Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This is a qualitative data collection. The locality programme undertook research in and across three localities. These were chosen to reflect the diversity of territories, places, scales, and networks in contemporary Wales. The three localities also give contrasting insights into the imagined geographies and area visions of the Wales Spatial Plan. For the practicalities of research, and also due to bounded territories often not corresponding with the ‘fuzzy boundaries’ of the Wales Spatial Plan, ‘core’ towns and cities drove the approach to the empirical research. A total of 120 interviews were undertaken with key actors across seven unitary authorities within three localities. Interviews were completed in two tiers: • Tier 1: Unitary Authority senior management • Tier 2: managers in other bodies with responsibility for service delivery The interviews were transcribed by a professional company and the entered and coded in the AtlasTi CAQDAS package. The interviews provide a snapshot of Wales at the time of a major recession, and they document the concerns and prospects of local government and shadow state representatives as they prepared to face an era of public sector austerity.

Purposive selection/case studies

Face-to-face interview

Telephone interview