10. 6. Statement: 20,000 Affordable Homes Target

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:55 pm on 1 November 2016.

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Photo of Carl Sargeant Carl Sargeant Labour 5:55, 1 November 2016

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.