Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. Llywydd, there are some basic economic realities that are quite clearly unknown to the Tory benches. Economic growth and action on climate are not opposing objectives; the greatest economic harm would result from a failure to prevent runaway climate change. The balance we must seek to strike is one that avoids policies that, by not considering economic and environmental...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. I completely acknowledge the disappointment of Members at the lack of time to scrutinise these LCMs. As I said in my opening remarks, we are very disappointed that the UK Government has chosen to table late amendments in this way, and indeed, we know now, has chosen to table further amendments at Report Stage. So, I may need to lay another supplementary legislative consent...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. I move the motion. This is a UK Bill intended to reform the regulation of social housing providers in England. English social housing providers own or manage around 500 homes in Wales; therefore, the changes proposed by this Bill will have an impact on people who live in these homes, because the Bill will change the way that their landlords are regulated. The legislative...
Julie James: Thank you, Cefin. The policy is that electricity transmission cables should be placed underground where possible, not just in designated landscapes, but where possible. Sometimes, it's not possible, even in a designated landscape. We don't anyone digging up our peatlands, for example. So we would expect developers to find the best route. Sometimes, that's not the shortest route, and then a...
Julie James: Diolch, Cefin. We need a strategic solution to updating our grid infrastructure to achieve our net-zero commitments and give people access to clean heat and transport. National planning policy states our preferred position that new power lines should be underground where possible and expects public engagement to mitigate their impact elsewhere.
Julie James: Thank you, Delyth. I absolutely do understand the frustration of that, and it’s deeply felt in a number of communities. The difficulty is that this is—as I know you know—a quasi-judicial process. This isn’t about your best judgment; this is about following a quasi-judicial process. I’m not going to talk about an individual application; I don’t have the details in front of me. But...
Julie James: Thank you, Mike. I just don’t agree that it would allow action to be taken. We’re actually very well aware of those buildings. Both of them are in the intrusive survey stage; one of them is complete. One of the buildings has not asked us to pay for a survey that they’d already had done. I’m more than happy to discuss the detail with you if you want to meet with me about it. We'd like...
Julie James: If a local planning authority refuses an application for planning permission, the applicant can appeal to the Welsh Ministers. Planning law requires planning appeals to be determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.
Julie James: On the leaseholder support scheme, I said when we launched it in June last year that we'd continue to review it on a three-monthly basis, and we've continued to do that. We've reviewed and slackened the eligibility criteria each time in order to reach a wider range of people. Now, we've included the rising cost of energy in the hardship factors that are taken into account, and we've allowed...
Julie James: Thank you, Joel. As I said, we are very aware of what the position on each site is. We understand what the difficulties have been. The remaining sites, the ones that are not yet completed, all have either a complex management structure and it's taken us some time to get all of the consents in place for the intrusive surveys—I believe we've got all but two of those sorted now—and the...
Julie James: Thank you very much, Rhys. I met Lucy Frazer. Unfortunately, she changed jobs pretty immediately afterwards. I'm not going to take that personally. I'll have to look to meet the new housing Minister as soon as I know who that is. I do meet Michael Gove regularly at the higher level inter-ministerial group meetings, in which we discuss these matters as well, but I haven't had the opportunity...
Julie James: Thank you, Rhys. I have regular contact with the UK Government and other devolved administrations in respect of building safety. I engage with my counterparts in the UK Government and devolved nations through the inter-ministerial group meetings, in which I discuss matters including building safety.
Julie James: Thank you, Huw. Llywydd, I'm in danger of needing to give an hour's lecture as the answer to every one of these questions. I won't try to your patience too much. Suffice to say, Huw, we've already announced that we'll make a state-owned energy development company. Part of the point of that is to build exemplar sites with a lot of community ownership and to exploit the resources we already...
Julie James: I wasn't quite sure where the edge was there. It's an excellent project, and one of the things we discussed when we were there—I had the great privilege of opening it, so it's now powering the hospital, helping with their energy and carbon footprint—but one of the big things about it is that it has a hedges-and-edges project around the edge for trees, and it's underplanted with a...
Julie James: Thank you, Natasha. Obviously, I won't comment on individual projects because I'm the planning Minister as well, so I'll make some general remarks about that. Quite clearly, we do want solar to come forward, alongside a raft of other things in the renewable energy market. What we want is to get as many different outcomes from energy projects as possible. So, we're particularly interested in...
Julie James: Thank you, Natasha. In 2021, renewables projects in Wales generated the equivalent of 55 per cent of our electricity use. Evidence published alongside our review of energy targets shows there is a pipeline of projects in development to meet our 2030 target, an ambitious but credible route to our proposed 100 per cent target by 2035.
Julie James: So, it's a multi-angled programme, basically, and so, what we're having to do is calibrate the budget out to the point where we're doing the remedial work. So, you'll see that we're spending less at the beginning of the programme because we're doing surveys. We have done some remediation. We've obviously done remediation in social buildings that meet the criteria, for example. We're about to...
Julie James: Yes, I'm very well aware of this as well. I've had one of the biggest managing agents in to see me very recently. I have a constituency full of people who have got this problem, so I'm dealing with it locally as well. It's sometimes difficult to separate the building safety from building structure issues, which can be complicated as well. So, we’re looking to see whether we can solve...
Julie James: Yes, Janet, I'm very well aware of Michael Gove's various pronouncements. I very recently met with the then Minister for housing, who's now the Minister for culture, media and sport, I believe—it's quite difficult to keep up—to talk about this. I have asked for a meeting with Michael Gove as well, but I haven't had one since his reincarnation. The programme here is virtually identical...
Julie James: Yes, thank you, Janet. So, just to be really specific, the Welsh Government have recently awarded grant funding to Conwy County Borough Council to develop a full business case for Llandudno, based on maintaining and improving the existing cobble defence on the north shore. The alternative sand option provides no additional flood benefit, at a much greater cost to the coastal risk management...
