A poverty truth commission in Swansea ought to be adopted by other councils to help understand what it really feels like to be on the breadline, a report has said. Swansea's cabinet approved the creation of a poverty truth commission in 2019 but it was finally launched last month. The idea is to hear directly from people who are struggling to better inform policies to help.
A report by Audit Wales said the scale of the poverty challenge, and weaknesses in the way it was addressed, made it difficult for the Welsh Government and the country's 22 councils to deliver "the systemic change" needed to alleviate it. You can get more Swansea news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters here.
The report said a lot of money was given to councils to tackle the impact of poverty - a figure estimated at more than £1bn in 2021-22 - but the total level of spending, it said, was unknown. This made assessing the impact or value for money of this funding hard to measure.
