THE cabinet secretary for finance and local government has visited a Blaenavon data hub, which stores data for a number of sectors in Wales.

Based at the Gilchrist Thomas Industrial Estate, the Shared Resource Service (SRS) is a collaboration between Gwent Police and the three local authorities of Blaenau Gwent, Monmouthshire and Torfaen.

The SRS welcomed Mark Drakeford to the data centre, whose state-of-the-art facilities provide services to partner organisations plus NHS Wales Informatics Service, Swansea University and the private sector.

“Shared back office functions such as IT play an integral part in delivering efficient public services and the SRS demonstrates exactly what can be achieved through regional working of this size and scale,” he said.

“More systematic and mandatory regional working between local authorities and the sharing of services more generally is something that we are currently consulting on as part of our White Paper on Local Government Reform. We are interested to hear views on how we can take this forward.”

The cabinet secretary was given a tour by Matt Lewis, the SRS’ chief operating officer, who outlined the service’s strategy.

“We operate in an environment where single technical solutions can be straight forward to implement yet are often difficult to progress,” said Mr Lewis, showing the minister the police, health and local government data halls.

“Our strategy is to use a ‘Once for Wales’ technology platform to consolidate demand and broker the supply of IT services to the Welsh Public Service.”

Cllr Anthony Hunt, Torfaen council’s leader said: “The SRS is an excellent model of regional governance with local accountability.

“SRS partners are a ‘coalition of the willing’, like-minded organisations who are making regional investment into shared solutions which can be easily scaled to other sectors and organisations.”

Paul Matthews, Monmouthshire council’s chief executive, said: “The SRS is a great example of a shared service working across multiple sectors and multiple regions with more public sector partners about to join.

“Scaled up solutions can provide better value for money for the public purse in Wales and protect valued services.”