3. 2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:33 pm on 3 October 2017.

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Photo of Jane Hutt Jane Hutt Labour 2:33, 3 October 2017

Thank you, Jenny Rathbone. I think you’ll be very pleased to hear, following your committee visit to the SOLCER house, learning about those different types of retrofitting, in line with local vernacular, that we are investing £104 million in Welsh Government Warm Homes over the next four years, to improve a further 25,000 homes. And we’ll continue to look at options to increase the scale of our own energy-efficiency programmes. And, of course, recognising our decarbonisation ambitions can’t be achieved through Government funding alone. This requires collaboration across all sectors, to increase the uptake of energy-efficiency measures, particularly amongst those able-to-pay households. So, that’s something that the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs is looking at carefully, in terms of how to best drive this change, and increase activity in this area.

On your second point, I think the report you referred to was the MoneySavingExpert report. It does provide additional insight into how council tax is managed across local authorities, and the Cabinet Secretary will be outlining his plans for local government finance next week, because we’ve just published research into the approaches that local authorities are taking in handling council tax debt, and the Cabinet Secretary is considering the range of evidence in this field, and we’ll be taking a number of steps to make our commitment to council tax fairer.