Welsh Journals

move into Wales is the availability of housing for key and incoming workers. Often the assistance that can be given by local authorities is limited because of their local commitments. Consequently the Development Commission has recently been developing a policy of co-operating with local authorities, with the Housing Corporation and local housing associations and making arrangements whereby houses are held vacant pending their occupation by incoming workers attracted to the town to man the new industry. These then are the main strands of policy that will now be brought together by the Board. It will have a three-fold responsibility-to promote the economic development of the area, secondly to assist its social development and thirdly to complete the development of Newtown and to develop any other new towns that may in the future be designated within its area. Although the Board initially will take over the policies of the existing organisations that it subsumes, it will be expected to develop its own initiatives, preparing proposals for the economic and social development of the area in consultation with the local planning authorities and other bodies in the area and implementing those which are approved by the Secretary of State. It will have an initial budget of £ 4 million per annum. The Board will certainly have regard to the importance of the primary industries in its area and will be able to advise the Secretary of State on matters of concern. But it will have no responsibility for agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Responsibility for agricultural support must remain that of the central Government, and decisions must be made within the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy and the EEC's rules on national aid. The levels of financial assistance available to farmers cannot depend on the accident of being on one side or the other of a boundary where conditions on either side of that boundary are comparable. It is not intended that the Board should purchase agricultural or forestry land for the purpose of restructuring farm units as was the intention of the ill- fated Rural Development Board proposed under the Agriculture Act 1967. The Board now proposed has an entirely different purpose. The Chairman of the Board will be a member of the Welsh Development Agency, thus ensuring the closest co-ordination between the work of the two statutory corporations entrusted with the economic development of Wales. The Board and the Agency together will form a two-pronged attack on the development problems of Wales. The task of the Board will be to deal in an intimate and delicate way with the smaller but no less urgent