Julie James: Well, neither of those options, because the Member has entirely forgotten that this Assembly has already passed into law the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016. It's a very radical Act, which I'm very proud of. We have not been in a position to implement that Act, unfortunately, because of some arcane issues, which I won't go into because of the time, around the IT systems in the courts, but we...
Julie James: Yes, indeed, and of course it goes alongside our Renting Homes (Fees etc.) (Wales) Act 2019, which we've only very recently passed through the Assembly, which sets Rent Smart Wales out as the organisation that 'polices' it for Wales. We did of course look carefully at the experience in Scotland as well, and there is an issue about local authority capacity to police the systems there. But I'm...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. This statement provides an update on the Government’s proposals for extending the minimum notice period for no-fault evictions under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016. The consultation closed earlier this month and the responses are currently being considered, and I will, of course, update Members further in due course. Ahead of that, I want to make clear what is being...
Julie James: In Scotland currently, and under the proposals being consulted on for England, there are grounds where tenants who are not at fault can still be evicted with only two months’ notice, such as when the landlord wishes to sell the property or move into it themselves. Under our proposals, in all circumstances, other than when the landlord is seeking possession for a specified breach of the...
Julie James: Well, I'm delighted to hear David Melding saying that he broadly is in line with the direction of travel. Obviously, we will be looking carefully to see what the responses say. I have had a brief overview of the responses, and they are largely what we expected, because we're in pretty constant touch with the sector anyway. But, of course, we will be looking at the policy in the light of those...
Julie James: Well, I'm sorry that Leanne Wood has chosen to politicise it in quite the way that she has, because I think there's a fair amount of consensus across the Chamber about what we're trying to do here in Wales. She listed a number of issues, having made the political points that she chose to make, none of which are actually affected by the circumstances we're talking about here. She talked about...
Julie James: So, on that last one, there were severe difficulties with the court's IT system, which we've been discussing with them. The proposal across England and Wales is that the whole of the IT system will be renewed. It was due to be renewed 'within two years' about three years ago, and we were waiting on that renewal. But we've decided not to wait and to actually implement the IT changes at our own...
Julie James: I'll start in reverse order again. We will ensure it because of course we have Rent Smart Wales. So, in Wales, you also have to be a registered landlord. So, we have a much more regulated sector than we have elsewhere in the United Kingdom. So, it's, first of all, important to remember that. If you breach these rules—. So, the rented homes Act says that you have to give a written contract...
Julie James: Well, I think we have a fundamental political disagreement about the role of the private rented sector just to start off. I think the solution to the housing crisis—for a crisis it is—is to build a lot more homes for social rent. That is a much better way of doing it, it's a much more secure route of doing it, and it provides people with the housing option that they actually want. So, we...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. I'm very pleased to be able to brief Members on the third year of the innovative housing programme. We cannot ignore the scale of the housing challenges we are facing. We are not building enough homes, we are in the midst of a climate emergency we must act upon, our population is ageing, and the availability of traditional house building skills is in decline. The IHP...
Julie James: Secondly, the quality of bids has been impressive. Selecting which schemes to recommend for funding has created a real headache for the independent panel. And finally, I've met many organisations across all of Wales since I launched this year's programme in February, all wanting to participate in the IHP programme. I've been struck by their flair, enthusiasm and sheer entrepreneurialism to...
Julie James: Thank you very much for that. We largely agree, really. On the modular point, I couldn't agree with you more. We encourage people always to think Huf Haus rather than prefab. Although, actually, the prefabs that people often decry are very sought after, particularly in my constituency. There are still people living in temporary prefab houses, which are lovely. I've seen some really great...
Julie James: Certainly. Going backwards on that, in terms of a road map, what we're very keen to do is make sure that the analysis over the three years, as we go forward, is fed immediately back in to both the programme and to the main stream. So, as I said earlier, where we see that something has been built, it's being lived in, it's stood that test, so it's delivered what it set out to do—so, for...
Julie James: I completely concur with Mike Hedges's analysis of this. We absolutely do need to get councils to build again at scale and pace. We've been very clear about that. We've been working really hard with the councils across Wales to change the rules, now that the cap has been lifted on the housing revenue accounts, both with stockholding and non-stockholding authorities, to make sure that they...
Julie James: Well, just dealing with a few of those things there, building on previous learning is absolutely built into it. And so understanding what has been built in the past, how that worked, why it worked and whether it's scalable is a really big thing, but whether it's scalable is one of the big things as well. So it's all very well to build one house, but whether you can build 400 of them...
Julie James: Yes, she's absolutely right, Merthyr Valleys Homes have done some sterling work in a range of innovative ways and it just demonstrates that the innovative housing programme is not the only innovation that we're looking at, because they've done a lot of that with mainstream social housing grant and so on. So lots of things are possible. Dawn Bowden's absolutely right, what we're looking to...
Julie James: Yes, I couldn't agree more. One of the reasons it's in the programme is because we want to test out the concept and make sure that it works, but, actually, I visited a similar scheme with Huw Irranca-Davies in his constituency recently, where we were shown a modular home that you could add another bedroom to, or, indeed, actually pick the whole thing up and put it down somewhere else, if you...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. I want to start by thanking Chris Jofeh and his independent group of stakeholders for delivering their hard-hitting but potentially transformational report, ‘Better Homes, Better Wales, Better World’. The report, published on 18 July, contains few surprises about the action we need to take, the urgency, the scale and the costs , but it makes for very sobering reading....
Julie James: Well, I very much welcome that, David, and what we're hoping to do is thrash out very quickly the parameters of a discussion that would be able to gain the approval of virtually everybody in the Chamber, we would hope, in terms of a way forward. The report goes into a lot of detail about possibilities, but what we need to do is explore how real they are and what consensus there is around some...
Julie James: Thank you for that, Llyr. I very much welcome the commitment to work with us and I'm hoping to get, in the initial stage, a group of cross-party people together—perhaps the spokespeople, or whoever the party thinks is most able to do the work—just to shape it, really, so that we can take it forward and then we can decide how that group can reference it. But, as I say, Chris Jofeh has...
