'm sure you can see it in Aberystwyth and Bangor and Glyndŵr as well, but I'm more familiar with the bit in my own patch. So, you can see the development of Swansea University reflected in the LDPs of both Neath Port Talbot and Swansea, for example, and you'd expect a regional strategic plan to look at the growth of the universities overall and to see what regional drivers should be put into that plan in order to enable that growth.

15:55

But how much do you think that core leadership role might be at risk if we simply revert to a competitive model of research funding?

Yes, well I really hope we don't do that. As you know, that's an ongoing battle at the moment. So, I do think setting the universities against each other in that way is highly counterproductive, and we've been able to punch well above our weight in terms of research in Wales, simply because our universities have been highly collaborative. So, long may that continue. 

Okay, but there's nothing further that you think could be enhanced in the NDF.

No, I don't think—. The spatial plan can't assist that; that's very much dependent on the funding models that come forward, isn't it?

Can I thank you, Minister? We might have started early, but we haven't finished very much earlier than we were intending to. But I'm very glad it went on because I think it was a very good discussion, and I think there's an awful lot on which we were all in agreement, and we'll probably write a report including all the bits that we disagree on. But I think there was fundamental agreement on the direction of travel, and I think it is important that we have a four-part Wales model, or a four-region Wales model. I will ask you: can you try and get all your colleagues to actually buy into this four-region model, because every Minister has the capacity to create their own little structure that has not necessarily borne any relationship to anything outside their own mind? This is not necessarily current Ministers, an awful lot of it goes back to Ministers over the last 12 years or so. 

Well, Mike, you've known me for a very long time, and you know I've gone on for a very long time about having a coherent model for regional development that isn't layered and complex for people to understand. And one of the things I've been driving through the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Bill is exactly that simple regional model, and I think you'll see the NDF is now reflecting it and I very much hope you'll see that the economic development strategies will also reflect it in the future. Having said that, of course, one of the big regrets of my life is that I don't always get my own way, but I do try very hard to. So, I think that's a good note on which to end the committee. I'm very pleased to have been able to stay longer, but I do hope the committee doesn't make a habit of keeping us half an hour longer than the allocated slot. 

Well, we haven't actually gone half an hour longer. We started at 20 past, and we started sort of 25 minutes early and we're finishing five minutes early, so it's 20 minutes, rather than half an hour. 

Thank you very much. But, I hope you found it useful as well to engage in this discussion, and we might have shorter debates in Plenary. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thanks very much, Chair. Thanks, everyone. 

4. Papurau i'w nodi
4. Paper(s) to note

Can I now ask us to note the papers under item 4: correspondence from the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, following our scrutiny session on 17 September; correspondence in relation to the UK Fisheries Bill; correspondence on the Planning Applications (Temporary Modifications and Disapplication) (No. 2) (Wales) (Coronavirus) Order 2020; and a briefing paper from Dŵr Cymru in relation to Llyn Anafon. Are we happy to note those?

5. Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42(vi) a (ix) i benderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod
5. Motion under Standing Order 17.42(vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting

Cynnig:

bod y pwyllgor yn penderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog 17.42(vi) a (ix).

Motion:

that the committee resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi) and (ix).

Cynigiwyd y cynnig.

Motion moved.

Can I now, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi) and (ix), move that the committee resolves to meet in private for the remainder of today's meeting? Are Members content? Thank you very much.

Derbyniwyd y cynnig.

Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 15:58.

Motion agreed.

The public part of the meeting ended at 15:58.