The Sustainable Development Action Plan

In the debate on the Assembly’s revised Sustainable Development Scheme, held on 16th March of this year, I undertook to publish, consult upon, and bring back to plenary the Welsh Assembly Government’s Action Plan for putting that Scheme into effect.

To that end, I issued a draft Plan for consultation on 22nd March, inviting comments by 21st May.  

All the responses we have received are now published on the internet, at http://www.wales.gov.uk/themessustainabledev/content/review/action-responses/index-e.htm.    Most have been very positive.  They have also been very thoughtful and, in some cases, very detailed.

I am grateful to all who have responded, and much appreciate the thought that has gone into the responses.

Thanks are due too to Committees of the Assembly which have considered the draft Plan, and to individual AMs who have written to me about it.

I believe that our original draft was good, but that we will be able to improve it in the light of all the comments we have received.

It was always going to be difficult to consult, take proper account of responses, and finalise the Plan between March and July.  I made this plain in March.   We have consulted, and have completed our analysis of the responses, but there are still some matters arising from them that we need to resolve before we can table a final draft for debate.

I have decided that the only proper way to respond to the interest and the comment that the draft Plan has attracted is to consider these matters further over the summer, to publish a final version as soon as possible, and to table it for debate in plenary in the autumn.

One of the commitments proposed in our draft Plan was that we would couple our statutory annual report on progress in implementing the Scheme with the First Minister’s report.   This proposal was welcomed by those who commented on it.   I therefore intend (annual reporting being a delegated matter) to publish the progress report alongside the First Minister’s forthcoming report, as we proposed.    I also intend to place the progress report before plenary alongside the final version of the Action Plan, in the autumn.