Tackling Poverty Plan

Foreword

Councillor Linda Davies Evans,
Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Tackling Poverty

This Tackling Poverty Plan is an important document for the Council as we work towards addressing and alleviating some of the pressures caused by poverty for our local residents and communities. It is disappointing that we have to prepare such a plan, but the reality is that a greater number of our residents and communities are now facing challenges as a result of poverty that we as a Council, working with our partners, are keen to support in whatever way we can.

We very much recognise that the current cost of living crisis is having a big impact on our residents, but we also recognise the longer-term generational impact that poverty has so we are keen to address the root causes of poverty and find ways to support our residents to lift themselves out of poverty.

We have to acknowledge that we as a Council won’t be able to resolve poverty ourselves – many of the factors contributing to the situation need to be addressed at a Wales and UK level. However, we do have a leading role in supporting our residents and communities to help themselves, by removing barriers to access support and empowering people to do for themselves.

With this in mind, the Council has identified tackling poverty as a thematic priority as part of its Corporate Strategy for 2022-27 and this will be a key contributor to making progress against our well-being objective to enable our residents to live and age well. In addition, the Carmarthenshire Public Services Board (PSB) has identified tackling poverty and its impacts as one of its well-being objectives and as a Council we will work with our public sector partners and other stakeholders on areas of collective responsibility to make progress on this objective.

This Plan provides a focused response on our activity over the next 12-months and is very much focused on support with the pressing cost of living crisis. It also identifies key areas of development that will enable us to refine our longer-term plan to address the broader causes of poverty. During the next 12-months Welsh Government will be publishing its national Child Poverty Strategy and once that is published, we will review our approach and further develop our medium to long-term tackling poverty plan.

I would like to acknowledge the input and support of the cross-party elected member Tackling Poverty Advisory Panel who have contributed towards the development of this plan in a considered, constructive and meaningful manner. This input is particularly welcome as we all strive to support the residents and communities of Carmarthenshire as best we can.