Julie James: Thank you, Mike. I agree with your assessment of prepayment meters. Part of the conversation with Ofgem—I had an already scheduled meeting with them in the diary, and I've had an additional meeting as well—part of the scheduled meeting with Ofgem is to discuss with them the plight of people on prepayment meters and what we can do to make sure that they register as people without a...
Julie James: Diolch, Delyth. Well, absolutely. We've done a number of things since the crisis has hit. I completely agree with your analysis as to the impact on lower income families and, indeed, a number of our businesses, and agricultural businesses in particular. I met the chief executive at Ofgem just yesterday to discuss the impacts on Welsh consumers and Welsh businesses of the global wholesale gas...
Julie James: Diolch, Delyth. Families in Wales are facing a perfect storm of increased energy prices, the freeze on the local housing allowance and the removal of the £20 uplift in universal credit. We have called on the UK Government to reverse these decisions and protect households from potentially devastating impacts this winter.
Julie James: Indeed. As I said in my initial answer, we're already working alongside other public sector organisations. We recently published the public sector reporting guide, which supports all public sector organisations, including the Welsh Government and, indeed, the Commission actually, to gather relevant information and report their CGH emissions. This will not only give a clear baseline to work...
Julie James: Everyone has a part to play in tackling the climate emergency, including the Welsh Government. In line with our recently published public sector reporting guide, we will comprehensively baseline, tackle and monitor our own emissions, building on the plans we already have made regarding our fleet, estate use and homeworking.
Julie James: Yes, thank you for that. It's actually a very important point, because we've got a number of issues in the small and medium enterprise house building market around cash flow, pipeline and so on. And again, Lee Waters and myself were very prominent in the construction forum in the last Senedd—I think you came with a different hat on a couple of times—to make sure that we put a pipeline in...
Julie James: Social housing remains mine and this Government’s priority for the whole of Wales. This reflects our commitment to deliver 20,000 new low-carbon homes for social rent this Government term. The North Wales region has been allocated £50.4 million from the social housing grant for 2021-22, to build much needed social homes.
Julie James: Thank you very much for that very important question. I'm pleased to say that when we negotiated a five-year rent agreement with social housing providers across Wales, both councils and registered social landlords, we negotiated a 'no eviction into homelessness' pledge from them, as a result of the rental increase, and that has helped. So, we will have no evictions from social housing into...
Julie James: Diolch, Carolyn. In the spring budget, as everyone knows, the UK Government announced it was cutting discretionary housing payment funding by 22 per cent, from £180 million to £140 million. The Government had, to be fair, boosted DHP funding from £139.5 million to £180 million in 2020-21 amid the pandemic. But I think it is worth noting that this year's funding is now lower than the...
Julie James: Thank you, Carolyn. We have written to the UK Government to express our great disappointment at the cuts made to discretionary housing payments. This, combined with the freezing of local housing allowance rates, and stopping the £20 a week universal credit top-up after September, will push more people and families into even greater hardship.
Julie James: Thank you very much, Buffy. We've had an extensive set of discussions around this. As I said, we are looking now to have a lessons-learnt review, and to address a series of recommendations to improve the level of flood protection provided to the community. We have put record levels of funding into flood risk management. In 2020-21, NRW's revenue funding was increased by £1.25 million to £21...
Julie James: Thank you for that, Gareth. There's nothing like keeping it apolitical when dealing with serious issues like flooding, is there? We are, as you know, already in the process of reviewing the flood management arrangements. We've already welcomed a number of section 19 reports from local authorities in terms of flood protection, and we are working with NRW, Welsh Government officials and local...
Julie James: Thank you for that, Heledd. If you want to write in to me with details of the houses that have been left out, I'm more than happy to look into it for you.
Julie James: Diolch, Heledd. I've recently met with the NRW leadership team, alongside the Deputy Minister, Lee Waters, and I am committed to working very closely with NRW and all our partners across Wales to ensure we can effectively meet the significant challenges of climate change, including responding to serious flooding incidents.
Julie James: Well, the bottom line, Jenny, is that we absolutely have no way to make sure that they're acting in line with their moral obligations; there's no legal method by which the Welsh Government can do that. As you know, I've asked all of the developers who are involved in the high-rises in Wales to meet with me. To be fair, a number of them have, and a number of them have put some money into...
Julie James: Absolutely, Andrew R.T. Davies, and I understand the written statement came out; sorry, these things are very complicated and I wish we could go faster. The speed is no indication of the priority; it's an indication of the complexity of being able to get these things right, as I've emphasised. I've been meeting, myself, as you know, with a number of residents associations and so on, trying to...
Julie James: Well, as I say, I put the statement out earlier today and, just to be clear, what that says is that there's no one-size-fits-all solution—all Members of the Senedd will have heard me saying this before. So, each block of flats will need a bespoke solution for their particular issues, and they're very different depending on how the flats were constructed, when they were constructed and the...
Julie James: I issued a written statement earlier today that sets out the first phase of the Welsh building safety fund, providing grant funding for surveys. Every building is different and the fire safety survey will identify measures and actions required to make blocks of flats safe in the event of a fire.
Julie James: Delyth, I'm very happy to confirm that. So, obviously, we have an interim programme right across the five years of the Senedd term in our head. That's not what's presented to the Senedd because that's been firmed up at that point. But I can assure you that I've been sharpening my elbows against my colleagues to make sure that the environment protection Bill is right up there. We have to...
Julie James: We absolutely are, Delyth. We're part of a global network of nations working on this and what we're looking to do is make sure that we fit nicely inside the global framework in an ambitious, but nevertheless achievable way. We don't want this to be a council of despair either. It's a very hard balance to strike. So, what we're doing is we're working with the global community. We'll get some...
