Julie James: The rapid delivery of housing adaptations is key to helping people stay independent in their own home. We are working with colleagues in the health services, local authorities and the voluntary sector to tackle the complexity that can sometimes hamper speedy adaptations.
Julie James: Yes, it's very good. I haven't read it all since lunchtime, but I've had a flick through and it certainly does look very good. I very much welcome the guide, which certainly will help housing providers consider how to provide a wider range of adaptations to their tenants, using an assessment that reflects the complexity of a person's needs and the adaptation they require. Obviously, the guide...
Julie James: A section 106 planning obligation is a legally binding contract between a developer and a local planning authority. An up-to-date adopted Local Development Plan provides the opportunity for the public to inform the scope and scale of infrastructure and finance required through s106 agreements.
Julie James: We recognise the pressures local authorities are facing and will continue to do all that we can to shield them and the people of Wales, from the worst effects of UK’s austerity agenda.
Julie James: Planning Policy Wales sets out the importance of common land which is a material consideration in the preparation of Local Development Plans and the determination of planning applications. Local planning authorities need to consider common land within their green infrastructure assessments when preparing polices for their Local Development Plans.
Julie James: According to Business Plans submitted to Welsh Government by the 11 stock-retaining authorities, they intend to deliver 425 homes in 2019/20. With the removal of the HRA borrowing cap, we expect councils to step up to the challenge to build at pace.
Julie James: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It has been clear to me since I was appointed to this portfolio that we have a shared desire right across this Chamber to see an increase in the delivery of affordable housing. And, Dirprwy Llywydd, I've been equally clear that social housing in particular is my priority. The positive impact good-quality social housing has on someone’s life cannot be...
Julie James: One of the key ways in which we can increase the supply of social housing is through local authorities getting back to building council houses at pace and scale. The long-overdue lifting of the borrowing cap will be an important catalyst for this, as will access to grant from Welsh Government, as the review panel recommend. Where appropriate, I am prepared to make grant available to ambitious...
Julie James: Well, thank you very much for that contribution. As I said, I wanted to emphasise that I do think there is much more, across the Chamber, that connects us together on this, and very small areas of disagreement that are not really that important in terms of what we're talking about here. In terms of the modular homes, I'm very keen on the slogan 'Not prefab but ab fab', as they call it. I was...
Julie James: I am happy to start with that last one. What we're not accepting is the detail of the Help to Buy recommendations. I just don't know what—or whether there is a consequential, so I don't know whether we can continue it at all or what the situation is. If we are going to continue it, however, we will be continuing it in a very different form to the form that we currently see. We have had a...
Julie James: Thank you very much. On that last one, what we're looking to do—in my statement very recently on local government regional working, I did outline that we are putting in a new vehicle for regional working for local government in that Bill, and that's something called a statutory joint committee. The word 'statutory' doesn't mean mandatory; it just means that the committee has a legal entity...
Julie James: I couldn't agree more. Clearly, one of the issues with homelessness is that we have a large tap, if you like, of people who are sliding into homelessness because we have an insufficient housing supply and it's a vicious circle. What we need to do is cut into that circle and make sure that the supply increases exponentially in order to cut off the number of people who slide into homelessness....
Julie James: Thank you for that contribution. Just to start off with the affordable homes target, I would just like to assure the Member that we will reach the 20,000 affordable homes target in this Assembly term. What this is about, though, is saying that that's not enough and that we need to build an awful lot more, if we possibly can, and about making sure that we start to build at scale and pace. It...
Julie James: Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank the Member for her contribution. I don't need you to forward me the research—I'm familiar with it already. We have been looking, as part of our regeneration work with Hannah Blythyn, at what we can do to green our developments in exactly the way that you mentioned. Joyce Watson has long talked about the need for porous surfaces and the...
Julie James: Well, it's interesting language, that's for sure. I understand the sentiment he expresses, and, as I said in response to Leanne Wood, we certainly will want to look very carefully at what we are putting public money into and what we're building with it. So, I appreciate the sentiment and I agree with the sentiment; I'm not sure I quite agree with the language. But, yes, we'll be looking...
Julie James: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the motion. The European Union settlement scheme was introduced in January 2019 and became fully operational across the UK on 30 March 2019. The loophole created by the EU settlement scheme is relevant to individuals who are currently ineligible for housing assistance because they only have one of the rights to reside listed in regulation 6 of the...
Julie James: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you to Mick Antoniw for those remarks. It is important we ensure that those resettled in Wales under amendments to UK legislation are able to access housing and homelessness assistance if they need to do so, particularly where they have had to flee their home country and have been subject to the turmoil and stress of war and conflict. With regard...
Julie James: We've recently written to planning authorities asking them to review some of the policies in the light of 'Planning Policy Wales', but it is a plan-led process and the plans have a lifetime of their own. So, we're asking through the Welsh Local Government Association and through local authority leads for them to review the local development plan process. And as you know, we're about to go out...
Julie James: I don't think there is an inconsistency. The planning process is not a science; it is a set of judgments based on a set of plans in a system that is plan-led. And so, you have to look at the system in the round, and each person who makes a decision, or each committee that makes a decision, will bring some human subjective judgment to how they see the plans. We put out guidance for that, but...
Julie James: Certainly, and I completely agree with you about the excitement of a distributed energy system, and the ability of that to bring a social justice element into that system that the old centralised system would never have been able to achieve. And we're very excited to be able to do that. Tomorrow morning, I will be receiving the reports of the decarbonisation working group, and I've had some...
