James Evans has raised concerns over Wales' ability to cope with the growing frequency of severe weather events, following the devastation caused by Storm Bert and the most recent Storm Darragh.
The Brecon and Radnorshire MS raised the issue in the Senedd this week.
Video from Senedd.tv
The Brecon and Radnorshire MS raised the issue in the Senedd this week.
Video from Senedd.tv
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00:00for the comments made about our emergency services and the stellar work they did over
00:04the weekend to keep people safe, and also to those people working in Welsh Water and
00:09National Grid who have done their bit as well, trying to restore services for people.
00:12Most of my friends are actually working at National Grid, so it would be remiss if I
00:15didn't mention them.
00:16I know a lot of them were out on the Friday and the Saturday night, but got to stand down
00:20because it was too dangerous for them actually to be out in the weather.
00:24Cabinet Secretary, what I want to touch on, as you said in your statement, these weather
00:27events are becoming more and more frequent, and that means we need to make sure that our
00:31regulator, Natural Resources Wales, is operationally effective when it comes to dealing with these
00:37issues.
00:38The Cabinet Secretary for Finance today allocated more money to your portfolio.
00:43Natural Resources Wales had a cut in the previous Welsh Government budget, so I'm interested
00:46to hear from you today how much extra money are you going to allocate to Natural Resources
00:51Wales, because if we're going to have more of these flooding events and storm events
00:55coming forward, we need to make sure that they've got all the tools at their disposals
00:59and the finance available, so they can step up to the plate when we need them to.
01:02Alun Ferguson AM James, thank you very much for that, and,
01:05again, I echo your support for the work of all those who responded to these.
01:10In the electricity utilities, but also in the water utilities as well, because one of
01:15the knock-on effects has been that we have had scores of water treatment works and others
01:19that have been out of action.
01:22Emergency generators have been provided in that mutual aid support.
01:25There was already planning for this sort of eventuality.
01:28This did not catch us cold, but we still get impacted by it, and credit to them, because
01:33they were out there doing that in the height of what was going on.
01:38In my house, we had a window taken out with the strength of the storm.
01:41While I was trying to batten down my window, they were up in pylons and out in fields trying
01:46to load up generators to keep water treatment works going.
01:50It's quite incredible and quite heroic there.
01:53NRW also played their part, I have to say.
01:55NRW have been through a series of storm incidents now, and they have been up to the mark.
02:00They've been out there with all the other agencies doing well.
02:03We've put money into NRW to help them do this as well.
02:06I can't give the detail of how we will use the additional money that we've actually put
02:12forward today, but I will be appearing as Penumbra in front of committees to go through
02:16that sort of detail.
02:17But what I can say is, in terms of flood resilience, we're already at record level.
02:21We've been doing that for a couple of years.
02:23We put specifically money into NRW to help them with their own flood responsibility as
02:30well, as well as the money that we put into local authorities and others.
02:34So, we're very focused on this because we really know that this is going to be far from
02:39the last.
02:40We have to deal with these on a fairly regular basis now, and in which case there's community
02:45resilience levels, and then there's the big agencies and public authorities as well, making
02:52sure that they've got full capacity as well.