I led a debate in the Senedd last week about the importance of retaining our community assets.

In Wales, we have a proud history of miners’ halls, libraries, and community centres: places built to feed our minds and nourish our souls. So many of them were paid for by the miners’ welfare: that is, the funds collected from the wage packets of men who spent their days digging in the darkness. They wanted to ensure their children had something better to live for - places of light and hope and splendour.

In this time of cuts to local authority budgets, libraries seem considered an easy target.

Take Caerphilly as an example, where the council is proposing to close ten libraries across the borough, including in Nelson, Llanbradach, Bedwas, Deri and Pengam. Residents who rely on their services have expressed their sadness and anger, but I fear it will be to no avail.

Closing a library is so much meaner an act than merely closing the doors to a building. Because a library is more than pipes and brickwork: within its walls are mansions of memory, immeasurable worlds to which we can be transported. And they are hubs, too, for the weary and lonely. Places to meet, stay warm, to learn and wonder. That was the dream bought for us by our grandparents: places of comfort and knowledge and friendship. And that is the legacy so at risk of being lost.

More locally, you have seen the closure of community assets like the day centre in Tudor Street, Abergavenny.

I was pleased to see the campaigners who battled for more than a year to save the day centre had recently held their first meeting in the building since taking over its running.

We need legislation to protect community assets, and we must find ways to make it easier to bring buildings back into public ownership. Indeed, there needs to be legislation ensuring community ownership rights.

We're already lagging behind Scotland and England when it comes to legislation. If we lose more community assets whilst awaiting laws to help maintain our community assets, all of our communities will be the poorer.