Ms Clare Bannon:

As to whether it is too early to see if the NPF is working, the RSES is very much dependent on what is rolled out at local level through county development plans. They are a key implementation piece for us in the jigsaw of implementing the RSES. Many of them have only been adopted in the past year or two, so it is still too early to see the results of that policy being implemented on the ground. There are early signs, however, that we are starting to see a shift change in the policy that we initiated in the RSES and the NPF.

I echo what Mr. Kelly and Mr. Minton stated in respect of the fact that the Bill would remove the obligation of public bodies to feed into the RSESs in the monitoring report under sections 22A and 25A of the current Act. Both of the provisions relating to public bodies have been removed. Although we, as regional assemblies, understand that obligation might place a significant onus on public bodies to feed in to us, we believe it would be a retrograde step to remove that obligation. It would be like going back to pre-NPF times, to the national spatial strategy, which was widely criticised as being inconsistent and that people were not singing off the same hymn sheet. It is important for those two provisions in the Act to be reinstated.