Between Investment Zones, Enterprise and AI Growth Zones, Freeports, City and Regional Growth Deals, Trailblazer Neighbourhoods, and Local Growth and Pride in Place programmes, Wales has become a patchwork of overlapping regional initiatives with conflicting short-, medium- and long-term priorities – some designed in Wales, others imposed from Westminster.
This fragmentation means that public money is not being spent as effectively as it should be. This is compounded by the lack of a clear spatial strategy. There is too much duplication and overlap between Corporate Joint Committees (CJCs), Regional Partnership Boards (RPBs), and Public Services Boards (PSBs), and the geographic footprints of these and other bodies lack coherence.
The current National Development Framework has failed to integrate these initiatives and structures into a logical, Wales-wide framework.
To overhaul spatial planning and regional development in Wales, we will produce a new National Development Framework, giving real strategic vision and oversight.
Central to this will be working with partners in local government to:
- Agree a more effective and council-led approach to regional collaboration.
- Create a new regional map and a plan for implementing it.
The aim will be to empower local government, reduce costs, bureaucracy and duplication, and create greater coherence between the footprints of regional structures.
The structures of government in Wales – including town and community councils, unitary authorities and regional structures – will be kept under continuous review to ensure they remain fit for purpose. And where it can effectively promote regional and local development and improve the delivery of public services, we will give local authorities greater freedom to collaborate with each other outside of existing regional structures on joint projects.
Working with the UK Government where relevant – including to secure full devolution of regional development funding – we will review all regional initiatives against both their own aims and our new National Development Framework, ensuring the best use of public money and ending or replacing programmes that are not delivering.