By Mark Smulian | 28 September 2011
Reform of the Wales Audit Office and a more interventionist approach to local authorities are included in the Welsh Programme for Government announced yesterday by First Minister Carwyn Jones.
Other measures include increased spending on schools, a jobs fund, 500 new community support officers and release of more public land for affordable housing.
Jones said: ‘Our Programmefor Government translates the manifesto on which we were elected into action – and my government is determined to deliver it in full.’
The Welsh Government will explain how it will pay for the programme when it publishes its draft budget next week.
Jones admitted that wider economic factors ‘have the potential to knock us off course’.
He added: ‘In most areas, the tools available to the Welsh Government are ones that can have a bigger influence over the long-term rather than in the short-term,’ he said.
‘Success will come from setting a clear direction and seeing it through for much more than the lifetime of a single assembly.’
The detailed programme includes the Wales Audit Office Bill, which would turn the WAO into a body with a majority of non-executive members appointed by the normal public appointments procedure.
It would also make the auditor general for Wales accountable for the WAO’s work to the Welsh Government.
The post has been a personal crown appointment without a link to the Welsh Government.
A Local Government (Collaborative Measures) (Wales) Bill is also planned to facilitate joint appointments between councils, and to require them to consider this step for posts of specified seniority.
Building on the Welsh Government’s interventionist approach to local authorities, it will also develop ‘a new approach that will identify where local government services are ineffective or failing and set out clearly what needs to be done to put things right’.
This year ministers imposed commissioners to run Isle of Anglesey council, the first time this step had been taken in the UK, and put education commissioners into two others.
