Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru The National Assembly for Wales Y Pwyllgor Amgylchedd a Chynaliadwyedd The Environment and Sustainability Committee
Dydd Iau, 17 Ionawr 2013 Thursday, 17 January 2013
Cynnwys Contents Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau a Dirprwyon Introduction, Apologies and Substitutions Ymchwiliad i Gynlluniau Datblygu Lleol a Ffigurau Poblogaeth/Aelwydydd—Tystiolaeth gan Awdurdodau Lleol Inquiry into Local Development Plans and Population/Household Numbers—Evidence from Local Authorities Gohebiaeth gan y Dirprwy Weinidog Amaethyddiaeth, Bwyd, Pysgodfeydd a Rhaglenni Ewropeaidd—Gofynion Cadw Cofnodion Glastir Correspondence from the Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and European Programmes—Glastir Record-keeping Requirements Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog Rhif 17.42(vi) i Wahardd y Cyhoedd o Weddill y Cyfarfod ac ar 23 Ionawr Motion under Standing Order No. 17.42(vi) to Exclude the Public from the Remainder of this Meeting and on 23 January
Yn y golofn chwith, cofnodwyd y trafodion yn yr iaith y llefarwyd hwy ynddi. Yn y golofn dde, cynhwysir trawsgrifiad o’r cyfieithu ar y pryd. In the left-hand column, the proceedings are recorded in the language in which they were spoken. The right-hand column contains a transcription of the simultaneous interpretation.
Aelodau’r pwyllgor yn bresennol Committee members in attendance
Mick Antoniw	Llafur Labour
Keith Davies	Llafur Labour
Yr Arglwydd/Lord Elis-Thomas	Plaid Cymru (Cadeirydd y Pwyllgor) The Party of Wales (Committee Chair)
Russell George	Ceidwadwyr Cymreig Welsh Conservatives
Llyr Huws Gruffydd	Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales
William Powell	Democratiaid Rhyddfrydol Cymru Welsh Liberal Democrats
David Rees	Llafur Labour
Antoinette Sandbach	Ceidwadwyr Cymreig Welsh Conservatives
Eraill yn bresennol Others in attendance
Martin Davies	Cyngor Sir Fynwy Monmouthshire County Council
Rhian Kyte	Cyngor Bwrdeistref Sirol Caerffili Caerphilly County Borough Council
Jamie Thorburn	Cyngor Sir Ceredigion Ceredigion County Council
Swyddogion Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru yn bresennol National Assembly for Wales officials in attendance
Alun Davidson	Clerc Clerk
Elfyn Henderson	Gwasanaeth Ymchwil Research Service
Catherine Hunt	Dirprwy Glerc Deputy Clerk
Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 9.33 a.m. The meeting began at 9.33 a.m.
Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau a Dirprwyon Introduction, Apologies and Substitutions
[1] Yr Arglwydd Elis-Thomas: Bore da a chroeso.		Lord Elis-Thomas: Good morning and welcome.
[2] You may use the interpretation equipment, because our translation is always accurate.
[3] Byddwn yn gweithredu’n ddwyieithog. Mae’r cyfieithiad ar y pryd a hefyd modd i addasu’r sain ar y system. Ar sianel 1 mae’r cyfieithiad, a cheir darllediad gair am air i glywed y sain yn well ar sianel 0. Nid oes rhaid ichi bwyso’r meicroffonau, bydd y bobl sy’n gweithio gyda ni ar y sain—pobl profiadol iawn, wrth gwrs—yn gwneud hynny. Rydym wedi derbyn ymddiheuriad gan Julie James ac rydym yn disgwyl Julie Morgan i ddirprwyo nes ymlaen, efallai. Bore da, Keith; mae’n dda dy weld di.		We will operate bilingually. Simultaneous interpretation and sound amplification is on the system. The translation is on channel 1 and the verbatim feed to amplify the sound is on channel 0. You do not have to press the switches on the microphones, as the people who work with us on the sound—who are very experienced people, of course—will operate the microphones. We have received an apology from Julie James and we are expecting Julie Morgan as a substitute later on, perhaps. Good morning, Keith; it is good to see you.
[4] Keith Davies: Bore da ichi hefyd.		Keith Davies: Good morning to you too.
9.34 a.m.
Ymchwiliad i Gynlluniau Datblygu Lleol a Ffigurau Poblogaeth/Aelwydydd—Tystiolaeth gan Awdurdodau Lleol Inquiry into Local Development Plans and Population/Household Numbers—Evidence from Local Authorities
[5] Yr Arglwydd Elis-Thomas: Rydym yn ddiolchgar iawn i’r awdurdodau lleol sydd yma ger ein bron. Yn ymuno â ni mae Martin Davies o Gyngor Sir Fynwy, Rhian Kyte o Gyngor Bwrdeistref Sirol Caerffili a Jamie Thorburn o Gyngor Sir Ceredigion. Dyma’r tro gyntaf inni gymryd tystiolaeth ar y pwnc arbennig hwn, ond mae gennym ddiddordeb arbennig, fel y dywedais wrthoch chi yn gynharach, yn y broses gynllunio. Mae’r pwyllgor hwn yn un o’r pwyllgorau o faint sylweddol, gydag aelodaeth drawsbleidiol o 10 Aelod, yn y Cynulliad, a ni fydd yn gyfrifol am ddeddfu ar y Bil cynllunio, pan ddaw. Felly, mae gennym ddiddordeb yn y broses, yn enwedig y berthynas rhwng cynghorau lleol, fel awdurdodau cynllunio, a swyddogion a Gweinidogion Llywodraeth Cymru, sy’n atebol i’r pwyllgor.		Lord Elis-Thomas: We are very grateful to the local authorities that are before us. We are joined by Martin Davies from Monmouthshire County Council, Rhian Kyte from Caerphilly County Borough Council and Jamie Thorburn from Ceredigion County Council. This is the first time that we have taken evidence on this particular subject, but we have great interest, as I mentioned to you earlier, in the planning process. This committee is one of the Assembly committees that is of a substantial size, with 10 Members from across the parties, and we will be responsible for legislating on the planning Bill when it comes. Therefore, we have an interest in the process, in particular the relationship between local authorities, as planning authorities, and Welsh Government officials and Ministers, who are accountable to the committee.
[6] Mae’n bwysig cofio bod pedwar Gweinidog yn atebol i’r pwyllgor hwn am wahanol gyfrifoldebau. Yn amlwg, Gweinidog yr Amgylchedd a Datblygu Cynaliadwy yw’r Gweinidog cyntaf o ran ei statws ynglŷn â chynllunio, ond mae gan Brif Weinidog Cymru hefyd gyfrifoldebau strategol.		It is important to remember that four Ministers are accountable to this committee in relation to different responsibilities. Clearly, the Minister for Environment and Sustainable Development is the main one in terms of his status in relation to planning, but the First Minister also has strategic responsibilities.
[7] Byddwch yn gwybod ein bod wedi gwneud ymchwiliad sylweddol i bolisi cynllunio ag ynni a chaniatadau ynni yn arbennig o ran y broses cynllunio, ond dyma’r tro cyntaf i ni edrych ar y broses gynllunio yn nhermau blaengynllunio ac amcangyfrifon yn ymwneud â phoblogaeth.		You will know that we conducted a substantial inquiry into planning policy and energy and energy consents in particular in relation to the planning process, but this is the first time we have looked at the planning process in terms of forward planning and projections in relation to the population.
[8] Gofynnaf i Llyr Huws Gruffydd gychwyn yr holi.		I will ask Llyr Huws Gruffydd to start the questions.
[9] Llyr Huws Gruffydd: Un o’r rhesymau ein bod yn edrych ar y maes hwn yw achos ein bod, fel Aelodau, yn aml iawn yn cael adborth ar broses y gynlluniau datblygu lleol sy’n awgrymu bod yr amcanestyniadau poblogaeth ynddynt yn rhy uchel i’r hyn y mae nifer o awdurdodau lleol yn teimlo sydd eu hangen o ran darpariaeth o fewn i’w cynlluniau datblygu lleol.		Llyr Huws Gruffydd: One of the reasons why we are looking at this area is that we, as Members, very often get feedback on the local development plan process that suggests that the population projections in them are too high for what many local authorities feel they need in terms of provision within their local development plans.
[10] Pan rydym yn holi’r Llywodraeth, mae’n dweud ei bod i’r awdurdodau lleol bennu eu ffigurau a’u cyfiawnhau. Fodd bynnag, pan rydym yn holi’r awdurdodau lleol, maent yn dweud eu bod yn teimlo bod yr arolygwr cynllunio yn gorfodi ffigurau Llywodraeth Cymru arnynt. Ble mae’r gwendid sylfaenol yn y drefn honno, os oes yna un?		When we ask the Government, it says that it is up to local authorities to set their figures and to justify them. However, when we ask the local authorities, they say that they feel that the planning inspector imposes Welsh Government figures on them. Where does the basic weakness in that system lie, if there is one?
[11] Ms Kyte: Do you want me to go first?
[12] Lord Elis-Thomas: I think so. We are very conscious of gender balance in this committee. [Laughter.]
[13] Ms Kyte: Ladies first, I am told. [Laughter.]
[14] Lord Elis-Thomas: Absolutely.
[15] Ms Kyte: Good morning. My name is Rhian Kyte. I work for Caerphilly County Borough Council and am in charge of the strategic and development plans team there. Just to give you the background, we have produced a local development plan and have had it adopted. We are now looking to the first review. We have a keen interest in the population and household projections. It is an area that we debated at some length with the Welsh Government. We were fortunate enough, in our section, to have a qualified statistician who could give us the support and backup we needed to do our own projections. So, when we produced our local development plan, we had regard to ‘Planning Policy Wales’, which indicates that the starting point should be PPW, but we were confident enough to be able to do our own projections, having regard to the full remit of evidence that we should take into account.
[16] I think that it is fair to say that some other authorities perhaps do not have that internal expertise and would not have the confidence to do that. Therefore, they rely on the projections. In addition to that, it think that it is fair to say that, when discussing the population projections with the Welsh Government, there is very much a mixed message that comes out from Welsh Government officials. You get a different response depending on whether you are talking to the planners or the statisticians.
[17] If I can give you a bit more information on that, if you talk to the statistical unit, they will tell you that projections are produced as short-term trends and are there to help and aid service delivery. They are definitely not prepared to inform development planning, because development planning is longer term and should have regard to longer-term trends—I added that last bit, by the way, that is not the statisticians talking. However, when you talk to the planners in the Welsh Government and the policy unit and look at how that translates into Welsh Government policy, there is very much an emphasis on the projections as the starting point and, if you want to deviate from them, you have to have sound evidence as to why. That is where there is a slight misunderstanding between the statisticians and the planners, and when that translates across to local government, it is down to the expertise in individual authorities as to how they treat the projections. It is also down to resources, because, if you do not have the internal expertise you have to commission it, which has financial implications.
[18] Llyr Huws Gruffydd: Felly, yn eich achos chi yng Nghaerffili, mater o lwc oedd hi, mewn gwirionedd, bod ystadegydd gennych wrth law oedd yn gallu cynorthwyo yn y broses honno. Wrth gwrs, mae hynny’n golygu bod awdurdodau lleol nad oes ganddynt y sgiliau ac adnoddau sy’n angenrheidiol i fedru cyflwyno eu hystadegau neu ffigurau eu hunain, a fyddai’n wahanol i rai’r Llywodraeth.		Llyr Huws Gruffydd: So, in your case in Caerphilly, it was matter of luck, really, that you had a statistician at your disposal to assist in that process. Of course, that means that there are local authorities that do not have the necessary skills and resources available to present their own figures, which would be different from those of the Government.
[19] Ms Kyte: I cannot speak for other authorities, but, having spoken to colleagues in my position in other authorities, I think it is fair to say that. I think that the expertise is now within local government, because things have progressed dramatically since we started the process of local development plans a number of years ago. For example, we have lost our statistician now—he has retired—but, at the first review of the plan, we would still aim to do our own projections, because we now have pop group and house group available to us, and we have other expertise within the section. Also, within our own section, when looking at projections, we do not just have regard to the short-term demographic trends; we look at environmental capacity, the ability of our county borough to take the growth, past building rates, and the ability of the development industry to actually develop the houses in question, because it is all very well saying that you will have 40,000 houses, but can the development industry actually deliver that many? We look at the whole evidence base before coming up with our projections for our county borough, which takes all that into account, not just the projection figure. Sorry, I do not want to hog this.
[20] Lord Elis-Thomas: That is all right. Do you want to come in now, Martin?
[21] Mr Davies: Yes, thank you. I am Martin Davies, and I am the development plans manager for Monmouthshire County Council. We are later in the development plan process than Caerphilly. We have recently submitted it to the Government for examination, and we are due to have our inquiry, which will perhaps start at the end of April. We have had similar experiences. First of all, we do have expertise in-house, but it is one particular officer who is experienced and trained in these sorts of matters. If she were to leave we would have difficulty, because we do not have a central research unit.
[22] We have found it difficult in that there is a danger that projections are treated as targets. They are not targets; they are just indications of what will happen if recent trends continue. There is perhaps a tendency, as Rhian said, for Welsh Government officials to give the impression that they are targets. When those figures suit the development industry, it is also very keen to go along with them and take them as set in stone and say that those are the figures that we should be following. There are statistical problems in that they are based on a five-year trend, rather than longer-term trends, and there is also a big risk that one or two anomalies could produce unrepresentative figures that could be carried forward and give totally unrealistic numbers.
[23] Llyr Huws Gruffydd: Could you give any examples of the type of anomalies that might affect that?
[24] Mr Davies: In Monmouthshire, for instance, we prepared our preferred strategy in 2009. We used the regional apportionment figures that were carried out by the south-east Wales strategic planning group, so we were a little bit behind the projections. The 2006 projections came out as we were producing our preferred strategy, and they indicated that we should have been going for much higher levels of growth—530 dwellings a year. Our preferred strategy was for 400 dwellings a year, which was, obviously, well below the projections, and we were criticised for that by the Welsh Government and by the development industry, which said that our figures were much too low. We realised that we had to justify the departure from the 2006 figures, and we were working on that, but, in the meantime, the 2008 projections came out, and they were much lower, because they were based on boom years with high migration. In other authorities I think it has perhaps been the other way around, but, in our case, we found we had much lower figures, and they did correspond to the figures that we were putting forward in our local development plan.
[25] Lord Elis-Thomas: So, you were right all the time. [Laughter.]
[26] Mr Davies: Yes, we were right all the time, but we were happy to take them on board. If the projections were done now, they would probably be much lower again, because over the last five years there has been a depression.
9.45 a.m.
[27] Lord Elis-Thomas: Jamie, you are next.
[28] Mr Thorburn: My credentials, I suppose, are that I have been involved in this sort of work since the 1990s, when we had the old eight counties and health board areas as our basis, and Ceredigion was a district council. I have also been involved with the Welsh Statistical Liaison Committee—the local authority/Welsh Government committee—since about that time, particularly on the working group on population statistics, under the old Welsh Office and now under the Welsh Government. I was a member of that for some time. I have been an invited member of some Office for National Statistics reference groups on migration statistics, student numbers and so forth. I am the research manager for Ceredigion, so I am coming very much from that point of view.
[29] We have been working with our colleagues in local planning, forward planning, or whatever it has been called over the years, in producing this sort of data. So, I have some idea of the problems of colleagues here—I appreciate the problems that they have in interpreting, and I also appreciate the view of the Welsh Government planning people. I share the view of my colleagues that there is some misunderstanding of the nature of projections and how they are used in the planning process. Those of us who work in these sorts of areas are very happy to see great progress since the days of the old Welsh Office under the Welsh Government. We have a much more transparent way of looking at the data, and we have better data because of the work of the Welsh Government and the Office for National Statistics and, in some ways, the working groups that we have, so our trend-based projections are much better, but also they are not so set in stone and not so much handed down. This is not an exact science, but there is in some ways a spurious precision about it. These are basically trend-based projections, and, as my colleague here has said, they can lead to anomalies. We have seen that, as Rhian was saying, with this period of projection. The Welsh Government ones are specifically for your own budgetary purposes, in particular for the health budget, education and so forth, and that is quite short term. The figures are also updated every two years or so—well, that is the theory. So, it is not the same as the local development plan process, where you are being asked to look at 15-year overall growth in your area, or projection of growth. It is quite difficult to reconcile the two. So, they are not exactly designed for the same purpose.
[30] We have also seen some problems, I think, in some of the drafting of ‘Planning Policy Wales’. In chapter 9, there is a specific paragraph that we came up against when we were talking with the Welsh Government planning people that seems to set out a dichotomy. It says that you have to take the Welsh Government projections and use them or you have to come up with a reason for why you are taking a policy-based approach. For a lot of us, in fact, we have not taken a policy-based approach. We have taken a sensible view that in particular circumstances our own projections are better—not based on the fact that we want to build an aircraft factory in Ceredigion, or whatever it might be, but simply because the data at the national level, and they have to be consistent at a national level across the 22 unitary authorities, are very good and give you quite a good result for your own purposes, but, for the LDP purposes in particular there are several local factors to take into account. For example, in Ceredigion we have a problem with students—not a problem with them, I should not say that—we have a problem counting students and modelling them.
[31] Lord Elis-Thomas: Students are very good for your economy.
[32] Mr Thorburn: They are very good, and we love them all, but there are an awful lot of them, and, if you make a small error in the migration statistics in particular, there can be problems. These are quite difficult things to count, because they are counted on health service data. We have 9,000 students, so a 10% difference, which is quite likely, given the sort of data that you have, is 900 people aged 22 or 23 who become 900 24-year-olds, 25-year-olds or 26-year-olds in the Ceredigion population. We removed those, so that was a technical thing.
[33] The other thing, as my colleagues have alluded to, is this period of five years. If you take the Ceredigion figures, for example, any five-year rolling average over the last 20 years could provide you with a range between a net in-migration of 200 people per annum and of 1,200 people per annum. So, it is almost a matter of chance as to where you actually pick your five-year period. We thought that that was not suitable, given our local circumstances in Ceredigion, so we went for our own projections using the same official data that is provided for the Welsh Government projections. We have no problem with that at all; that is the best source of data, but we use them in a slightly different way. That was a policy-neutral approach, but we had to argue with people from the Welsh Government at hearings, saying that we were not arguing for a higher figure because we want an aircraft factory, or whatever, but because we think we have a better way of doing it locally. In some ways, we were caught out by the legality of that paragraph in Planning Policy Wales, which says, ‘You’re going for a policy approach’, but we are not—we are doing our own, policy-neutral approach.
[34] My overall view is that we have a much better system. You might hear from my colleagues in that working group about this, but we have only had two or three chances at this, and it takes Welsh Government statisticians some time to do this work. They have been working so far on this five-year period. As a working group, for the next variant, which we will see later this year, we will be looking for a 10-year or 15-year historic period as another variant on those projections.
[35] In other words, I think that it is moving on quite well—it is a much better process than we had from the slightly black-box-dividing-it-up approach that we had before. However, it is only a starting point. My colleagues in the area of planning policy have quite rightly said that the projections are only trend-based. You then have to argue as to whether that trend will continue, and whether in policy terms you might wish to build this aircraft factory or whatever it is. You then have to discuss how you are going to use and build on those trend-based projections, because they are quite technical things. So, you have to bring in the policy side with it, and that is where the interest should come, rather than on the technical side of the projections themselves.
[36] Llyr Huws Gruffydd: Roeddem yn sôn gynnau ei bod yn amlwg bod gwahanol lefelau o arbenigedd o fewn gwahanol awdurdodau. Faint o waith rhannu profiadau, arbenigedd ac adnoddau sy’n digwydd ar draws awdurdodau lleol?		Llyr Huws Gruffydd: We mentioned earlier that there are obviously different levels of specialism within different authorities. How much sharing of experience, specialism and resources takes place across local authorities?
[37] Mr Thorburn: Our working group has representation from Swansea, Ceredigion, Powys and several other authorities. We also have a north Wales group; Conwy takes a lot of responsibility for looking at the north Wales situation.
[38] Lord Elis-Thomas: It is a very good county, I find.
[39] Mr Thorburn: It is a very good place, indeed. [Laughter.] We also tend to take a collegiate approach in any case; as local authority people, we meet several times and we like to help our colleagues. We also appreciate that many places—Caerphilly was mentioned—has lost some expertise over the years, particularly as people from large county systems have taken retirement and gone out of the system. We are with our Welsh Government colleagues building capacity, not so much as something that we want to do on our own, but it is important to understand what the projections are about. So, our collaboration is in those terms.
[40] If you were to move towards discussing policy-based projections, which is a very different black-box approach, you might then be back into a much more complex discussion on divvying up population change, growth, decline or whatever it might be, because you have no basis in trend-based terms. We certainly collaborate on the technical side of trend-based projections, but perhaps my colleagues can help on the other areas.
[41] Ms Kyte: From a policy perspective, we have been collaborating in south-east Wales since 1996, particularly in response to the 2003 projections. The south-east Wales strategic planning group looked at the projections, and Welsh Government statisticians came to discuss them with the group. I am sorry; you might not know who the south-east Wales strategic planning group is. It is a group that was set up in 1996 because we recognised that there was a vacuum at a regional level after local government reorganisation, so we started meeting on a voluntary basis. The group includes all of the strategic planning departments, and we meet once every two months.
[42] As a result of the new planning process and the general local development plan system, we felt the need to respond to the 2003 projections because they were regional projections at the time. We felt that there was a need to do exactly what my colleague said in terms of divvying up the growth. There was a memorandum of understanding between all the authorities in terms of the level of growth we would all take across south-east Wales. The serious flaw in the process was not the work undertaken, because that was undertaken quite easily. We had remarkably easy agreement across the 10 authorities, which surprised us all. The flaw in the process came when the weight to be attached to them was discussed. Because there was no statutory regional planning framework, there was nowhere to test that in public. Housebuilders and other stakeholders felt that they had not had sufficient input into that process. They had had input, and we had held stakeholder meetings, but there was no formal, statutory inquiry.
[43] Subsequently, although we reflected that apportionment exercise in our local development plans across south-east Wales as LDPs came online, we still had to argue the case at every inquiry. Had there been a mechanism for us to argue the figures once for south-east Wales, that could have been put to bed and reflected in everyone’s local development plans, and we could all have accepted the figures and moved on. Now, we have to argue the figures at every subsequent inquiry.
[44] Lord Elis-Thomas: So, what you are saying is that there is no way of ensuring that democratic legitimacy, which we understand to be part of the planning process at every level, at the regional level.
[45] Ms Kyte: Yes; not at the regional level, which is critical. That has been missing in Wales since 1996.
[46] Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas: This is something that will interest us hugely when we come to look at the planning Bill and the recommendations of the recent inquiry chaired by John Davies. However, it is not for me to turn this into a seminar.
[47] Keith Davies: Ar yr un trywydd, yr oeddwn yn edrych ar y ffigurau ac mae’r tri ohonoch wedi rhoi’r un ffigur, sef 20% dros 15 mlynedd. Rwyf wastad yn edrych ar beth sy’n digwydd yng Nghaerffili oherwydd mae poblogaeth Caerffili yn debyg i boblogaeth sir Gâr. Roedd yn fy synnu, o edrych ar y ffigurau, mai Sir Gâr oedd â’r ail dwf mwyaf, y tu ôl i Gaerdydd. Ym mha ffordd y mae sir Gâr mor wahanol i Gaerffili? Fe ddof yn ôl at hynny mewn munud. Nid oeddwn yn synnu mai Caerdydd oedd â’r twf mwyaf, achos mae’r Llywodraeth yn awr yn edrych ar ranbarth dinesig, a bydd yr un peth yn digwydd yn achos Abertawe. Buaswn i’n meddwl y byddwn, o gael rhanbarth dinesig yng Nghaerdydd, yn gweld mwy o dwf yng Nghaerffili. Onid hynny fydd yn wir? Roeddwn hefyd yn synnu, o edrych ar y ffigurau hyn, pa mor fach oedd y ffigur ar gyfer Casnewydd.		Keith Davies: On the same point, I was looking at the figures, and all three of you have put the same figure, namely 20% over 15 years. I always look to what happens in Caerphilly because Caerphilly’s population is similar to that of Carmarthenshire. Looking at the figures, I was surprised that Carmarthenshire had the second largest growth on the table, following Cardiff. In what way is Carmarthenshire so different to Caerphilly? I will come back to that later. I was not surprised that Cardiff had the largest growth, because the Government is now looking at a city region, and the same will apply to Swansea. I would think, therefore, that having a city region in Cardiff will lead to more growth in Caerphilly. Is that not going to be the case? I was also surprised, in looking at the figures, that the figure for Newport was so small.
[48] Lord Elis-Thomas: I think that is one question for Caerphilly and one for Monmouthshire, not that I am asking Monmouthshire to speak on behalf of Newport.
[49] Keith Davies: Mae un peth arall: mae Caerdydd wedi sôn yn y mis neu ddau ddiwethaf am adeiladu rhyw 30,000 o dai, a nid wyf yn credu bod y ffigurau hynny yn y tabl hwn. Felly, a fydd hynny’n golygu mwy o dwf yng Nghaerdydd nag sydd eisoes wedi’i nodi yn y tabl hwn?		Keith Davies: There is one other thing: in the last month or two, Cardiff has talked of building about 30,000 houses, and I do not think that those figures are in this table. Therefore, will that mean more growth in Cardiff than what is already set out in the table?
[50] Yr Arglwydd Elis-Thomas: Rwy’n credu bod o leiaf pedwar cwestiwn yno.		Lord Elis-Thomas: I think there are at least four questions there.
[51] Do you want to start, Rhian? We will then go to Martin. I think we will probably leave Ceredigion out of this one, but we will come back to you later.
[52] Ms Kyte: I assume that you are referring to the projections and the census figures, which are different to the projections that we reflect in our development plans. The mechanism for incorporating and looking afresh at the figures will be our first review of our local development plan, which will be in 2014-15, unless we trigger a review before then. The problem in Caerphilly is that the census shows that we already have the population that we were planning for by the end of our planning period. When we plan for population growth in the development plan, it is so that we can provide relevant figures in terms of houses.
[53] The interesting link there is to look at the relationship between population growth and household size and household figures. If you look at the census figures, the decline in household size that we projected over the planning period—which results in a certain amount of houses—has not happened. There are various reasons for that. In our case, much of that is down to the lack of affordable housing, people staying at home longer, students no longer going away to college and living at home, and elderly people living with their children and not going into nursing care. Whereas we have always assumed that the household size would  continue to decline over time, the census says that that is not the case anymore.
10.00 a.m.
[54] When we look at the figures afresh for the first review of the plan, we will have to take all of this evidence into account and consider what it means for housing and how much housing land we have to provide for. We will look at the whole array of information again. Of course, when we get to our first review it will be very much dependent on what is happening in the region, in Cardiff and with our neighbours. Our growth will be very much dependent on what is happening in adjacent authorities and, most notably, Cardiff. At the moment, we think that we are all doomed in Caerphilly, because if Cardiff is going to build 45,000 houses, no-one will want to build in Caerphilly, especially as Cardiff has a greenfield strategy and we have a brownfield one. Therein lies another host of problems. We are going to have to look afresh, come 2014-15. However, all of that will have to have one eye on what is happening in the city region. Our view, and my personal view, is that the sooner we get a planning Bill that introduces regional planning and a proper regional development framework that takes on board all of these factors, the sooner you will get sensible growth in the region that is fairly distributed and that can safeguard its environmental capacity. That touches on Newport’s issues, as well. I am sorry, but I cannot talk about Carmarthen at all.
[55] Lord Elis-Thomas: You have done well enough. I will ask Martin to come in here. We are discussing what is table 2 in the paper, namely, ‘Projected Households by Local Authority, Wales, 2008-2033’. I just wanted to ensure that we all knew that.
[56] That was very helpful. We can promise you that we will look extremely seriously at the quality of the regional dimension of the planning Bill. I think that everyone around this table can promise you that.
[57] Mr Davies:  Commenting on the regional situation, perhaps from a parochial point of view and Monmouthshire’s place in it, Monmouthshire is a very attractive place where people want to live and where developers want to develop. It is obviously very profitable. However, at the same time, that environment which attracts developers and residents is so important to protect. We have very limited brownfield land. If we go for development, we have to go for greenfield sites. We have historic market towns with very sensitive settings and historic transport networks that make it difficult to accommodate growth. We are in a position where we are trying to resist growth. It seems strange that we are under so much pressure for growth when, at a regional level, you have urban centres, like Cardiff and Newport, which have brownfield land with all the services for sustainable and urban living, but yet we are expected to take some of that growth when it is difficult for us. There is a need, as Rhian has said, for that regional overview, so if there is a decision on what role Monmouthshire plays in the region, that can be related to the aspirations of adjoining authorities—such as Valleys authorities—with a lot of brownfield land that are anxious to achieve growth.
[58] Lord Elis-Thomas: Your views and attitude towards development reflect the views of your electors, the local population of Monmouthshire, presumably. That is where they come from.
[59] Mr Davies: What was that, I am sorry?
[60] Lord Elis-Thomas: Your views—in what you have said about the pressures of development—and the attitude that you take towards conservation, in the broadest sense, reflect the views of the local population. It is a democratic view.
[61] Mr Davies: It is a democratic, local view. That is the danger—there is an impression that the figures are coming from the Welsh Government in Cardiff and ignoring local wishes. So, as officers, we have had to tread a very fine line. On one hand we are trying to convince our residents and councillors that the growth we are going for is not too high, and, on the other hand, we are trying to convince the Welsh Government and the development industries that the growth we are going for is not too low. It is a very fine balancing act.
[62] Lord Elis-Thomas: I will take a question on this from David next and then William.
[63] David Rees: Is there a danger, as a consequence of that position, that you do not have the mix of households that may be needed within an area, because, as you mentioned , the type and nature of the household is changing and more social and rented housing is going to be available? Will you lose that mix as a consequence of that type of approach?
[64] Mr Davies: It is a balancing act. If we do not have reasonably high levels of growth, we will not have the ability to provide affordable housing for local people. I agree with you entirely that it is a balancing act. There are issues. We have done a lot of viability assessing to see how much affordable housing we can get from our development sites through section 106 agreements. That is going to be difficult, particularly if new regulations come in on sustainable design standards. With that argument, the higher the numbers, the more affordable housing that you can produce. However, we are trying to achieve a balance where we have enough housing. We are going to push the limit with regards the proportion of affordable housing that we ask for as far as we can. We hope that we will then get enough to make a contribution to meeting those sorts of needs for social housing and the different sizes of homes.
[65] William Powell: I have a couple of questions that focus in on Martin’s evidence. One other constraint that you did not mention regarding Monmouthshire and the way that you factor in housing projections is the fact that Monmouthshire also contains a fairly large chunk of the Brecon Beacons National Park. I believe that the national park is just a few paces ahead with regards the development of its own local development plan. Will you comment on any complications that may arise with regards the apportionment of growth—the 20% that is in the table that we have for 2008-33—and how that particular conundrum is resolved?
[66] On a second and unrelated topic, you come from a local authority that sits next to Gloucestershire and Herefordshire over the English border, which are answerable to the pronouncements of Mr Pickles and his colleagues—[Interruption.]
[67] David Rees: Do not talk about them.
[68] Lord Elis-Thomas: Do not spoil the morning.
[69] William Powell: What additional interesting dimension does that bring to the work of your authority, which is also probably relevant to authorities further up the Welsh border?
[70] Mr Davies: Given that part of the national park is in Monmouthshire, there is an entirely separate planning authority for the park area for planning purposes. Our main interest as representatives of the local planning authority in Monmouthshire is looking at the relationships between the two authorities. In that sense, we do not have any great problems. The original figures that we used were based on Monmouthshire as the overall administrative area. I think that the projections have been developed since, but the projections that we used included the Brecon Beacons National Park. We have taken on board the figures for Monmouthshire, and we have taken off a couple of hundred homes, say, that are going to be provided within the national park authority. It has a couple of sites in the Monmouthshire part of the park that could make that contribution.
[71] Again, looking at it from a parochial point of view, and the relationship between our LDP and the national park’s LDP, we are content with its approach because it is making a contribution that we can say is helping us to meet our targets. There are obviously much greater constraints in the national park as a whole with regards the amount of development that it can take. However, we, as planners, have a very limited interest in what happens there—we need to get involved in the cross-border implications.
[72] William Powell: Given what Rhian said earlier about issues around capacity, and given that that authority has a significantly smaller capacity than your own, have you found yourself helping to feed in particular expertise in this area as to how to interpret the projections and take them forward?
[73] Mr Davies: Not really; in the early days, we had a bit of a problem with that authority’s preferred strategy and projections because we felt that it was not interpreting them correctly. We had an expert in that matter, so there was a bit of difference between the two authorities. However, it seemed to go on according to its strategy. As I understand it, that authority now has consultants working for it on its planning projections.
[74] William Powell: Yes; I think that it hired Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners.
[75] Mr Davies: I do not think that we have helped it in that sense. We have kept in contact and have discussed things, but we have gone in our own directions.
[76] As far as the other side of the border is concerned, we keep in contact—we have discussions, particularly with officials at the Forest of Dean. However, there is not a lot of cross-border working. Chepstow, for instance, is the area that is most affected. Development goes on in the Forest of Dean—particularly in Lydney—that sends traffic through Chepstow, so we are concerned about that. There are settlements on the other side of the River Wye that in physical and social terms are part of Chepstow, and it would be nice to think that they could take some of Chepstow’s growth. However, there are English villages where there is no appetite for growth, and limited development is proposed on that side of the river. So, they are not taking any of Chepstow’s growth; we have to sort out ourselves in that regard. I have talked a lot about there being no brownfield land, but in Chepstow, we have a very good brownfield site, which is fairly close to the town centre and we are hoping that it will take most of Chepstow’s growth for the local development plan period. However, there are these cross-border issues, particularly in terms of traffic.
[77] William Powell: Do you feel that there is a need for more close collaboration between Welsh and English authorities, particularly given that the drive-to-work patterns very much ignore the border, which is extremely porous from my experience; my home area is a little further up the border in south Powys.
[78] Mr Davies: I would definitely say that there is a need for that. There is not a lot of appetite on the other side of the border for that sort of co-operation. If those settlements were considered as parts of Chepstow, they would be taking more growth, but there is not an appetite for that growth in the Forest of Dean District Council.
[79] William Powell: That is interesting, thank you.
[80] Lord Elis-Thomas: I call on Antoinette next; you have been very patient.
[81] Antoinette Sandbach: What sort of historic reviews do councils carry out when they are making projections, particularly when they are challenging Welsh Government projections? I think that you answered that, Rhian, in terms of the census information. For each of your councils, in the recent experience of your LDPs, for example, how significant was your departure from the Welsh Government figures? Do you look to see, historically, whose figures are more right, if I can put it that way—the Welsh Government’s or your own projections? Are there lessons that you have learned from that that you would like us to learn?
[82] Mr Thorburn: Shall I take this one?
[83] Ms Kyte: You are the expert on this. I can then add to your reply.
[84] Mr Thorburn: Ceredigion County Council seems to go in different directions to other authorities. There were significant changes; more due to the period of historic trend. We did quite a lot of work. As you might have gathered from my preamble, I am interested in this sort of work, so we tend to review these issues constantly. With issues such as the student population, we have to look at the data and know exactly what it is. So, we are constantly reviewing that.
[85] The question is the nature of trend-based projections and exactly what we are going to do with them. Over recent years, the Office for National Statistics has come out with a bewildering number of reviews, particularly of its migration data, which are the key component and the most difficult to model in local authority areas. Even in quite large local authorities, it is quite difficult; it is very difficult in such places as Ceredigion, which have strange populations, such as student populations. So, you have to look at how robust they can be. That is our main concern. There are technical issues regarding students. In Ceredigion, for a century or so, we have seen a period of prolonged net out-migration, as opposed to the prolonged periods of net in-migration of quite significant numbers, in proportional terms, in the 1970s and 1980s.
[86] If you look at any five-year period from the last two decades, you will come up with a lot of different results, because migration in particular varies annually and there are cyclic issues related to the economy, for example, which is a major issue. Now, we are presumably in a period of fairly low migration and low mobility in the population in general. If you were to take that period now and project it on and say that that is what is going to happen over the next 15 years, you might find that there is a risk that you are underestimating future population growth. I think that you should do this and we should be looking to have a reasoned approach and argument to those areas.
10.15 a.m.
[87] Our difficulties in Ceredigion might be local, because one member of the public took a great deal of time and trouble to interrogate our figures, which is good, as it puts us more under the microscope than other areas. It took a little time and we had to argue clearly and cogently with the inspector. I felt a little hobbled by the piece of legalistic dichotomy raised in ‘Planning Policy Wales’. I would like to see more of that approach and the capacity is there within local authorities, as they work in collaboration, to do that. In our working groups, we do not look at each individual authority and say ‘That looks good’ in relation to Caerphilly, Conwy or wherever. As experts in local authorities, we take a reasoned approach, as does the Welsh Government, as to what is a consistent approach for the whole of Wales. We do not say, ‘I vote for that for Ceredigion; that seems fine’. I only look at them in Ceredigion to give me some new insight into how good those data are or how good the approach is. So, there is a need to go beyond the trend-based tables that you get from those into some sort of commentary about how those affect or apply to any particular area over an historic period.
[88] Ms Kyte: In Caerphilly—I am sorry, I am not sure whether the microphone is on or off.
[89] Lord Elis-Thomas: Leave it alone, because there is a nice man in there—
[90] Ms Kyte: There is a man that does it.
[91] Lord Elis-Thomas: Yes, a person, I should say.
[92] Ms Kyte: In our chamber, you have to press the button.
[93] Lord Elis-Thomas: In fact, he is from Ceredigion, I think. [Laughter.]
[94] Ms Kyte: In Caerphilly, it is completely different to Ceredigion in that regard. I referred earlier to an apportionment exercise that we undertook in the south-east Wales strategic planning group, and we continue to work collaboratively, looking at the figures and at everyone’s local development plan. We look back annually to see how that growth is being accommodated and whether the local development plans are in line or not with the memorandum of understanding. We also look back at any new data in terms of projections and the mid-year estimates, and do a comparison. The one thing that you can be sure of is that they are all wrong. The one thing that you can say with certainty is that, whichever figure you look at, it will be wrong, because, at the end of the day, it is all about factoring in various assumptions, and a small change in one of the assumptions can completely change the outcome. So, that is the one thing to be certain of, namely that it will all be wrong.
[95] We have looked at it historically and at what we are trying to do in policy terms. For example, in Caerphilly, we have had a decline in population figures since the 1920s. So, when we did our unitary development plan, which ran from 1996 to 2011, the aspiration was to accommodate significant levels of growth to halt decline. Looking back, which we have to do as part of the evidence base for looking forward, we can see that we achieved that, largely through large-scale greenfield release at that time, but also because there was a period of economic growth across Britain, and we were fortunate to get some growth, whereas in previous booms, we had been unsuccessful.
[96] On what that means for us from 2006 to 2021, which is our current plan period, we have moved to a position where we are looking for moderate growth. We have gone from a position of decline, to halting decline, and then to looking actively for growth. We factored that in and, therefore, released sufficient land, we hoped, to accommodate the levels of growth required over our plan period. We will have regard to the new evidence that has come out, and the census in particular, when we look to review it; we will look at everything again. We will look at the mid-year estimates, the census and all those other factors and, most notably, things like housebuilding rates. They will all come into the mix, not just the projection figures, in terms of what we will do in the future, because, unlike Ceredigion—although we have looked at the trends and used the long-term trends, over a 15-year period, for our figures, because that would take into account a whole economic cycle and a whole-plan period, in looking forward—we must also decide how much growth we are willing to take if the city region concept is successful. In terms of viability, which is key to all this, we were getting good levels of development on brownfield sites just before the bust, but developers are not touching brownfield sites in our area now, because it is not economically viable to do so.
[97] Antoinette Sandbach: You have touched on this, but we have had a particular problem in north Wales, in Denbighshire, with the evidence that is accepted by the planning inspector who is conducting the inquiries. How is it to put together robust evidence that is accepted? This has been a particular problem in north Wales.
[98] Lord Elis-Thomas: Robust and credible.
[99] Antoinette Sandbach: Yes, that is it.
[100] Lord Elis-Thomas: What does that mean?
[101] Antoinette Sandbach: Yes; what does that mean?
[102] Mr Thorburn: We found ourselves faced with this: ‘Are you doing a policy-based thing?’, ‘No, we’re not; we’re doing a better set of projections neutral.’ However, it was quite difficult proving the technicalities of it. It is not exactly rocket science, but it is quite difficult to explain in a hearing, when people are throwing in figures, to an inspector who is not trained in these areas. He was also trying to give everyone a chance to have their say. It is quite a difficult forum, I suppose, in which to cover that sort of area, because it can become quite combative in those circumstances.
[103] I do not think it is difficult to build a case, however; it is probably how you put it. I would say that there is probably room for a better way of including commentary ahead of this—although we always try to put it in, and someone will always come up and comment. Of course, the more figures you provide, the more open you tend to be to someone saying that this or that is wrong, or a certain figure is not 70 but 74, and that level of detail is quite difficult to deal with. I hope that we were able to put our case, and the inspector, obviously, is trying to give a good hearing to those arguments that are put by others.
[104] Antoinette Sandbach: Obviously, we are looking at this to see whether or not there is room for improvement. So, what would you say that you would like to see changed?
[105] Mr Thorburn: I would say that, at the moment, it is ‘Planning Policy Wales’, which has caused us particular problems—that is a very local view. In north Wales, I know that there are similar problems: Conwy, as I said, was doing quite a lot of work and, recently, the projections for Denbighshire have been redone. In that case, I think it is the commentary that you are picking up quite short-term historic changes and projecting them forward by some way, and that caused the problems there. There are anomalies in the data. I would look for an opportunity to put those sorts of arguments and to give them the same weight, if you like, as some ‘policy’ decisions—that would be a good step forward, so that there would be room for more subtle variation and nuance in the presentation of that information.
[106] Antoinette Sandbach: Are you, in fact, arguing for a shift in the burden of proof? That is, if a council should come up with its own figures, they should be accepted and given weight, so that they would then have to be disproved by Welsh Government.
[107] Mr Thorburn: That would have helped us, because we found that our friends in Welsh Government planning would say, ‘We do not find them appropriate’. We had an exchange, during which we asked, ‘Why do you not find them appropriate?’, and they said, ‘Because we do not find them appropriate’. That is not exactly verbatim, but it is more or less the exchange that happened. [Laughter.] You are put in quite a difficult position when you have to meet that sort of argument. So, I would say that a change in the weight would be good, but as to how you go about that, I am not too sure.
[108] Lord Elis-Thomas: Before I call Llyr to do his round 2, and any other colleagues who have another round of questions, I would like to pursue the role of the inspectorate in this whole process. You have talked a lot about what the local authorities are doing with regional collaboration working and the detailed statistical work, and you have mentioned your interesting, if perhaps not always helpful, conversations with officials in Welsh Government, and we will put this to them when we see them. I should preface my remarks by saying that a number of my friends are, or have been, planning inspectors, so I am well disposed towards the inspectorate, unlike some of my colleagues, perhaps—that is for them to say. However, what would you do to improve the quasi-judicial role of the inspectorate? I am not asking in relation to development control issues generally, but specifically this process of planning over the longer term.
[109] Mr Thorburn: From my point of view—I am not a policy person, as I said, and I am sure that my colleagues have much more to say on the subject—I would say that it is a matter of educating the inspectorate in these matters, and perhaps giving inspectors some guidance on things like the weight to be given to a Welsh Government view, which will in fact become more of a complex Welsh Government view if we have more variables in things like projections. That would be one view, but I am sure that my colleagues have more to say about this than I do.
[110] Ms Kyte: Speaking from our experience of the inspectorate at our examination, we had an excellent inspector and an excellent relationship, and he dealt with the Welsh Government and us fairly in an examination environment.
[111] In terms of the relationship between us and Welsh Government officials, we have a very good working relationship with them; we work very closely with them. The problem comes when you have a dispute about a particular issue, be it population projections or any other part of the plan. When the Welsh Government speaks, its view seems to take priority over the local planning authority’s view, in terms of the weight that the inspectorate attaches to the comments being made. It categorises objections as category 1 or 2 and so on. If you have a category 1 objection, you know that you will have to overcome it, because the chances are that your plans will be found to be unsound. You may be faced with those sorts of objections based on population projections based on PPW and projections that have recently come out.
[112] To give you an example, during our examination after submitting our LDP, the 2006 projections came out and we had to write a paper about what they meant for our plan. However, during the two-week examination process itself, the 2008 projections came out. So, we then also had to say what they meant for our plan. We had to say, ‘We can deal with this at the first review—that would be the appropriate time to deal with this new evidence’. However, the inspectorate will always give greater weight to the Welsh Government. There needs to be a more balanced approach in terms of whose view should be listened to. I do not think that the Welsh Government’s view is any more appropriate than the local planning authority’s view; they are equal. The views of stakeholders around the table are also important.
[113] Lord Elis-Thomas: That is a very healthy and democratic perspective, if I may say so. I am interested in the categorisation of the objections. How transparent and testable is that in terms of being evidence based or academically rigorous and all the rest of it?
[114] Ms Kyte: My honest answer is that the problem we have with the Welsh Government’s objections quite often is that they are not evidence based. They will be ‘of a view’. Take affordable housing, for example, the Government will say, ‘You will provide x amount of affordable housing because the Minister says you will’. Basically, that is the answer you get. When you ask where the evidence is for that level of need, there is none; there is only a statement that that will happen, although we might have a pile of evidence that says something else. We then have to debate that with Welsh Government officials. That happens time and again. We are told to do things because ‘that is the view’. We are not presented with any evidence why that is the view.
[115] Mr Davies: We have an outstanding objection from the Welsh Government on our population numbers and housing figures. We have tried to answer it in a detailed way, but it has not come back to us to say that it accepts our arguments. So, we are under a bit of stress and uncertainty going into the examination. We do not know if we have resolved these issues. We feel strongly that we have provided the evidence to do that, but there is always uncertainty. As Rhian said, there is a perception that the Welsh Government carries more weight with the inspectorate than our evidence does. When you still have an outstanding objection, it makes you worry about going forward into the examination.
[116] Lord Elis-Thomas: This is a very interesting area. As you know, I have a friend and colleague who was once a Minister for housing. I suspect that she would say that it was for her to assert the housing need.
[117] Ms Kyte: I am sure that it was. [Laughter.]
[118] Mick Antoniw: Is there not a dilemma with what you are saying? You said earlier that you can have a high degree of cross-area agreement on evidence, but the problem is the weight attached to it. So, you may have a series of different authorities with the same sort of evidence—I accept the problems you outlined in terms of how valid that evidence is—and a fair degree of agreement, but, the fact of the matter is, you will still have all sorts of different interpretations and arguments over that. You are then left with the Welsh Government’s role of having to balance out the different interpretations. You seem to be leading towards a higher degree of co-ordinated central planning.
[119] Ms Kyte: My view is clear: we need a regional development framework and we need it quickly.
[120] Mr Davies: I would agree on the regional development framework. It is how you interpret ‘central’. You would not want the Welsh Government imposing things. It would need to be a more strategic overview on a co-operative level at a regional level.
[121] Mick Antoniw: I probably got carried away with my terminology. I was reading the Morning Star this morning. [Laughter.]
[122] William Powell: How significant are local housing needs surveys in terms of forming part of the evidence base for local authorities? Also, based on the experiences of your own authorities, what role do housing enablers play as part of that process?
10.30 a.m.
[123] Mr Thorburn: Perhaps I can start with this question. We conducted a local housing needs survey and used it with our projections and other evidence. They were broadly compatible, which is very good, because they are very different animals. One comes from a face-to-face interview survey and one comes from a projection of aggregate trends. So, we used that, basically taking our overall numbers—which is what planners are very interested in—from our projections. The type of housing, in particular the component of affordable housing and the various types of affordable housing products, came from our housing needs survey. One of the problems with housing needs surveys is that they are quite expensive to do. It cost us £50,000 to do the 1,500 interview surveys that are required to get good, robust evidence. We are working with the local government data unit and with the Welsh Government on ways in which we could do some sort of similarly robust but cheaper—or more cost-effective, I should say—way of doing that and updating it in line with projections and so forth. That is one area of work between local authorities and Welsh Government that will be very good for us.
[124] As for rural housing enablers, we have found them to be very useful, but their role is very limited. They would be the first to admit that they are taking a bottom-up approach. We have seen them conducting community housing needs surveys, which are quite different from an overall thing and involve more of a self-selected sample. That approach has its role in helping the community form its own ideas and put over its views on what should happen in particular small communities. However, if you are talking about Tal-y-bont in Ceredigion, with 400 or 500 people, or the Ceulanamaesmawr ward, you are talking about a relatively small-scale approach, and it is quite difficult to reconcile some things as you cannot carry out those sorts of surveys simultaneously over the whole county and with the same sort of robustness as a housing needs survey for a county. There is a role for all of these to be used. I see my role in this, particularly in housing and planning terms, as putting together this evidence and keeping that as a robust and fairly focused and consistent approach, and one that takes all of this evidence into account.  I assume that my colleagues in other areas are doing similar work.
[125] Mr Davies: We work very closely with rural housing enablers; there is one for Monmouthshire and south Powys. In the early days of the use of housing enablers, they did a lot of community-based surveys. We have probably seen eight or nine of them done. They provide very good evidence, but that evidence is starting to get out of date, and there seems to be major resource issues, as these surveys are labour intensive and expensive, and they have not been done for quite a few years. This is causing us problems because we use the national data to provide examples.
[126] We have a policy in Monmouthshire where we are trying to allocate small sites in our villages and to say that, on those sites, there should be 60% affordable housing. That raises viability issues, but we are saying, ‘Well, with the uplift in land values, you would not get those houses anyway unless you were providing affordable housing’. We have met with a lot of opposition from local communities. Those communities will not necessarily work with a housing enabler if they do not want affordable housing in their areas. The evidence makes it difficult for us to say, ‘Well, there is a need for it’. You could probably assume that there is a need: there is a national need, which is worse in rural areas; all the evidence that we have points to that. However, we do not have those specific surveys, but we understand the problem in terms of the resources needed to carry them out.
[127] William Powell: How long does a housing needs survey remain relevant, in respect of its shelf life, to use an everyday term?
[128] Mr Davies: I would imagine that the situation changes pretty regularly.
[129] Mr Thorburn: In terms of the larger scale surveys, you have a shelf life of three or four years, with five years as a maximum. You can update it through secondary sources. I know that the community ones are much more difficult to update because they are self-selecting. They tend to be what people have in their heads at the moment when they are answering the questions on the form. You need to bring all of these different levels of evidence together and make the most appropriate use of it in the most appropriate place. Certainly, we would like to carry out more bottom-up community approaches and to meld them somewhere with a top-down approach.
[130] William Powell: That acts as a validation of the whole process, in my experience.
[131] Mr Thorburn: Yes, exactly.
[132] Llyr Huws Gruffydd: Hoffwn ddilyn i fyny ar rhai o’r materion hynny. Soniodd Rhian ar y dechrau am dai fforddiadwy a’r ffaith bod yr arolygydd cynllunio, efallai, yn mynnu bod nifer y tai fforddiadwy o fewn cynllun yn cael ei ostwng oherwydd byddai hynny’n ei gwneud yn fwy tebygol y byddai gweddill y tai yn cael eu hadeiladu ac y byddai’n fwy atyniadol, efallai, i gwmni i fynd ati i ddatblygu’r tai. A oes perygl mewn sefyllfa o’r fath eich bod yn cyrraedd y nifer angenrheidiol o dai ond nad yw’r tai hynny o reidrwydd y math o dai sydd eu hangen?		Llyr Huws Gruffydd: I would like to follow up on some of those issues. At the outset, Rhian mentioned affordable housing and the planning inspector, perhaps, insisting that the level of affordable housing within a scheme be reduced because it would make it more likely that the rest of the houses would be built and it might be a more appealing prospect for a company to begin to develop the houses. Is there a danger in such a situation that you reach the necessary number of houses but that those houses are not necessarily the type of houses needed?
[133] Ms Kyte: We undertake a local housing market assessment and, in terms of the affordable housing level that we have set in our development plans, for example, we could build 100% affordable houses and it would still not meet our need over the plan period, because our need is so great. To meet our need, every single house built from now to 2021 would have to be affordable and, obviously, that will not happen. So, we had to maximise the level of affordable housing. In setting the affordable housing target for particular areas, we had to complete a viability assessment because we are working with the private sector and registered social landlords to deliver that affordable housing, as well as with our own housing colleagues. So, in Caerphilly, we have a 40% target in the more affluent areas, 25% in the mid valleys, 10% in the less affluent areas and nothing in the Heads of the Valleys area, because the land values will not support that.
[134] In terms of site-specific schemes, as they come in, the target depends on which area they are within. We are then left in a position where we negotiate with the developer about the numbers. They invariably come in and say, ‘It is not viable to provide 40%, so we will give you 20%’, or whatever. So, you then argue about the viability. To be fair to the developers, they generally do not mind what they develop. We have a very good working relationship with the registered social landlords, who work very closely with our housing colleagues and, together, we agree a package of the type of housing that needs to go on that site in response to the needs of that area. So, for example, at the moment, there is a very real issue in relation to one and two-bedroomed houses, because of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. Increasingly, all of the affordable housing will be one and two-bedroomed houses or flats, which fills me with absolute dread, because we are just building demolitions for the future. What will happen is that there will be one and two-bedroomed flats, problem people will go in there and, 10 years down the line, we will be knocking them down. Sorry, I was going off on one there, but it worries me somewhat. However, we build what is required, according to need, in consultation with the RSLs and our housing colleagues and we try to maximise what we can in terms of viability.
[135] Mr Thorburn: This is a little outside the remit of research, but when we are looking at things, we talk to developers—and I am talking about rural Ceredigion—and I think that we would get one developer, who is a very good gentleman who comes along to all of our meetings and who understands the pages of viability reports and so forth that we produce as our evidence. However, there is only one in the whole of Ceredigion. As you can imagine, in that area—and I think that this probably applies to other areas—we do not have a Redrow or a Barratt Homes or people who employ full-time staff—
[136] Lord Elis-Thomas: Aren’t you lucky? [Laughter.]
[137] Mr Thorburn: In many ways, yes. I wish for the quality of architecture to be a little better than that.
[138] He is an intelligent gentleman and he bothers to read all of this stuff. He knows that the other 99% of people building houses in Ceredigion do not have a clue about this. You might say that it is up to them to get clued up about this, but we look at a viability study that we produced through consultants, on exactly the things that Rhian was talking about, making the case for a proportion of affordable housing on some sites, with all of the different legal matters that might come into it, and I find them difficult to understand and I am paid full-time to look at these things. How on earth is a developer who wants to keep to the scale at which he is working supposed to do so? That is not my point of view, but it has been raised many times when we present evidence such as this. It is very good evidence, but getting people who are supposed to be building and providing those houses to understand it and see their role in it is quite difficult. That is an area that probably does need more work.
[139] Lord Elis-Thomas: If we are supposedly encouraging business-friendly practices on the part of government—both local and central—where are we?
[140] Russell George: I would like to follow up Rhian’s point. It would worry me if we are building houses and then knocking them down in 10 years’ time. Will you just follow that logic through, as I did not quite follow that?
[141] Ms Kyte: I am speaking on behalf of my housing colleague, really. We are currently doing quite a lot of work with the Welsh housing quality standard to upgrade our social housing stock. We visited a particular estate only last week to look at its environment and to see where we needed to make improvements to regenerate that estate. It was noticeable that there were many green spaces. I was not around—well, I was, but not in Caerphilly—30 years and more ago when the estate was very densely built, with a series of one-bedroomed tenement blocks inside what is quite a rough social housing estate. These have all had to be demolished. It all stems back to a fire that happened there about 30 years ago, and there were issues about problem people all being put together in one building in one-bedroomed flats. It invariably meant that people with mental health issues and drug problems were all together in one building. I do not mean this in a sexist way, but it is a fact that they were mainly young men in this one building. It ended up with this tenement block being knocked down, but it was not only that one, because the council chose to knock down all of the tenement blocks as it recognised that they were not suitable for the types of people who were living there and the problems they had.
[142] My worry is that I was in a meeting only yesterday where we were negotiating a block of one-bedroomed flats for people on the waiting list who will invariably be young, single men. We have come full circle: this is exactly the kind of building that we were knocking down because of the problems but, yesterday, we were negotiating building some more. It just frustrates me; it is my own personal little frustration.
[143] Russell George: So, the issue is that one and two-bedroomed housing is needed but that they should be integrated as part of a wider development.
[144] Ms Kyte: Yes, they should be integrated. The problem comes when you are talking about viability, land values, how you get them onto the site and all these other things. It is probably not viable to build nice little one-bedroomed houses; the cheapest way to do it is to put them all together in a block. All of the other arguments then come into play: you have to realise your affordable housing targets, your environmental considerations, your play facilities and your education contributions. All the viability is integral to delivery, and you end up with something that is less than satisfactory.
[145] Russell George: What is the answer?
[146] Ms Kyte: If I knew that, I would be in charge. [Laughter.] I think that there is a dissertation in there somewhere—I could spend all day deliberating that point with you. There is no simple answer.
[147] Russell George: It is a valid issue.
[148] Lord Elis-Thomas: You have given us a very useful answer.
[149] Antoinette Sandbach: There are issues around how they are designed and built. In Mick’s communities, there is an issue about ghettoising people into certain developments. If you know that there is a need for one or two-bedroomed accommodation, the question is why that need has not been recognised and met before.  Over a long period of time—possibly over the duration of the recent census, but that may have changed—there has been a huge growth in single person households and an increasing trend for women to be in single person households. Perhaps you have touched on an issue where, despite all the projections that we have been talking about today, there is an indication that other policy considerations can influence those projections. Do you think that current LDP review periods are sufficient to take external factors into account, such as the 2007 financial crash or changes in policy direction?
[150] Mr Thorburn: We have seen a bewildering flurry of demographic statistics, which makes it very difficult. As we have gone through the hearings, for example, we have had new evidence. How do you respond to that when you have built your edifice upon a figure that came out of some work done a year before, which is not a great deal before? We are also talking about a lot of things that are quite variable. Picking up on demographic trends is quite difficult. You should have an aspect of aspiration in your plans, so that you are looking forward and not just looking backwards. You mentioned that we have projected that single person households will probably continue to grow, so does that mean that you will necessarily look for one-bedroomed dwellings in flats.
10.45 a.m.
[151] It might mean that you aspire to something more than that with regard to housing in general, or that you at least give people the option to aspire to something more. If you are going to review things, you need to take into account the continual flurry of new and more exciting data that will always be coming—perhaps leaving it to us, the researchers, to assess it—and be able to feed it into the LDP process, which we are monitoring formally for the purpose of our five-year review. That seems to be the sort of period over which you could capture something like that. It is quite difficult to respond to something that is coming out here and there, but I think that you have to look at all of it, and not just in the formal looking at a number on a spreadsheet—you have to consider the reality of these things.
[152] Antoinette Sandbach: Are you, therefore, saying that you accept that the five-year review is about right?
[153] Mr Thorburn: It would appear to be about right for the sort of factors that we are talking about.
[154] Mr Davies: There is an issue that projections come out every two years, and that that does not tie up with any of the decision-making processes. I do not know how you would do it, but there is a need to integrate the way that projections are published with the actual monitoring and review of the plans. You cannot keep changing every two years, as people have found out with the ways that things have changed in the recent local development plan process.
[155] Antoinette Sandbach: Are you suggesting that the projections should be published every five years?
[156] Mr Davies: Perhaps they should. That might give longer term, stable trends. We have been expected to comply with those projections, but you cannot keep changing every two years.
[157] Lord Elis-Thomas: However, if the demographic factors are changing in the way they currently are—from what we have seen—that would make planning more indicative than real, would it not? Is that not the issue?
[158] Ms Kyte: The review timeline is about right. I feel as though we have only just finished the plan that we adopted in 2010 and I have started again, because the process is continual. With regard to building up your evidence base, which is vast, you are doing that constantly. There are annual reports to do. The annual monitoring report that we submit to the Welsh Government on our local development plan looks at where we are regarding delivery, and I think that that is correct—it is a really positive part of the new process. Before, you wrote a plan but no-one checked that you were delivering it. This process checks that you are on target and delivering. The compulsory review, every four or five years, seems about right in terms of looking at the evidence afresh.
[159] Looking at our specific LDP, I was writing it from the evidence base back in 2005-06. We are in a very different place now than we were then, and we are probably going to have to look at our strategy completely afresh for the review—I do not think that it is going to be a case of just rolling it forward. It is such a large and expensive piece of work; the resources needed to produce an LDP are enormous. However, it is a long-term plan and five years seems about right. Annual monitoring does the job, and if a review is triggered before then, you can undertake it sooner. There needs to be recognition that there is a cut-off point. Beyond that, you will look at it at the first review. You cannot always reflect the most up-to-date piece of evidence. There needs to be recognition that, as of a specific date, we stop looking at the matter—we adopt it, and we will deal with anything else through the review. I think that that would work much better.
[160] Antoinette Sandbach: What would you suggest that that cut-off date should be? Should it be two years before each annual review? Should it be one year?
[161] Ms Kyte: There are two trains of thought. One is the deposit plan, and, beyond that, you would submit stuff at the examination that the inspector feels is necessary. The second is that you look at it on submission of the plan to the inspector. You are sitting an examination on something that came out yesterday, and you are being asked how that impacts on your plan the next day—that is nonsense.
[162] David Rees: Going back to the issue of one-bedroomed or two-bedroomed properties that you mentioned—it is an important issue, and some Members on this side of the table have strong views on it due to current UK Government policy—the LDPs are about more than houses. Looking at the whole picture, you mentioned the integration of one-bedroomed or two-bedroomed properties into a wider picture. However, trends suggest that there will be people who are established in properties who may have to move into properties with fewer bedrooms as a consequence of these changes. How does the plan look at the changes that might be needed in facilities and other things to meet the needs of the people who will go into those areas? A young single person will have different needs to an elderly couple wanting a one-bedroomed property, for example.
[163] Ms Kyte: The local development plan is a corporate document. We have to get away from the idea that it is a planning document: it is a corporate policy document that all our internal service areas and external partners feed into. In producing the local development plan, you involve the health board, the police and all those other stakeholders. Hopefully, in terms of the plan’s land-use allocations—. At the end of the day, the LDP is a land-use document. It is about where things are going to go. It cannot be all things to all people and it cannot solve the ills of the world. What you are doing is providing land for future needs, which are identified by your evidence, and therefore you provide whatever the evidence suggests.
[164] Many of the things that we talk about may not be land-use driven. Obviously, housing is land-use driven and so we have policies in our plan that talk about mixed communities and affordable housing, social housing and general needs housing. On a scheme-by-scheme basis, we then have the housing providers and our housing officers determine the type of new houses to be built, where those are for RSLs. With regard to the private sector, the market normally determines what type of housing is built. Invariably, the private sector will not want to build one-bedroomed houses, because it does not get a return on them. It wants three-bedroomed and four-bedroomed houses on lower density sites that will give it a better return.
[165] So, when you look at a scheme, you look at the whole scheme and at the mix between social and private housing and then you negotiate with the developer in terms of what will be delivered. Obviously, whoever lives on that site then impacts on the services. So, in looking at the mix of housing, you make assumptions. For example, you are not likely to have children living in one-bedroomed houses—you might be wrong, but that is the assumption that you make—so those houses would not have an impact on local school provision, whereas you are likely to have children living in two, three or four-bedroomed houses. We then make assumptions about how much of a contribution the developer has to make towards the local school. It might be that that development will mean that the school down the road needs a new classroom, or that it will put pressure on the local playground, so you take a contribution off the developer to upgrade the local play facilities. You can go on and on, depending on in which area a site falls. When doing that, you have to look at the state and capacity of the existing provision. You also have to evidence the need. If there is already an adequate playground that can accommodate additional children and the school can accommodate the additional children, you do not ask the developer for anything, and so on. We look at it holistically for every single development.
[166] David Rees: Is that part of the review process?
[167] Ms Kyte: It is, in terms of the policies that then feed through into the development plan.
[168] Mr Thorburn: I will just add, if I may, that, in Ceredigion, we are moving towards our single integrated plan. For us, that is a prime area and we are developing exactly those things that you are talking about, that is, not just looking at the technical aspect of housing in isolation, but a lot of these things around the themes of health and social care and so on. To beat our own drum as research people, one key issue is the evidence base for need, and so not just having the slightly sterile spreadsheets of projections and so forth, but combining data that so that everybody in Ceredigion—the health service, social services, the police and the other people who are involved in the local service boards—is working from the same integrated set of evidence of need, population change, the changing nature of the age structure of the population, where people are and where need will change over the whole of Ceredigion. Ceredigion is probably not the most dynamic of areas, but it will change and that is what we hope to reflect in building our single integrated plan through the local service boards, using this common set of information about change in the population, society and culture of Ceredigion as a whole.
[169] Mick Antoniw: You have answered most of the things that I was going to raise, but I have just one point, and that is that you cannot get away from the external factors. You mentioned welfare reform legislation and the impact that it has on policy. That has an impact that can derail—so, no matter how good your plans or your evidence base are, external factors and factors in relation to matters that are not devolved can intrude significantly. When that sort of legislation goes through, I suppose that it boils down to the extent to which account is taken of those factors. There is not much that you can do about it, is there?
[170] Mr Davies: Again, I think that you have to be aware of that and that a lot of the projections were produced at a time of high in-migration, and migration levels change depending upon Government policy. You just have to be careful and wary in how you interpret the figures.
[171] Ms Kyte: I think that flexibility is the key. If your plan is adequately produced and sufficiently flexible to deal with changing circumstances, then you will be fine. The review will sort out anything else later on. Providing you have adequate flexibility in your plan, you will be fine. It is one of those strange situations in that you want to give certainty to developers so that they have confidence in investment decisions, but you need sufficient flexibility so that, if there are things that knock you off course, you can deal with them.
[172] David Rees: On that point, you are, obviously, building flexibility into your plan, but what flexibility does the Welsh Government give you in that sense, when it looks at those plans?
[173] Mr Davies: In fairness to the Welsh Government, it does try to get us to introduce flexibility into the plan. That is one of the factors that it would raise in objections, and it does that by asking for contingency measures. So, if you say that you need 4,000 houses, it might ask you to put in an extra 500 so that you have a bit of flexibility. The difficulty that we have in Monmouthshire with that is that those 500 generally get built out, so you are increasing your target. So, we are having a debate with the Welsh Government about that, but officials do try, in testing the plan, to make sure that it has that kind of flexible element.
[174] Ms Kyte: I can give you another example of that. When we did our plan, we were saying that we needed 8,625 houses over the plan period to meet the projection that we had done. However, at the time, the 2006 projections were saying that we should provide 10,000 houses. So, what we did, in consultation with the Welsh Government officials, was to set our housing requirement figure at 8,625, but make an allowance for up to 10,300, or whatever it was, so that both figures were in there, showing that there was a range—because it is not an exact science, and it will fall between the one figure and the other—and then we allowed for sufficient land in the development plan to accommodate the higher figure rather than the lower one.
[175] Lord Elis-Thomas: Related to that, what about the time taken to agree figures, and the effect of that on the local development plan process and the provision of the five-year supply of development land that you are required to have? How does that all work?
[176] Ms Kyte: There is no mechanism to agree the figures in advance of the examiner looking at your plan. You do your preferred strategy and your deposit plan, you submit, the examiner examines your plan, and he finds it sound or unsound. In between all of that process, of course, you are in consultation with the house-building industry, the Welsh Government and other stakeholders, and you will be arguing the figures throughout the process. However, as a local authority, you do not know that your figures are sound until you get the examiner’s report back at the end.
[177] Lord Elis-Thomas: Is there any way that you would like to obtain more transparency, or it is part of the mystery of the examination and planning processes?
[178] Ms Kyte: It adds to the excitement, does it not? [Laughter.]
[179] Mr Davies: There may be ways of looking at the various stages that the plan goes through. You produce your preferred strategy and then, a few years later, you produce your deposit plan. Could you decide on the figures at the preferred strategy stage and get them accepted by everybody before you go through the process of a deposit plan and examination? That is going into a different area—the LDP process—but there may be ways of getting more certainty early on in the process rather than leaving it right until the very end, as Rhian said.
[180] Lord Elis-Thomas: I was trying to insist on my Chair’s privilege of asking the last question, but I will give you another one, Antoinette. You owe me one now. [Laughter.]
[181] Antoinette Sandbach: Is there room, therefore, for changing the rules for submitting evidence into that process, for example, and to say that there should be a response on particular issues by a certain time—within so many weeks, say?
11.00 a.m.
[182] Mr Thorburn: We might have found that helpful in Ceredigion. As I say, we had a particular member of the public who was quite interested in this, and those figures are fundamental and they should be discussed in detail and argued about in terms of the technicalities, but also the aspirational policy. A bit like Rhian, we found ourselves hoping that the hearing would be over before any census data came out, and it was not, due to a delay due to illness or something. We ended up, in almost the last week of hearings, with new data plonked on the table in front of us. What can you do about that, except to say that those data were not available when we started and so we would have to look at them in more detail? So, if there were a way in which that could be argued earlier—. The full argument should be made, but it needs to be done at an early stage, because everything is constructed upon that and you cannot just start saying, ‘Oh, cut 10% off here and there’, or, ‘Add 5% on’ or whatever. That would not work.
[183] Lord Elis-Thomas: Part of the problem, is it not, is what you mentioned earlier: that the basis of the data in the various analyses differs?
[184] Mr Thorburn: It will keep on changing.
[185] Lord Elis-Thomas: The census is a self-selecting thing that people fill in, which is different again to the general household survey, ONS and all the other things that we have got.
[186] Mr Thorburn: Indeed; different snapshots in different places.
[187] Lord Elis-Thomas: So, how can there be consistency in the evidence, based on the data that you use, if the data are so confusing?
[188] Mr Thorburn: I would say that a skilled research person would be able to understand what those different sources are. So, that is my professional answer.
[189] William Powell: You would give a weighting.
[190] Mr Thorburn: Yes, you would be looking at it that way and you would make an argument based on that.
[191] Lord Elis-Thomas: I am going to give you the last word now. All three of you have been here for an hour and a half.
[192] Ms Kyte: I know that this would not apply everywhere in Wales, but, in south-east Wales, the answer is to have a regional development framework that has that debate about regional figures and agrees the growth figures for the individual unitary authorities. They can then reflect that figure in their local development plans: so that is one debate instead of 10.
[193] Lord Elis-Thomas: Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi.
[194] David Rees: May I just ask—?
[195] Lord Elis-Thomas: Just because I gave in to Antoinette—[Laughter.]
[196] David Rees: It is just out of curiosity. You talk about the regional development aspect; I understand that. At the moment, there tends to be quite a long time between the submission of authorities’ plans. Will the regional development framework stop that, as you would expect them to be based on one set of figures for everybody? Clearly, your figures, and you have entered them, will be different to those of Monmouth’s and others.
[197] Ms Kyte: If this is given some serious thought by officials, I think that there is plenty of opportunity—in south-east Wales anyway—for the front-runner authorities to co-ordinate their first reviews to fall in line with the first sweep of plans that are coming through from Cardiff and Newport. By the next round of plans, we would all be in sync and the regional plan could tie in with that.
[198] Mr Thorburn: On a regional framework, south-east Wales is a particular case, certainly, and, also, if you are looking at regional things like that, there are different regional characteristics across the area. Ceredigion and Powys for example, are back to back, and we are very friendly, but there are mountains between us. So, if you are looking at those sorts of areas, those factors need to be taken into account.
[199] Lord Elis-Thomas: I have two Powys county councillors sitting on my right, so I am very careful about what I say about Powys in public. [Laughter.]
[200] Mr Thorburn: We are very friendly.
[201] Lord Elis-Thomas: We are extremely grateful to you for giving us an hour and a half of your time. The length of the session is a tribute to the quality of the evidence that you have given us. So, we are very grateful. Diolch yn fawr iawn.
11.03 a.m.
Gohebiaeth gan y Dirprwy Weinidog Amaethyddiaeth, Bwyd, Pysgodfeydd a Rhaglenni Ewropeaidd—Gofynion Cadw Cofnodion Glastir Correspondence from the Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and European Programmes—Glastir Record-keeping Requirements
[202] Yr Arglwydd Elis Thomas: A oes unrhyw sylw ar y mater hwn?		Lord Elis-Thomas: Are there any comments on this matter?
[203] Are you happy with this? Well, not happy with this, perhaps, but are you happy with the fact that we have had a response?
[204] Antoinette Sandbach: I think that it is very welcome that the Minister has taken action to reduce the amount of record keeping, particularly given the concerns that were raised in the evidence that we had. It is a very positive development.
[205] William Powell: The fact that there is financial recompense for some of the work and time that goes into that record keeping is also to be welcomed.
[206] David Rees: It shows that he is listening to the stakeholders.
[207] Mick Antoniw: It might be a good idea to write to him to tell him that. We often write to tell Ministers how badly they are doing, so I think—
[208] Russell George: Yes. I am happy to do that.
[209] Lord Elis-Thomas: I think we might also reflect upon the quality of the questioning from members on both sides of this committee that produces such results, but we will not say that in the letter. [Laughter.]
[210] Mick Antoniw: No. We do not want to overdo it.
11.04 a.m.
Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog Rhif 17.42(vi) i Wahardd y Cyhoedd o Weddill y Cyfarfod ac ar 23 Ionawr Motion under Standing Order No. 17.42(vi) to Exclude the Public from the Remainder of this Meeting and on 23 January
[211] Yr Arglwydd Elis-Thomas: A wnaiff rywun cynnig ein bod yn mynd i sesiwn breifat?		Lord Elis-Thomas: Could someone propose a motion that we go into private session?
[212] Keith Davies: I move that
the committee resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting and on 23 January in accordance with Standing Order No. 17.42(vi).
[213] Lord Elis-Thomas: Are we all agreed? I see that we are. Diolch yn fawr.
Derbyniwyd y cynnig. Motion agreed.
Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 11.04 a.m. The public part of the meeting ended at 11.04 a.m.