{"id":666341,"date":"2026-01-01T07:11:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T07:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/666341\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T07:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T07:11:13","slug":"senedd-prepares-for-once-in-a-century-change-for-2026-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/666341\/","title":{"rendered":"Senedd prepares for ‘once in a century change’ for 2026 election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Work is continuing to prepare the parliamentary estate for the additional Members of the Senedd (MSs) who will be elected this year.<\/p>\n

The debating chamber is being renovated to include 36 more desks and upgraded technology, at an estimated cost of \u00a34.2m to the taxpayer.<\/p>\n

The expansion was a policy backed by Welsh Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Liberal Democrats<\/a>, with the aim of ensuring the Senedd is better equipped to deal with the extra powers it has gained over the years.<\/p>\n

However, critics including the Welsh Conservatives argue that increasing the number of politicians is a waste of taxpayers’ money.<\/p>\n

The election will also see the number of constituencies cut from 40 to 16<\/a>, with each one represented by six MSs all elected via a new proportional system.<\/p>\n

These will be the most significant reforms to the Senedd since devolution began in 1999.<\/p>\n

In fact, according to the Senedd’s presiding officer Elin Jones, the institution “is about to about to embark on not a once in a generation change but a once in a century change for our Senedd here in Wales”.<\/p>\n

“It’s the opportunity to do the work of a Senedd properly and Wales deserves no less than that,” she added as the sound of construction work echoed around us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Work is continuing to prepare the parliamentary estate for the additional Members of the Senedd (MSs) who will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-666341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115818599754390969","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}