WEN and WWBG respond to the Welsh Government’s Draft Budget 2026-27

Wales Women’s Budget Group and WEN Wales warn that 2% inflationary uplifts fall short and urge the Welsh Government to use remaining unallocated funding to protect women and public services in Wales.

Today’s detailed Draft Budget outlines the Welsh Government’s draft spending plans for 2026-27. As a ‘business as usual’ budget, it restates last year’s budget allocations alongside inflationary uplifts of around 2% for each department. Despite this additional nominal funding, the current spending plans do not go far enough to protect Wales’ struggling public services and adequately support women.

We welcome ongoing funding for the Women and Girls Health Plan which helps to address long standing gendered gaps in healthcare access and outcomes, and to support the growing number of women in Wales who are economically inactive due to ill-health. However, the 2.5% uplift for health and social care announced in today’s Draft Budget is insufficient to meet growing demand and cost pressures within the sector. The impact of this shortfall will be felt most acutely by women in Wales, who make up 78% of the health and social care workforce and the majority of service users.

While we were pleased to see continued support for childcare in Wales, the system remains confusing, unaffordable and inaccessible to those on lower incomes, as highlighted in new research by WEN Wales. Similarly, the funding allocated to social care is insufficient to solve the recruitment and retention crisis which continues to impact the sector. We are also concerned that the funding allocated to the local authorities who provide these vital services will fall far below what is needed to sustain them. The Welsh Local Government Association have already warned of job losses and council tax raises of up to 20% if the allocations remain as detailed in the Draft Budget. Again, these consequences will disproportionately impact women, who are more likely to work within and rely on public services, and to become unpaid providers of last resort when services are cut. The unequal position of women in Wales also means that they will be hit harder by council tax rises, which will push them and their families further into debt and poverty. This is particularly the case for single parents – the majority of whom are women – 35% of whom are already living in relative income poverty in Wales.

It is positive to see continued funding for Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (VAWDASV) services in Wales. However, with cost and demand pressures within the Welsh third sector at an all-time high, many providers do not have the capacity to deliver these essential services. Additional support is urgently needed to counteract the alarming loss of expertise in the Welsh third sector, and protect its sustainability, particularly with regards to the women’s sector.

Nevertheless, we welcome the key improvements made to budget transparency this year and the new collaborative approach to the Strategic Integrated Impact Assessment (SIIA) following its review. We hope that this new approach will help to address issues of siloed working and continue to improve the quality of impact assessment within the SIIA. We look forward to seeing further improvement in the final version of the SIIA alongside the Final Budget in January.

Finally, we are particularly pleased to see the evaluations of the Welsh Government’s gender budgeting pilots published alongside today’s Draft Budget. The evaluation findings regarding successes and challenges will be vital in informing next steps and embedding gender budgeting across the work of Welsh Government. Only by doing so can the Welsh Government prevent unequal gendered impacts of its spending and policy decisions.

To mitigate the unequal impacts of today’s draft spending plans, we urge the Welsh Government to use the remaining unallocated £380million of its budget to protect the sustainability of Wales’ public services and its third sector. We must also impress upon the wider Senedd the need to pass a Budget this year, as the penalty spending limits for not doing so will hit Welsh public services, and therefore women in Wales, hardest.