We move on to the statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children—20,000 affordable homes target—and I call on Carl Sargeant to move the statement.

Thank you, Deputy Llywydd. I’m delighted to provide Members with an overview of the approach the Government will be taking to deliver our ambitious target of an additional 20,000 affordable homes.

This is a key commitment within the programme for government and it lies at the heart of our comprehensive housing agenda. Delivering on this will also support other key themes across my portfolio: improving well-being in our communities and promoting economic regeneration.

I want to begin by recognising the achievement of the sector during the last term of Government. Statistics released last month confirmed that we exceeded our target of 10,000 additional affordable homes in the last Assembly. This demonstrates what effective partnership working can achieve. I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this.

However, as a Government we want to achieve even more, which is why we’ve a target of 20,000 affordable homes for this term. Building homes delivers important benefits beyond simply putting a roof over people’s heads. Alongside the well-documented health and education benefits that good quality housing provides for children and families, building homes of all tenures has a significant positive impact on the Welsh economy and on our communities. House building creates thousands of apprenticeships each year, providing wider regeneration in deprived areas, and can transform communities.

We have a strong record of support for social housing and this will continue to be crucial. The target is ambitious and ‘business as usual’ is not an option, but tried and tested schemes including the social housing grant programme and the housing finance grant will play a key role in delivering affordable homes and supporting the most vulnerable.

Alongside the need to build new homes, it is important that we retain our existing social housing stock. We propose to abolish the right to buy and the right to acquire and work is already under way to prepare the necessary legislation. This will enable us to retain safe, secure and affordable social housing all over Wales. The legislation will also enable housing associations and councils to invest with confidence in building new homes. Our plans for improving the supply of affordable homes will include measures designed to provide additional support for those aspiring to home ownership. This will become a more realistic prospect for greater numbers if we can provide the right sort of incentive or assistance.

We will support a variety of housing tenures in order to respond to a wide range of housing needs. Our programme for government makes it clear that our target of an additional 20,000 homes includes 6,000 that will be delivered through the Help to Buy—Wales scheme. This reflects the success of the scheme in providing a route into more affordable home ownership, especially for first-time buyers. It has played a huge role in generating confidence within the housing sector and supporting private housing development. We have recently signed off contracts for phase 2 of the scheme, which will see £290 million invested until 2021. While taking a broad view of the need for Welsh Government action to promote the wider affordability of housing, it is important to emphasise that the TAN 2 definition of affordable housing for planning purposes remains unchanged by these proposals.

‘Taking Wales Forward’ also includes a commitment to develop a rent-to-own scheme. This is designed to support those who aspire to buy their own home, but struggle to save a sizeable deposit. We are currently examining a variety of options for this scheme and details will follow in the new year. Our broader aim will be to promote a range of routes into home ownership at an affordable cost, especially for first-time buyers in areas where they are often unable to purchase a home due to high local property values. If we are to build successful and sustainable communities, we need a house-building programme that is ambitious in terms of the design, quality, location and energy efficiency of the homes that we deliver. We will be challenging the sector to step up and provide a significant number of new-design homes. We will also promote joint working aimed at delivering housing schemes that can provide long-term benefits to the health and social care sectors.

Altogether, we’ve allocated £1.3 billion for this Assembly term in supporting affordable housing. This includes supporting the delivery of 20,000 affordable homes and completing the task of meeting the Welsh housing quality standards. The scale of this budget is a clear indication of our level of ambition in this area. This financial commitment is only one of the ingredients, however, necessary for success. The Welsh Government does not itself build houses; we rely on the strong relationships that we have with housing associations, local authorities and private house builders. We will maintain and strengthen those relationships.

In the last Assembly, the pact with Community Housing Cymru played a crucial role in achieving the target to build over 10,000 affordable homes. We are now negotiating a tripartite pact with Community Housing Cymru and the Welsh Local Government Association to support the achievement of the new target. I am very pleased with the progress we have made to date and welcome the WLGA’s involvement. This is particularly welcome because local authorities are now starting to consider their own building programmes once again. I will be providing additional support to support these development activities. We will be working with these authorities to identify how best we might support their efforts. Taken together, we expect them to deliver over 500 homes in this term of Government.

Private builders make a significant contribution to the delivery of affordable homes. We will continue to work closely with developers through our house builder engagement programme to ensure Wales remains an attractive place for both large developers and, of course, SMEs to build homes. This Government recognises the importance of building more homes for sale across the whole price range. It is important not to confuse our affordable housing target with the wider efforts necessary to meet the country’s overall housing need.

We will continue to act to support house building. The planning system will remain an essential enabler to ensure the right homes are built in the right places to meet housing need. We will continue to work to ensure that our housing and planning policies are aligned to encourage new house building. Making more land available for development is also important. We have already brought forward a number of significant Welsh Government-owned sites for housing delivery. We are continuing to explore what more we might do to identify more public sector land suitable for housing.

Llywydd, our ambitious housing programme is about providing people with affordable, safe, warm and secure homes in sustainable communities. Delivering new homes for Wales is a key commitment for this Assembly term. I do not underestimate the challenges in achieving this target. However, we are building on our already strong relationships, making significant resources available and seeking to facilitate housing development across all of Wales. Together, I’m confident that with these steps to help, we will succeed.

I must say, Deputy Presiding Officer, that that was rather thin gruel after I was expecting a much richer banquet. We now have clarification about what an additional 20,000 means. Your target in the fourth Assembly was 10,000 social homes; you actually did a bit better than that. Your target for the fifth Assembly is 20,000 social homes. Now, according to your maths, that’s an additional 20,000 which, I have to say, I think is vamping up the stats a little too much.

However, that’s not the most important point, and the real reason why I’m so disappointed. The Minister has just confirmed that the Welsh Government rejects the new estimates of housing need presented in Professor Holmans’ report, ‘Future Need and Demand for Housing in Wales’. This is your Government-sponsored report to check your former estimates. The estimates that Professor Holmans was asked to review were made in 2010, and were based on 2006 data. Those estimates delivered a projection for housing need that was below the long-term trend. Professor Holmans said that this abrupt change in policy should be questioned as a basis for future housing need, and that’s the question I again put to you.

The Welsh Government’s policy in the fourth Assembly, as I said, was to provide 10,000 social homes. To be fair, 11,500 were actually delivered, so the target was exceeded. However, that achievement was below the Welsh Government’s projection of need, which was 3,500 social homes a year or 17,500 over the five-year term. So, even the 11,500 was well short of your projections, which themselves have now been fundamentally challenged, or were fundamentally challenged, by Professor Holmans.

Today’s statement means that the Welsh Government now wants to deliver on those old estimates of about 3,500 social units a year—actually, a little bit more, I think, when you do the maths. However, I have to tell the Assembly that the latest statistics are not very encouraging. We expect this year to have an extra 2,792 social homes and next year 3,351—still below the sort of target that would be over 3,500 a year to achieve the 20,000 that are now committed to.

Of course, the most significant fact in the projection that was delivered by Professor Holmans was that we needed to provide something like 5,000 affordable homes a year to try to meet the sort of need that we can now anticipate. And I’m afraid it’s not ambitious when you reject your own review and then come up with a target that is well below what we can assume is needed in the housing sector. And I’m afraid that this failure is also mirrored in the number of private homes that are envisaged to be built in the next five years and beyond. Quite simply, Minister, this means that tens of thousands of Welsh citizens—over 60,000—by my calculations, the difference between the old projection and the new projection you’ve just rejected over the period to 2030 is 66,000. That’s the number of people that will potentially be without a home they may have had provided by a more ambitious housing target. And it’s for those potential homeowners and occupiers that I ask: why aren’t you really being ambitious and, simply, why have you rejected this excellent report?

I’m grateful for the contribution from the Member and as always he’s eloquent in his projection of the figures that he uses. May I suggest that he takes another look at the document that he has? Indeed, we haven’t dismissed the document in any shape or form. Let us put some facts to the Member who has just made a contribution.

The Public Policy Institute for Wales report, ‘Future Need and Demand for Housing in Wales’, recently provided estimates on current and projected housing needs and demands for Wales between 2011 and 2031. Based on the Welsh Government’s official projections for the growth in the number of households—the principal projection—the report estimated around 174,000 additional properties are required in Wales between 2011 and 2031, of which 100,000 would be in the market sector and around 70,000 in the social sector. I’m sure the Member will also be able to do the maths in that respect, but this equates to an average of around 8,700 dwellings a year in the period, of which 3,500 would be social sector housing. Our commitment to 20,000 new affordable homes is absolutely accurate and it isn’t the only figure—this is not the only figure we will be using. The figure of 20,000 is our commitment and it is ambitious. I’m grateful to the Member for recognising that, whilst we thought 10,000 was ambitious in the last period of Government, actually delivering 11,500 was very positive and it was only because of the work we did with our partners. I take some credit, but only part, because actually people like CHC and local authorities who are already starting to develop properties are the people on the ground that deliver us home solutions in our communities across Wales.

I’m sure the Member, deep down, does welcome the fact that we are doubling the target in terms of our affordable housing projections. I’m sure this debate of the confusion of figures he projects will continue over many months, I expect—I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Member—but I won’t take any lectures about building houses or protecting social houses anywhere in the UK from the Conservative Party, with the greatest of respect. The fact that we are about to legislate for ending the right to buy is the fact that we value our stock in Wales. We value protecting housing in Wales, which is something that I would ask the Member to reflect on with his own party position. The fact is, where we build homes, we will be protecting them—and not building one, as in England, and selling seven off to the private sector. It isn’t sustainable, and what we’re doing in Wales is something very different. We should be very proud of our actions in house building here.

Thank you very much and thank you for the statement here today. We wouldn’t, obviously, dispute the fact that a target of the nature you’ve arrived at is to be welcomed, but I would echo some of the comments that have been made in relation to whether there is an issue with regard to the figure that stands. I say this not because I am saying it only—I’m saying it because I’ve had that reflected to me by the sector. Of course, 6,000 of those homes will be Help to Buy homes and obviously, that is to help those buy a house up to £300,000. While that may be of significance in the south-east of England, affordability in that relation is not comparable in Wales, and I would want to find out—being new into this brief—whether any of your civil servants did some research into whether there would be ways of adapting that Help to Buy situation here in Wales. Of course, I don’t know about your area, but in the area where I live, a £300,000 house is quite substantial as compared to others that are available in Wales. So, I think that’s quite fundamental for the debate that we have in relation to affordability.

I’d also like some clarity to that definition, again having spoken to people in the sector. Your definition of affordability is:

‘Those whose needs are not met by the open market.’

I wonder whether you’ve had any thoughts as a Minister—as Cabinet Secretary—about variation of this definition in different parts of Wales. For example, in Neath, the affordability of a house would be very different to what the affordability is in Penarth. And so, having that quite broad definition sometimes confuses residents when they are attending consultation processes, because they know that their families will not be able to afford the definition of a house as defined by, say, Barratt Homes or another company in their area.

I would be intrigued to find out more about the fact that you said that you would be releasing more public sector land and Government land for housing. I think it would be interesting to find out more details on that, because, of course, sometimes there is controversy about where that land is, and how then that housing is distributed locally. So, I think that’s something that I would be interested to find out more about, and also to do with the tripartite pact that you now have with Community Housing Cymru and the Welsh Local Government Association to support your delivery. Obviously, you had this pact with the CHC before, but could you tell me how they still retain their ‘critical friend of Government’ when they’re working with you on this particular matter, because, of course, we need to have that scrutiny element from CHC also?

You also mention in your statement that having good-quality housing has benefits for children in terms of health and education, and I wouldn’t want to dispute that, but so, too, does stability and not being evicted and moved. So, what measures will you be taking to ensure that the social housing section of these 20,000 homes are being run by organisations that are not using evictions as the first resort, as Shelter Cymru exemplified in recent research.

And my other question would be that housing may be affordable when built, but if it merely ends up in the hands of buy-to-let landlords, it won’t be affordable for very long. So, how do you ensure longevity of affordable homes that are built, not by your Government, as you don’t build houses, as you said, but by partners in the sector?

And forgive me if I haven’t read your statement correctly, but can you tell us, by seeking to abolish the right to buy, which, of course, we support, what element—? How does that play into the figures, because, of course, the Conservatives will say, ‘Well, you’re not building enough’? But, surely, by abolishing the right to buy, that would feed into the social housing statistic. Can we understand how that would play a part in that?

My final question is something, again, we had at a fringe meeting at the Plaid Cymru conference arranged by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. They were curious to find out, with the new infrastructure commission, whether housing would be a key part in that, because, of course, we have skills here in Wales, we have people wanting to build more houses. How will they play a role in the infrastructure commission, because I think they were seeing it more as a sort of transport infrastructure project, as opposed to a housing one? And they wanted to be part of the conversation, really. So, if you could answer those questions, I’d be very grateful.

I’m very grateful for the Member’s questions. There were an awful lot of them, so I’ve tried to scribble them down as you were raising them. The definition of affordable housing: of course, I recognise the issue that wherever you are in Wales, there are different elements that will have an effect there—the cost of housing solutions and markets drives different pricings and need, but there is an affordable definition that we use. I did mention during my statement that, in planning terms, there is a very specific definition that we would consider using in terms of developments. I’m sure the Member will be aware of that, but I’m more than happy to write to the Member in terms of definition, which would be helpful in her appointment as shadow housing Minister.

The CHC—she raises a very valid point about the critical friend situation of the CHC and the WLGA. I think what’s really useful, and what we’ve learnt from our growing up of the experience of the pact, and also the way my team work with the organisation, is that they have a lot of the solutions to this as well. So, it’s almost about recognising that Governments have many skills but not all of them. Where you have experts in the sector, we should use their thought processes. And that’s why CHC and the WLGA, who are developing these properties, are able to give us further advice, and, yes, they are very critical where they need to be, but, actually, we’ve got a very good relationship and we are investing £1.3 billion of public money into housing solutions. And I think it’s very useful that we have a third party looking at how we are able to do that in a more practical way.

I agree with the Member wholeheartedly about the issue of protecting properties when we have them in stock and not moving into the buy-to-let market. And that’s why we’ll be bringing forward legislation with regard to ending the right to buy.

In terms of detail for the 20,000 homes, it doesn’t actually add value in terms of additionality within that number, but what it does do is protect the stock that we already have, and future stock that will be investment. So, it’s a protection tool in terms of our long-term investment.

Help to Buy is an important point the Member raised. I need to check the figures, but I’m pretty sure, when we introduced the scheme, that the scheme, in relation to England and Wales—that the thresholds are very different. I think our upper limit is around £300,000, and I think the UK threshold is £0.5 million. But I will check—and if I’m wrong, I apologise to colleagues, but I will check and I will write to the Member on that process. We also recognise that there is a difference in terms of the markets, and the availability of properties here.

What we’re trying to do here is give a mix of tenure. Many people are seeking to enter the housing market, at very different levels, whether that be social housing or the private sector market. And there are barriers in all of those fields, and we’re trying to create a space where we can help people move into home ownership—physically or in a rental market, through social housing—what is right for those.

In regard to the Housing Act the Member raised in regards to Shelter Cymru’s views—I will give that some further consideration. I would hate to think that any of our organisations that we fund directly are in the market to evict people, as their first point of call. I don’t think it’s right, morally, and therefore I will give that some further consideration as we move forward.

Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. There are estimated to be approximately 20,000 homes standing empty in Wales. If you bring those back into use, you will have hit your target for the term. I acknowledge the spending pledge, but how much of this £1.3 billion will actually be spent on homes, and how much will go on admin and into the pockets of developers as profit?

Regeneration and refurbishment schemes are better value for money, and create many more homes per pound. What is the Welsh Government going to do to regenerate and refurbish empty homes, and how is the Welsh Government proposing to help owners bring those properties back into use?

I thank the Member for her question. Empty homes scheme—we have a very positive empty homes scheme, with over 6,000 units already having been brought back into use. There is a difficulty—and I agree with many Members in here—that sometimes empty homes can be a blight on the community and they’re very, very valuable assets if we can bring them back up to standard. Often it’s a cheaper way of providing a housing solution. So, we are very aware. We are committed to continuing a support scheme for local authorities to build and to renovate empty homes, but there are often many legal barriers that are attributed to moving into empty homes properties. But we are committed to doing that and they do provide a great solution in many areas, not just in regeneration, but in providing housing. So, it is something that we are very aware of and continue to provide support for.

I welcome the statement by the Cabinet Secretary and the proposal for 20,000 affordable homes for people to live in. The ending of the right to buy and the right to acquire will put an end to the loss of public housing for rent. Building homes is not only good for the people who will live in these homes, but is good for the Welsh economy and getting people into work.

I have three questions for the Minister. As well as private development and developments by registered social landlords, there is also the building of council houses and co-operative housing. What role does the Cabinet Secretary see for co-operative housing? I see that the Cabinet Secretary expects to build 500 councils houses in the period. That is less than Swansea council used to build every year between 1945 and 1979. So, I think we need to be more ambitious in building council houses. Swansea council has started building council houses again, with those at Milford Way already in construction and planning permission for Rhyd-yr-Helyg being applied for. Will the Cabinet Secretary join me in congratulating Swansea council on this development? Let’s hope that many more new council houses can be built. Also in Swansea, Hygrove Homes are developing a 200-plus affordable home and housing association development on a brownfield site. Does the Cabinet Secretary support the use of brownfield sites for this type of housing development? Does the Cabinet Secretary also think that it’s a good idea to have a mix of housing association and low-cost housing rather than just having it set up in certain areas?

I thank the Member for his comments and his questions. I don’t disagree with anything he said. The issue around council housing and co-operative housing is something that we will be pursuing as part of our 20,000 target. Indeed, I was in the constituency of Mick Antoniw only a few weeks ago launching a co-operative housing scheme that is very successful, where the community are embracing the opportunity to own their properties and develop the schemes around that. Of course, I pay tribute to Swansea and other councils such as my own in Flintshire, where they are already starting to build council properties again. I have made no secret of saying that, where we have good-quality RSLs, we should continue to invest in those schemes, but there’s no reason why, I don’t see, we shouldn’t be investing in council schemes either, and I’ve asked my team to look at that proposal.

The brownfield site issue the Member raised with me is an important one—about mixed tenure on these. Of course, I agree with that. But I should also—it was remiss of me not answering a question from an earlier contribution around the public sector land issues. We are bringing forward—I’m working with the Minister for infrastructure on Government-owned land and public sector land to see how we can bring a stake to the table in terms of not always being a fiscal opportunity, but a land-based opportunity. It gives us an opportunity to offset some of the costs as well. But, as always, with all of these schemes, they would have to go through the proper planning process, to give comfort to the Members who asked questions earlier on.

Thank you very much. Suzy Davies, if you can be brief.

Diolch, Lywydd. Two questions, one of which is not unfamiliar to you. I mentioned in the last Assembly the possibility of you speaking to landlords in areas of oversupply of HMOs in order that they might be considering converting them into more permanent homes for one and two-bedroomed families, if I can call them that. I wonder if you could update me on progress on that. Secondly, Help to Buy: have you considered extending this to properties being brought back into use, rather than new build? Because, obviously, we have a large number of small builders within Wales, and some of those might be encouraged to take on apprentices if they had the kind of regular work that Help to Buy, in terms of restoring buildings rather than building new ones, might provide. Thank you.

Thank you for those very brief questions. HMOs: I have not ruled out anything in terms of the opportunity to bring more stock back to the market. The opportunity is to ensure that we get best value for money and best value for our clients. So, the deal with HMOs, or the transferral from HMOs into housing associations, is something we could indeed talk about, but it has to be of value to us—to Government and to the public purse. In terms of Help to Buy, the issue with Help to Buy is not a problem with demand. The problem with Help to Buy is managing the fiscal responsibility around that, because, actually, we could open that pot. I think a previous Member who sat on your benches used to ask me on a regular basis if we could use Help to Buy on not new homes. It was a fiscal issue about managing the budgets that we have available for this scheme, and at the moment they are well subscribed—the Help to Buy situation—in terms of what we’re delivering already. So, we don’t think we need any more schemes to add to that to be able to spend the money on Help to Buy as it stands.

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary.