How the cam­paign evolved

This cam­paign start­ed after a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the Future of the Welsh Crown Estates dur­ing the Tir a Môr Fes­ti­val, St. Davids. Con­clud­ing that the Crown Estates was not some­thing that was going to be ‘giv­en’ to us, we decid­ed to put pres­sure on our demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions from below. In prac­tice, one strat­e­gy is to lob­by local author­i­ties to take a stand with us. We have spent the last year ask­ing coun­cil­lors to table Notice of Motions in favour of devolv­ing the Welsh Crown Estates. If all coun­cils in Wales take this posi­tion, it will place seri­ous pres­sure on the Senedd to make this an issue of greater pri­or­i­ty than it is now. This pres­sure is then trans­ferred onto the UK par­lia­ment.
In Octo­ber 2024, the first local author­i­ties in Wales passed motions in favour of devolv­ing the Crown Estates, name­ly in Gwynedd and Mon­mouthshire. Oth­ers began to fol­low, and going into 2025 this start­ed to snow­ball to the point where all coun­cils have backed the cam­paign save two (Pem­brokeshire and Tor­faen). The cam­paign con­tin­ues until all local author­i­ties are in favour of devolv­ing own­er­ship of Wales to its peo­ple.

Why is this impor­tant?


Polit­i­cal Strat­e­gy: We recog­nise that both UK Labour and the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty will not want to devolve the Crown Estates to Wales. This is in light of both their ide­olo­gies on cen­tral­i­sa­tion and their com­mer­cial inter­ests in Wales’ nat­ur­al resources, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to our seabed. This means that regard­less of who is in pow­er in the British Par­lia­ment, our cam­paign will face stiff resis­tance.
We also recog­nise that Welsh Labour, the main par­ty in the Senedd, offi­cial­ly sup­port the devo­lu­tion of the Crown Estates. Eng­lish Labour will dis­miss any Labour politi­cian who cre­ates real dis­sent, whether in Par­lia­ment or in the Senedd. In this way, Eng­lish Labour have a near stran­gle­hold on the Senedd. It is there­fore not good enough for Senedd politi­cians to be ‘on our side’. We need to cre­ate a much larg­er move­ment that exists at all lev­els of democ­ra­cy in Wales. When the call comes from a much wider breadth of soci­ety, UK Labour and the Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty will not have the strength to deny us tak­ing back own­er­ship of the Crown Estates. Among oth­er strate­gies, build­ing a larg­er move­ment has meant gain­ing the sup­port of local coun­cils.

Democ­ra­cy: Aside from a strate­gic per­spec­tive, it makes sense to get local coun­cils to under­stand their role in bring­ing us clos­er to our lands. Many of these lands are the Crown Estates. When the Crown Estates are even­tu­al­ly devolved, we don’t want con­trol of those lands to sim­ply be trans­ferred from MP’s to MS’s. We want ordi­nary peo­ple to have a greater say in how these lands are man­aged, and how the finan­cial wealth that emerges from these lands is dis­trib­uted. Local Coun­cils are far from per­fect and have failed to rep­re­sent us his­tor­i­cal­ly. This is, in part, because Coun­cils being impov­er­ished by cen­tral gov­ern­ments mean they lack agency in ful­fill­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ties. By draw­ing coun­cils once step clos­er to Crown Estate lands the mon­ey that comes with them, democ­ra­cy becomes more account­able to us and more respon­sive to our demands.

Get involved

If you would like to find out more about how you can lob­by your local author­i­ty and help with this cam­paign, get in touch with us by click­ing here.