Julie James: Thank you, Lynne. As you know, public protection services have been a vital part of Wales’s response to the impacts of the pandemic and we're really, really grateful to public protection services in local authorities, in particular, for having stepped forward to help us out during this pandemic. Without them, we would certainly not have had the level of test, trace and protect, for example,...
Julie James: Thank you, Alun. We've very keen on ensuring, for example, in our—. We've got our optimised retrofit programme where, as you'll know, we'll be working with a range of registered social landlords and councils across Wales to understand what a retrofit programme looks like for all housing stock in Wales, and we're very keen to have done that in combination with the Minister for Education and...
Julie James: Thank you, Alun. We've continued to provide support for affordable housing with all communities through the delivery of our 20,000 affordable homes target. Our record levels of investment are seeing benefits for housing in all areas, including in the Heads of the Valleys.
Julie James: We have maintained regular contact with the industry through our house builder engagement programme and the construction forum and its sub-groups, which my colleague Lee Waters chairs, but I attend. Through the construction forum, we have developed a recovery plan—COVID's the standing item on the agenda—to address the issues the industry faces, which I know David Melding will be very...
Julie James: Thank you, David. We've undertaken a range of actions to protect and support the housing industry across all tenures during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Our action includes the provision of financial support, sustained investment and working collaboratively to develop guidance for safe working across the industry as a whole.
Julie James: So, we're very happy to work with local authorities. Now that we've managed to remove the Conservative Government's cap on the housing revenue accounts across all of the stockholding councils in Wales, councils have been working at pace to build council houses again in Wales. We've also worked, of course, very closely with all of our registered social landlords to build housing at pace....
Julie James: We have made a record investment in affordable housing this Senedd term, making a significant impact on the delivery of affordable homes. During 2019-20, we invested just over £33 million in the South Wales East region, through our social housing and housing finance grants, and that equated to 361 new social homes in 2019-20, and we expect that to increase this year.
Julie James: Thank you, Huw. We've made our position extremely clear, as you know, from the correspondence we've had, to local authorities, that people who are sleeping rough should be provided with appropriate accommodation as a matter of urgency and, absolutely crucially, that they must be accommodated with the wraparound support that they so badly need in order to be able to sustain that accommodation....
Julie James: Thank you, Huw. We have been working closely with local authorities throughout the pandemic, with over 5,000 people supported into emergency accommodation since March 2020. We have provided significant additional funding for our inclusive, needs-led approach. Currently, an average of £1.6 million per month is being claimed for this.
Julie James: Thank you, Jenny. Unfortunately, you're absolutely right—it is likely that many people will experience real difficulties in paying rent as the pandemic period continues. Our officials are continuing to work closely with private sector and social sector landlords to monitor the position and to understand where and how further mitigations or interventions might be required and possible. We've...
Julie James: My focus is ensuring that people in Wales who are unable to pay their rent due to the pandemic can access the support and advice they need. We have worked with the social housing sector to make this happen, and we have ensured that additional support is available to private sector tenants across Wales.
Julie James: So, again, Delyth, thank you. Obviously, I know where we are with council tax, but council tax is in the portfolio of my colleague Rebecca Evans. She's been recently able to announce another £33 million, I think it was—although you would have to ask her to confirm the actual figure; I'm trying to see if she's nodding at me—in assistance to councils for council tax relief funding and a...
Julie James: Indeed. Thank you very much, Delyth. Yes, so, absolutely, we know that the bottom three councils are a little below the average. So, we've got Ceredigion, Wrexham and Caerphilly below the average, but all of them have got positive settlements. So, Ceredigion has 2 per cent—that's the lowest settlement—but 2 per cent is the planning assumption that we had been working on with the...
Julie James: Thank you for that, Delyth. Sorry, the sound was very bad there, but I think I got the gist of the question. Forgive me if I missed a nuance. As you know, we've got a cross-party working group of people looking at the complexity of the second homes issue. I'm certainly aware that Plaid Cymru have put a plan up. A number of us have been working on a number of solutions that might present...
Julie James: Again, as I say, this is not my portfolio. This is actually split between the portfolio of my colleague Ken Skates and my colleague Rebecca Evans, but obviously I have a large part in the conversation on that, given that local authorities are the distribution mechanism for a very large part of the rates. We have, of course, been looking again at what can be done. My colleague Ken Skates only...
Julie James: The council tax and NDR system is actually in the portfolio of my colleague Rebecca Evans, although obviously I have a lot to do with that, because local government is one of the main beneficiaries. She very recently in the Senedd introduced a piece of research that we have had done, and I've been working alongside her in doing it, into exactly that—how to reform the council tax and NDR...
Julie James: I'd like to welcome Laura Anne to her role—it's nice to see you taking the role, Laura. I think this is the first time that we've had a question time together, so very glad to see you there. We've worked very hard with local authorities to ensure that we have very speedy distribution of grants, especially the grants that go out through the non-domestic rates process. I'm very pleased to say...
Julie James: We work very closely indeed, and I've worked very closely with my colleague Jane Hutt on this, in harnessing the council for voluntary service arrangements right through Wales. We've directed people in large numbers through the council for voluntary service as each locality has it set up in order to enhance that. All local authorities in Wales have used volunteers to do things such as...
Julie James: Thank you, Dawn. I am very familiar with the complexities of some of the grant streams that directly employ staff in local authority areas. Right at the beginning of the pandemic, so a whole year ago now—though it seems both shorter and longer to many of us—grant teams were all advised that they needed to offer flexibility where that was at all possible, for example, by extending...
Julie James: Thank you for that, Dai Lloyd. We are working very closely with health and, as I say, a number of other public authorities across Wales to ensure a number of things. We know that local authorities have had to redeploy staff away from business-as-usual front-line roles in order to address pandemic issues, and we're working very carefully with them to ensure that those front-line roles resume...
