New Community Governance

Plaid Cymru believe in the importance of community and our six strategic planning regions would provide the framework for an evolutionary approach to creating new democratic leadership at the community level across Wales.  The present 22 unitary authorities, which proved so effective during the Covid pandemic, would be retained. Alongside them we will create a new system of empowered Community and Town Councils, as the foundation for Welsh local government.

We will reduce the number of Community and Town Councils to a more effective scale of around 150, a number that corresponds in some respects to the 164 urban and rural district councils that existed prior to the 1974 reorganisation of local government, and in others to the catchment areas of secondary schools.

The new Community and Town Councils would have planning powers and an economic development role in promoting local business startups, social enterprises and co-operatives, tourism, small-scale renewable energy schemes, and recycling. They will become a delivery vehicle for regeneration strategies set by Cymoedd, our Valleys Development Authority, the Arfor Development Agency, and elsewhere by Prosperity Wales, our new national economic development agency.