2. What role does the First Minister see for councils in building social housing? OAQ(5)0187(FM)

Local authorities will play a key role towards the delivery of our ambitious target of 20,000 affordable homes in this Assembly, and we’re keen to support their work to build high-quality, new social housing in the areas that they are responsible for.

Cardiff council is committed to building 600 new homes over the next 10 years, built to the highest energy standards, and that’s created an extra 250 jobs. This is great news, as it’s the first time that Cardiff council has built homes for a generation, but more needs to be done. Even the Tories are recognising that there is a housing crisis. Whether they’ll actually do anything about it is another matter.

How can the Welsh Government ensure that local authorities, now that they’ve got themselves out of the housing revenue account, are going to be able to use their clout to borrow on excellent terms in order to build a lot more council housing?

Whilst the Member is right to point out that Welsh local authorities are free in terms of the old housing revenue account subsidy system, there is neverthless a cap still on borrowing that they have to observe. What I can say is that we’re working with those authorities who wish to build new council housing to ensure their borrowing cap is used to its fullest capacity in order to increase housing supply, and we’ll continue to work with them in order to make sure that they’re able to do that.

I welcome the fact that councils are now starting to build council houses once again. But, the main way of generating social housing is through housing associations, and I declare an interest as a member of a housing association. A decision by the ONS to change the classification of housing associations in Wales, to bring them into the public sector, does have very serious repercussions for the Welsh Government in terms of the £2.5 billion of debt that will be passed to Government. So, what steps is the Government taking to exact the situation, and do you intend to legislate quickly to put this right?

Yes, this is a problem and we are considering a way of resolving this through legislation. I can say that the housing associations should be confident that this will be resolved as soon as possible.

First Minister, do you agree that local authorities are perhaps best placed to be enablers by releasing land, or, a model which is favoured in many European countries is to support neighourhood and community groups that want to join together to build their own schemes? I see this as a way forward for many young people these days who are excluded from family housing to come together and agree these models, where they’re small and manageable for the future.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that local authorities can only be enablers; they are important builders of houses as well. But it’s not the only model, and that we understand. We know that housing associations will continue to be important in the provision of affordable homes, and, of course, innovative new solutions. We’ve talked in the past about community land trusts, of shared equity schemes. Co-operative housing schemes, I believe, are certainly models that can be explored fully in the future, and we would seek to provide what support we can in order for those models to be taken forward.

First Minister, areas across Wales have a substantial amount of brownfield land that could be used to build social and affordable housing. Brownfield sites are often an unknown quantity though, and if we add into the mix the potential on some sites for contamination by asbestos, lead and other substances, it is easy to see why developers are often not prepared to take the risk of developing a brownfield site. This puts yet more pressure on local authorities to permit building on open green spaces, or much-needed housing is simply not built. What measures is the Welsh Government prepared to take to incentivise developers to build on brownfield sites rather than greenfield sites, and what assistance is the Welsh Government prepared to give to developers to support them in the decontamination of brownfield sites?

Well, there are examples of brownfield sites that are being built on across Wales. Not too far away from here, the old Ely mill site is being redeveloped. The Member is right to point out that we do have a legacy where, in the days when environmental regulations were far more lax than they are now, where operators of sites no longer exist as companies, and therefore the liability then falls on the taxpayer. It is something that we have been wrestling with, for example, with some of the bigger opencast sites in terms of where liability ultimately should lie, given the permissions they were given in the early 1990s. We will look to work with developers, of course, in order to make sure that land is made available in the future. But it is true to say there are still some sites where a substantial amount of money would be needed in order to remediate those sites to the level needed for housing.