Welsh Assembly Government spending review

Age Cymru has given a mixed response to yesterday's Welsh Assembly Government spending review.

The charity's Director of Influencing and Programme Development Victoria Lloyd said:

"Our initial response is that we believe this overall budget presents a fair deal for older people in Wales, however it will take some time to sift through and analyse the details of today's announcement.

"At this stage the impacts on individual programmes such as the Strategy for Older People in Wales - an important and groundbreaking initiative to tackle pensioner poverty, ill-health and age discrimination, are unclear.

"However, we welcome the recognition by the Welsh Assembly Government of the importance of protecting health and social services, which help some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. 

"In particular it is vital that spending on social services is safeguarded, though it will be down to individual local authorities to ensure that this protection becomes a reality across Wales when they set their own budgets."