Section 5: Strategies prepared by other Welsh authorities
21.Section 5 makes provision about the strategies to be prepared by Welsh authorities other than the Welsh Ministers and local authorities. The Welsh Ministers may make regulations about the making, publication and review of their strategies and consultation on their strategies (subsection (3)).
22.Section 25 of the 2004 Act places a duty on a local authority to make arrangements to promote co-operation between the authority and its “relevant partners”, who are specified in subsection (4) of that section. Two of these partners are also Welsh authorities for the purpose of Part 1 of the Measure. They are a local health board and the Public Health Wales National Health Service Trust (if it is providing services in the area of the authority). These Welsh authorities can discharge their duty under section 2 of the Measure by having the strategy included as an integral part of the plans of each local authority with whom they enter into arrangements under the 2004 Act, rather than preparing and publishing a separate plan of their own (subsections (4) and (5)). A Welsh authority which exercises functions in relation to more than one local authority area will only discharge its duty to prepare and publish a strategy by having its strategy incorporated into each of the plans of the local authorities in question.