Pwyllgor Cyllid Finance Committee Bae Caerdydd / Cardiff Bay Caerdydd / Cardiff CF99 1NA
Carl Sargeant Minster for Natural Resources Welsh Government	22 January 2015

Dear Carl,

Thank you for attending the Finance Committee regarding the financial implications of the Planning (Wales) Bill on 26 November 2014 and thank you for the correspondence outlining some inconsistencies in the Explanatory Memorandum (EM) and the RIA.  The Committee notes that you intend to make these changes at the end of stage two.

Given the information contained within the Bill, the Committee is unable to draw any firm conclusions or recommendations on the costs and savings of this legislation. We do believe that the financial information in the Bill is the best guesstimate for the costs given the information available at the moment. Furthermore, we believe that whilst the projections for savings are not necessarily that robust, we welcome the intent of the legislation to remove delays from the system and the potential for significant savings to be made through the legislation.   

The Committee noted that many of the costs will not be finalised until the necessary Secondary Legislation has been made. To this end, we will be recommending to the successor Finance Committee that it revisits the financial implications of this Bill in approximately five years to consider whether the costs and savings were realistic.

We have written to the Environment and Sustainability Committee outlining the Committee’s finding to inform their scrutiny of the Bill through the Assembly.

Yours sincerely,

Jocelyn Davies AM

Committee Chair