, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
—from the fund to the care and repair.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
That's the £5 million that's being moved, Chair—
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Yes, absolutely. So, the whole point of that funding is, you know, it reduces falls, it reduces pressure on services, it enables people to live more independently for much longer, and, of course, part of that has to be that the house is habitable, right? So…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Yes, yes, absolutely. So, this is very much part of the care and repair core working that we do. We're very, very keen to do this sort of adaptation, both just adaptation to be able to live in your home, but actually adaptation to make your home a healthier…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Yes, so, you've heard me say it, haven't you, lots of times, that what we're trying to do is trial it out, and that's happily going along. We've got quite a lot of good information now about what does work in various houses, and so on, as part of where we've…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Yes, that was a very important consideration for us. I was very keen indeed to make sure that we weren’t causing people to be in unaffordable housing. Also, as part of the social rent settlement with our social housing providers, councils and RSLs, we have a…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Yes, so that’s a very interesting point, isn’t it? So, we do absolutely have to do a balance of that, of course, because we’re basically using the rental income of current tenants to build the houses of the future. So, in talking to TPAS and other tenants’…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
And obviously, we pay in arrears on staged payments. We don’t put the money out the door first, so that’s where the profiling’s coming in, as we understand what the contracts look like and so on.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Very regularly. I’m meeting the developers on Monday next week to talk to them about where they are—with the programmes of big developers, that is. I’m also meeting the managing agents next week. I meet the stakeholder group myself, often. I think one of my…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
This week, I think it was, anyway.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
We’ve got a stakeholder group that meets very regularly. It last met Monday of this week, I think. Is that right?
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
This is what we call re-profiling, and it doesn't really mean anything outside of public sector organisations, I'm afraid. So, effectively, what's happening there, Joel, is that the scale at which we're able to intervene in those buildings is not as we…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Help to Stay is for people coming off fixed-term rates who are suddenly facing enormous interest rate hikes and who would, otherwise, become homeless, and you heard me earlier saying how expensive that is in human terms as well as in financial terms. It's a…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
We've managed to protect the budget again for land division, as Emma alluded to earlier. That's because we have 27 sites that could deliver around 6,000 homes on exemplar sites. So, we're very keen to make sure that we use Welsh Government land to show people…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Yes. So, we haven't got a specific budget line for that in the next financial year, but we have asked partners to come forward with their proposals anyway, because, traditionally, this part of my portfolio across the Government has been the part of the…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Okay, so, the finance grant budget remains at £13 million, and it's for contractual commitments to registered social landlords to support SHG, as we call it—the social housing grant. The budget line is offset by a £9 million income line from the Development…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
You're absolutely right. I'm not going to hide away from that. I'd very much like to be able to pay the real living wage to everybody who works in homelessness prevention services. These are very skilled individuals doing a very difficult job in very…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
I'm not—. Go on, Sarah.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
I suppose the answer to that is 'yes', but we think it's also very important to keep the railways running, and that capital is absolutely essential to keeping the core Valleys lines programme running, for example. There are choices to be made in these things…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
That's capital. One of the really weird things about my MEG is there are enormous amounts of capital and tiny, tiny amounts of revenue, and that's been one of the most difficult things to sort out across the MEG. Jamie, I can never remember the exact…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Very recently I went and opened provision here in Cardiff, which was a series of independent living flats, but with warden-controlled areas, shared social spaces and integrated social care arrangements, for example. That was paid for out of that fund. That's…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
I think I'm right in saying—I'm happy to be correct here, Jamie—there's a MEG-to-MEG transfer the other way. That's the point I'm making. Because that fund sits in my budget, whereas we've transferred the other one—. So, tracing housing spend across the…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
Housing and care. There we are. It was the HCF, for those of you who are struggling with the acronyms. Again, you'll see a MEG-to-MEG transfer there the other way, because that's combined, social services and housing. It's housing-based social services. It…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
A very good example of that, Carolyn, is that if you look at the housing policy budget, the allocation remains as it was last year at £1.4 million, but there's a £5 million apparent reduction in that line. That's because it's been moved to independent living…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024 - 25 - evidence session 3: Minister for Climate Change
We're looking at a whole range of things here. We're looking at joint commissioning between local authorities, a different way of commissioning that we're doing through the ending homelessness national advisory board. We still have the board up and running…
