, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning: Working with local government to deliver more affordable homes
Yes, thanks, Mike. I agree largely with what you're saying there. That last one: we're not going to do that, but we are going to encourage local authorities to make sure they are fully recouping their costs, which is the same thing put round the other way, I…
, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning: Working with local government to deliver more affordable homes
Yes, thanks, Carolyn. So, there is a range of things there. We have a construction forum, and it's now chaired by my colleague Jeremy Miles, but we have a subsection of that, which is the housing building forum, and we meet very regularly with those. We're…
, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning: Working with local government to deliver more affordable homes
Yes, that's a very good question. What we've asked is for local planning authorities to review their LDPs, particularly the housing allocations therein, but they're doing a full review. We're also asking all local authorities in Wales to work at the CJC level…
, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning: Working with local government to deliver more affordable homes
Diolch, Mabon. I don't disagree with anything you just said, other than the need for new policies. I'm very keen not to have, actually, any new initiatives. I'm very keen to make sure that the initiatives and strategies we have are actually delivered on the…
, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning: Working with local government to deliver more affordable homes
Well, thank you for that series of comments and questions—I think. Just to start off with some of the statistics that you quoted, Mark, and just to be really clear what we're talking about here, when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats took over the UK…
, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning: Working with local government to deliver more affordable homes
Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. My new portfolio of housing, local government and planning brings together the key elements required to deliver my topmost priorities—tackling homelessness and the commitment to deliver 20,000 additional homes for rent in the social…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Diolch.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Pleasure.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
The housing with care fund. We've changed the name of the fund in order to befuddle the Cabinet Secretary and it's certainly worked. It used to be called the HLF, but now it's called the housing with care fund—I must try and get my head around that. That is…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Yes, I think that's right. I think it's got real potential for step-up, step-down accommodation, as well. And we've got the—. We've changed the name, apologies, Chair. Sorry, say it again—
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Absolutely. The whole modular homes market is one that we've been encouraging for some considerable period of time. It's the fastest way to build low-carbon housing that there is. It's adaptable, it means you can get a much more diverse workforce in the…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
We absolutely agree—we need a sound evidence base and a full understanding of what we're looking at in the housing market and households in Wales. Just to be absolutely clear, we have no intention of doing an annual housing survey. The resource to do that…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
We can't stop anyone from owning property—I can't do that—but we can stop them from being the landlord and being the managing agent and being the renting person. So, where somebody has been convicted of a range of offences and those convictions are unspent…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
The PRS, as I said, is a matter for local authorities, and they do that through their environmental health departments. It is absolutely a matter of fact that the private rented sector teams in local authorities were decimated during the austerity years. As I…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Yes. So, we absolutely are. Because of the imminence of a general election, it's perfectly proper for the civil service to be able to brief the opposition as well, and we've asked for factual briefs on a number of points to share with both parties, actually…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
We have absolutely no power to make sure that the Bills go through, obviously, in the UK Parliament; it's not a matter for us. I'm told that this is apparently going to Report Stage later today, so it's still progressing. I'm actually concerned about this one…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
We weren't given the opportunity to do so, basically. So, we weren't asked to pick and choose which bits of the Bill we'd like to have applied to us. An offer was made to us to be involved in the no-benefits-claimants and no-children exclusions, and so we've…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
And I understand that, in England, the right to refer already exists, but the private landlords are not subject to it, and I'm told by the officials—I don't know which one of you knows more about this—that the Scottish proposals aren't proposing to subject…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
So, we haven't included a proposal for private landlords to be placed under a duty to refer. The duty to refer is for bodies and organisations; it's not proposed as a duty that applies to an individual profession or a private citizen, which is what landlords…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
It's the classic dilemma: we want to build as many permanent houses as we can, but we've got problems with building the permanent houses in some parts of Wales. Committee will be very familiar with some of those, such as the phosphate difficulties that we've…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
The expressions of interest we've had are way over the budget that we've got. So, it's clearly a very popular programme and people want to be part of it. So, we're just in the process of working with the sector on that. Sarah, do you want to add to that?
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Yes. So, we're just running into the second year of the programme. We've been doing some analysis of the first year schemes and their effectiveness, and so on. We've asked for an expression of interest to gauge appetite for the schemes, and that exceeded the…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
I can tell you anecdotally that I've been contacted by a number of landlords concerned for their tenant who want to refer them on to services. I think a very large number of the landlords in Wales are actually perfectly lovely people who are trying to provide…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Housing support grant is tenure neutral. It's provided to everyone who needs it regardless of their tenure and it's available to all individuals at risk of homelessness regardless of where they are—whether they're in the PRS or anywhere else. The whole…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Private rented sector: Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
LTT is in Rebecca’s portfolio, not mine, but, obviously, I have long conversations with her about it all the time. There are three sets of rates—I’m sure the committee knows this already: the main residential rate, the higher residential rate for additional…
