Baroness Wilcox of Newport
Main Page: Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Wilcox of Newport's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
Grand CommitteeThe proposed multiyear funding settlements for local authorities from the Government are most welcome. They should enable councils to make more strategic plans for services.
The Senedd’s Local Government and Housing Committee considered how libraries and leisure facilities could continue to be funded, and it published a report in July 2023. It was of no surprise to me, as a former leader of a city council, that the report concluded that,
“councils have found it challenging to maintain their existing local … services”,
after such a sustained period of austerity and diminishing budgets. It discovered that many councils sought to deliver those services differently, such as by contracting the management to not-for-profit social enterprises, as I did when I established our leisure company, Newport Live.
I urge my noble friend to ask her department to review that report from the Welsh Government and see what areas of congruence can be brought to bear on ensuring stability of future library provision by the UK Government.