Item 5 on the agenda is a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children on the innovative housing programme, and I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children, Carl Sargeant, to make the statement.

Thank you, Deputy Llywydd. ‘Prosperity for All’ makes clear this Government’s intention to improve the prosperity and well-being of individuals, families and communities. Housing is one of the five cross-cutting priority areas identified in the strategy and underpins the delivery of many other strategic goals. People need good-quality homes throughout their lives. They give a child a place to grow and thrive. Decent housing reduces individual and family stress, and the building and refurbishment of homes creates enormous job and training opportunities. Older people need a place to live an active and comfortable retirement. And people need these good-quality homes now.

Increasing the number available, the rate at which they’re delivered and their affordability while reducing their impact on the environment are the obvious challenges. Our 20,000 affordable homes target is central to increasing supply across all tenures, and I want to do more to help people regardless of where they are in life and whatever their circumstances are. Essentially, I intend to find new ways of not only increasing the number of homes available, but also the speed at which more can be supplied. The findings of the Farmer report, ‘Modernise or Die’, clearly set out the very serious problems in the UK construction industry. It was clear to me that traditional approaches to house building would be very unlikely to deliver the changes needed. A new, innovative approach was needed and the report I commissioned from the Welsh School of Architecture demonstrated that, although there is no silver bullet, there are many potential models and methods available.

That’s why, in February of this year, I launched the innovative housing fund. With £10 million available this year and next, housing associations and local authorities were invited to bid for resources to use new housing models, new delivery pathways and new construction techniques. I challenged organisations to develop fresh thinking for delivery sooner rather than later. I have been surprised and pleased by the strength of interest in the programme and the enthusiastic response to it. This has gone beyond social housing landlords to include many other organisations, including small and medium-sized enterprises, lenders, academics, and professional bodies. We’ve spoken to many people, from a wide range of backgrounds, this year and their views and ideas have helped to shape the programme. Many have contributed their time too, helping us with everything from developing the technical documents to road testing the application packs to assessing bids. I offer everyone involved my sincere thanks.

In September, I received 35 bids for funding. I asked an independent panel to assess the schemes to identify how they offered the innovation and value required for the scale of change I want to see. On that basis, I’m delighted to say I’ve decided to fund 22 schemes this financial year. Subject to the necessary due diligence checks, I will be making available almost £19 million to build 276 new homes—nearly double what was intended. A full list of the successful schemes will be on the website later this week when all of the successful and unsuccessful applicants have been told.

However, Llywydd, I wanted to tell you about a few of them to give you a sense of the breadth of what we will be funding. Firstly, a scheme that will roll out elements of the homes as power stations project by SPECIFIC, so that people can benefit from homes that not only save them money, but have the potential to create income by producing power—many of you will know that the development of this model has received significant support from the Welsh Government. Seeing it put into practice is really exciting. A new 40-bed extra-care project for older people in the Valleys, built using modular techniques from a Welsh SME in mid Wales—I believe modular homes built in factories offer major opportunities to increase both the speed of construction and the quality of homes. I am funding other modular schemes, so that we can compare and contrast models. This will allows us to test what works best here and identify both opportunities but also potential issues. Building 24 homes in mid Wales using the home-grown homes model, where locally grown timber is used to provide both quality and low-energy homes—this will support new, local jobs and training as part of our work to support timber growers across Wales.

Llywydd, I’m also funding schemes involving homes made from recycled containers to test out their suitability as short-term or ‘meanwhile’ living solutions for people in the most urgent housing need. I believe we must try all solutions in this field.

Innovation is never without risk, and I’m not expecting every scheme to provide the long-term solutions we’re looking for. But what I do know is we must do something different and these projects have been carefully chosen. All the schemes will be subject to monitoring and evaluation so that we can learn from what works best and why. That includes asking people what they’re like to live in.

Llywydd, next year, I want to open up the programme to the private sector, as well as social landlords, to allow them to help us in our search for solutions. Last month, I announced an increase in the property development fund to assist SME house builders and developers back into the market. That fund, together with this programme, will help us to deliver new types of homes that will help meet the needs of people in Wales now and, I hope, long into the future. Diolch.

I must say I find more than a hint of encouragement in this statement, and that’s not always been the case on housing issues with the Welsh Government, and we’ve had our differences. But I particularly welcome aspects of this statement. For instance, on house building, he says, and I quote, it

‘creates enormous job and training opportunities’,

I completely agree with that, and also that he wants

‘to find new ways of not only increasing the number of homes available, but also the speed at which more can be supplied.’

I think that really is the tone we need to meet current housing needs, and I’m pleased to hear that from him.

Less optimistically, but it’s also, unfortunately, an area I have to also agree with him on, the conclusion that the report he referred to comes to, that there are very serious problems in the UK construction industry, does face us. But I think that requires a comprehensive approach through the further education sector in particular to ensure that the new skills that the construction industry needs are going to be supplied, and he made several references to modular construction, which will demand those skills.

I really do welcome the aim of promoting innovation. I think that is precisely what we should be trying to do in public policy: to use the resources more effectively and to take things forward and meet several objectives at once, if possible. So, for once, can I congratulate him on his vast overspend in this respect? I think the fund is now twice as much as was intended to be spent, and he’s even going to extend the fund to the private sector next year, which, again, I welcome. But it’s a serious point: I think when innovation does take off—. And, by the sound of it, you have been surprised and very pleased at the number of projects that have come forward. Again, I think that means you’ve hit the right spot in terms of a useful Government programme.

On the specifics, then: homes as power stations—I really think that using energy efficiency in housing as a way, also, to give people even some income and, obviously, to eliminate any risk of fuel poverty for people in those homes, is just the sort of ambition we should have. I was very pleased recently to visit the SOLCER house near Bridgend with the committee. It really was wonderful to see pioneering practice there, and I think that involves Cardiff University, and you referred to some of their work. Really, I think what we want to see is that type of work taken further, and that energy efficiency house is also of a modular design.

I know there that, still, one of the problems is just taking the technology around batteries even further. There’s been a lot of progress, and they showed that to us. Where, previously, the battery took up pretty much the whole roof space if it was up there, now it’s the size of a large-ish radiator. So, there’s real progress, but it is important, I think, for feeding back into the grid and getting that income.

But, most of all, we were told that that type of pioneering design currently, as it’s still bespoke, costs about twice as much to build as traditional materials. Yet, once we get to scale, those costs are going to come down quite dramatically. I understand Carmarthen county council are in the process of building a social housing estate using these new methods and I just wonder if he’s looking at using the social housing sector as a way of establishing the viability of this type of approach and modular design and energy efficiency and indeed net generation. That will get our support.

In terms of modular homes, again I think—. I mean, this was part of the solution in the 1950s; many of those homes were thought to be temporary and there are still one or two around—they’ll probably be taken to St Fagans shortly—because they were actually quite popular and it was difficult to get some people to move on. But now the technology has advanced so much that often modular design is the preferential way of building houses. That’s been the radical shift, and I’m pleased to see that he’s joining up with the need to build flexible care for people in the Valleys, and I’d be very interested to see how that is taken on. I understand that, last year, Legal & General opened a purpose-built factory to build around 3,000 modular homes across the UK, and they estimate that the time to build those homes is 70 per cent less than traditional methods. So, again, I think there’s a significant industry here and a way of taking advantage of it if we can develop the market in Wales.

So, I do welcome that and I hope that modular design is going to be used also to meet the requirements of changing urban communities, because I do see those, especially on green principles, which again you referred to, as being part of the solution so that we have family-sized homes for younger people who may be unlikely to afford traditional semi-detached and anyway are up for a new way of life and see the advantages in this sort of living with perhaps communal play space—but, you know, really innovative, interesting buildings to live in that are also energy efficient. So, I do think, in terms of urban design, there are a lot of opportunities here. But this statement, frankly, was a breath of fresh air and I’m very pleased that the Welsh Government is making some progress in these areas.

I’m very grateful for the positive contribution that the Member makes and thank him for his kind words. A couple of points, I would—. This was really quite difficult at the start of this process, because tradition is hard to break. We talked to the team and they said, ‘So, what are the parameters around innovation?’ which is sort of self-defeating. I said, ‘There are no parameters around innovation for the very issue of that. Let people come to us with options that are available.’ However, that in itself causes problems, because we’re awash with innovation now and at some point in time we’re going to have to pin down what is deemed as good in order to tackle the issues that the Member raises, particularly around the scale.

There are lots of added value, other than just building a home, from the things that we talked about in the statement and the Member raises: so, the environmentally friendly way that these modular units are built, the effectiveness of tolerance on wasting materials, et cetera, the skills associated with that, the made-in-Wales solution. And there’s something in this. When the big law firms or insurance firms are investing in large factories to build modular units, there’s something in that, and that’s why we should be getting into that space: a made-in-Wales modular solution actually that is a product of Wales, which could be global. Actually, some of our technology that we’ve seen across Wales is world leading, so I’m really encouraged by that. Working with Ken Skates and Julie James around skills, supply chain, all of that whole progression about delivering an end unit, is something that I’m really excited about.

The particular product that the Member turned to, homes as power stations, I think is a really clever, innovative solution. I’ve already met with the company and I’ve already said to them, ‘We want a stake in this.’ Not because we’re being selfish about the Welsh public pound here, but actually the return on the energy that comes back—. Yes, that may be good for the estate, and good for the tenant of the property, but it could be used as a revenue cost for developing more homes for the future. So, this is a great way—an opportunity—of reinvesting the money created in housing for futureproofing a solution for the long term.

The cost is, of course, an interesting one at the moment, and I’m prepared to take risks. I said that in the statement. Some will flourish and some won’t because of various issues. We’ve got to take an approach for the whole lifetime of the home here. What I do know is that energy prices will continue to increase, so we’ve got to do something about tackling those issues. Therefore, a positive energy developing property is something that we should think about investing in. I’ve been very clear to my team. We are going to be making about £1.4 billion worth of investment in the housing stock over this term of Government. I am saying to them, ‘At what point in time should I say that half of that or a quarter of that should be only investing in and developing this type of property?’ And when I’ve got that innovation project and product that is good for Wales, good for people, do I then—or the Minister at that point in time—say, ‘As we do with the private sector, we only build six types of properties, from starter homes to mansions, if you like, but this is what it is: it is a power house. If you want social housing grant, we will only pay out on that’? I think that’s brave, but it’s the only way that, (1) we are going to get scale, and (2) it’s deliverable in Wales for the people of Wales. I think that’s the right thing to do; it’s just finding the right project. This will give us the opportunity to deliver on that.

I think that what is really important is that, collectively, we send the message out that we are not talking about the prefab of the 1960s. We are talking about a very different style at the very high technical end of modular units that are being developed for people. A colleague of mine from a local authority said to me—. His words were, ‘Sargey, you’re not going to put my grandmother in a metal box, are you?’ I said, ‘Technically, yes, but it’s not actually a metal box as such.’ He said, ‘I’ll work with you on this.’ Actually, I’ve seen some of these projects. They are amazing. You would never know that they were modular built. They look traditional. So, we have got a clever Wales, and long may it continue. This project is just the start of something good moving forward.

We, of course, welcome any progress with the work of developing low-carbon homes, and we welcome the statement, certainly. But we see it as part of the attempt to build 20,000 affordable homes, and it would be good to have a statement in the near future about how that strategy is coming forward in its entirety, as it were. We’ve been talking about ending the right to buy, but hand in hand with that we have to be building new homes in Wales in order to respond to the crisis that is facing us.

This is a statement that gives information on the plans that have been funded from the innovative homes fund. We hear that 22 schemes out of the 35 bids are to be funded, and that there will be 276 new homes built. I look forward to seeing the full list of successful schemes on the internet. As you said, by the end of this week, that will be available. You mention in your statement four of these schemes: the homes as power stations project, the modular homes scheme for older people and homes using local timber. You might be interested in the report of the climate change committee that I was a member of until very recently, which emphasises that we need to move urgently to growing much more timber in Wales for future homes as well as for climate change reasons. I have a particular interest in the fourth scheme. It doesn’t sound like something very interesting or exciting—making homes from recycled containers—but I’m very willing to be enlightened on that, and it would be interesting to see how appropriate those homes will be for the needs of our modern families.

I have a few questions. Of those 22 successful schemes, are they going to lead to schemes in all corners of Wales? It would be good to see how those 22 schemes are distributed on the map, as it were, because it’s important to experiment in various locations that have different challenges, including those rural areas, of course, where, perhaps, the uptake of homes of this kind isn’t, on the first sight, going to be that attractive. But we do need to work with those challenges in those rural areas, as well as in more urban areas.

You talk about 276 low-carbon homes—that’s excellent—out of a target of 20,000 affordable homes. Do you think that this is a sufficiently high percentage? That is, how many pilots are needed? These are all pilot schemes. But there are many lessons to be learnt from other countries in this area, and the technology isn’t that new; a lot of trialling has already been done. So, could the percentage not have been a little bit more ambitious?

You commit £19 million for these 22 schemes this year, which is £9 million more than was intended. I would like to know how much funding will be in the pot for the next year, and where did that additional £9 million come from within the budget. What will happen after this test period? How will you be moving on to ensure a significantly higher supply of low-carbon homes in Wales once this test period comes to an end? What’s the long-term plan here? What are the targets and what’s the vision for the destination here? Finally, have you considered using the land transaction tax—the stamp duty—to encourage the construction of low-carbon housing? Thank you.

I’m grateful for the Member’s comments. As soon as data is available with regard to a position statement on the 20,000 homes, I will come to the Assembly and let Members know about that. We are having great success already, but I will give the further details as soon as they become available to me.

The number of homes under this scheme is 276. This is twice the number that we thought we were going to be able to deliver based on an assessment at the start of the programme. So, I think that, in terms of ambition, doubling the number is pretty effective. So, the Member will maybe want to consider those comments.

The issue of timber is—. The Member is right to raise the issue of timber. The problem of Welsh timber traditionally is that it hasn’t been the right grade of timber for construction. It has been used in assisting construction, but not as a main material. The timber industry in Wales has developed significantly over the last few years and we now have good quality timber available for building whole units. Therefore, the trials that we are using in this space are something that we will be looking at with interest. It has a great opportunity of reducing carbon and the carbon footprint of the whole home framework.

On containers, there will be some critics of my decision to use ex-shipping containers as modular units for accommodation. We have a housing crisis in our communities, and we have people sleeping on the streets. I want a safe, warm home for an individual on a temporary basis, and the container solutions are ones that offer that. They are used across the world. If Members go to the Docklands in London, they will see a village made up of them. Actually, what we are trying to prove with the concept is actually that potentially more well-off individuals will see this as a great yuppie-esque style living accommodation, and to prove that, actually, it’s not about putting anybody into this; there are people who want to pay money to live in these places. So, I think you should bear with us and see if this actually works and what that lived-in experience is like. If it’s not the right thing to do, then we should stop that, but I don’t think it’s worthy of not trying, and I will be happy to take the criticism alongside of that.

The Member asked for detail of where schemes lie. I can assure the Member there are schemes the length and breadth of Wales, from Anglesey across over to Flintshire, from Monmouthshire over to Pembrokeshire, and bits in between. There are 22 projects and the Member will have further details, on the website, later this week. It’s unfortunate that we have been unable to finalise details with the companies and successful programmes in order to give Members details today, but I can assure you that, as soon as we do have that, by the end of the week, it will be on the website for Members.

Cabinet Secretary, I’m completely delighted by your statement, and also welcome very much the statement by David Melding, a forward-thinking Conservative, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron.

I just want to delve a little bit into history as to why we are where we are today, because it was Gordon Brown in 2006, when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who announced a UK-wide zero-carbon homes policy, and Britain was the first country to make such a commitment. It was going to make it impossible for any new homes that were built from 2016 to not be ones that were also generating as much energy on site as they would use in heating, hot water, lighting and ventilation. So, it was a fantastic, forward-thinking policy with a green pack that set out the regulatory framework to help to achieve the zero-carbon emissions that we needed to deliver in housing by 2016 and non-domestic buildings by 2019. So, it was tragic that George Osborne axed both these programmes back in July 2015 in a footnote, in the infamous productivity plan attached to his summer budget statement. The head of the UK Green Building Council at the time announced it was the death knell for zero-carbon homes policy. So, I really congratulate the Cabinet Secretary for reinvigorating that policy, because that is absolutely what we need to be doing.

We have a huge housing crisis, as the Cabinet Secretary has already said, and we have to bear in mind that 80 per cent of the houses that people will be living in in 2050 have already been built. So, we don’t need to be building any more inadequate homes that we’re going to have to retrofit. We need to put a stop to that and build the sort of homes that the Cabinet Secretary has outlined. So, I really welcome the idea of working with timber growers, and I hope the Cabinet Secretary is aware of the work of Woodknowledge Wales, where growers, constructors and architects are working together to produce these innovative homes that people are already living in, and we know they work.

On the recycled containers, I haven’t yet visited one, and I look forward to doing so, but I absolutely agree that living in a recycled container is an awful lot better than sleeping on the street, or sofa surfing on people’s sofas. This will give people privacy and dignity and enable them to rebuild their lives and move on to larger housing to suit their circumstances. But you rightly point out that the yuppies in London are already living in these homes, because they can’t afford even a garden shed with ridiculous London prices.

I want to challenge us to address the stranglehold that the big five house builders have on house building in the private sector, because it has already been shown that modular housing can be built within the envelope of what social housing budgets are likely to be—£110,000 for a three-bedroomed home. So, if they can do it, why is it that the big five are continuing to insist that they must have 25 per cent return on their profit before they’ll even get out of bed in the morning?

I think that that needs to change, and we need to change that conversation, and this enables us to demonstrate to them yet again that there are perfectly excellent solutions out there already to allow us to tackle the housing problem in a way that will deliver for people really warm, affordable homes that they’ll be proud to live in.

I’m grateful for the Member’s contribution. She has for many years championed the issue of sustainable housing and I’m grateful for her comments.

We do have to break the tradition, and we have to break the myth, of why we have to have the same old type of home being built, in Wales or anywhere else. I also recognise that while we are developing new products, we have to have a transition time of giving people the ability to retrain and reskill—the option of the traditional skills of bricklaying may be now in a factory creating modular units. So, we have to help the industry do that. Julie James and Ken Skates have been very helpful with some of the employability issues around that.

The issue of pressures the Member talked about, particularly around homelessness—it’s one that is here and now. We have to do something and that’s why a quick solution, such as the modular steel units—it’s something that we can deliver very quickly and is usually around a 12-week programme to get from order to delivery. I visited a programme in Newport where a church group was working with homeless young people who were refurbishing containers into homes, which they were then going to be using as accommodation. So, there was a training and support mechanism around that as well, and supported living. So, it was quite an acute project. These are some of the ideas that I’ve come across on my desk and some things that we will be taking forward.

The big question is—and it’s a fundamental one for any Minister that needs to take decisions on this—what are we doing and what are we building for the future? The issue of the pressures of energy costs, the pressures on the environment and the pressures of global warming are all things that we should think about and make a clever investment now that will last 40 years. It’s making the right judgment. It may cost us a little bit more but it’s the right thing to do, and that’s what I will continue to do.

But I think the issue of scale will reduce the costs significantly and therefore will be competitive to the traditional build, and something that I think—as I said earlier to colleagues, that whole made-in-Wales approach is something that we could lead the market on if we get this right.

Thanks to the Minister for today’s statement. I think these are interesting ideas and very worthy of exploration and I think there has been a good vision that we’ve seen today, so I hope that a lot of this innovation does come off. As the Minister said, there is a pressing need for more housing, and hopefully the innovative housing programme will help to address that. But of course we also need to ensure that it is good-quality housing and also that, ultimately, it is affordable. I appreciate that there’s a lot of risk involved with innovation, as the Minister stated, so we understand that not all of the different new ideas are going to take off, but it’s good that we investigate them.

The Minister stated that there is a wide array of innovative housing products that are coming on to the market, and he stated that a lot of it is now very good quality, so that is encouraging. I think there is a good idea, as the Minister suggested, of linking an innovative housing programme with training a new generation of construction workers, bearing in mind that this type of housing may take off, there may be less need for bricklayers, as you suggested. That’s possibly quite futuristic—I’m not sure how specifically we can train people for now. If the Minister does have any more to say on that I’d be interested to hear it, and how it’s going to link up with Ken Skates’s ideas of employability and apprenticeships and so on. But that may be for a future statement, because I appreciate it’s early days for the innovative housing programme.

Now, there are going to be 276 homes built in the first tranche. Given that there are risks in the innovation, as you stated, what safeguards do we have against the spiralling costs in the building—potential spiralling costs—to ensure that we do actually get close to 276 homes and that they do offer good value for money.

There are other issues over planning. David Melding mentioned the environment committee and our trip to SOLCER house, which is an example of a pioneer home as a power station. It was very interesting going around and looking at SOLCER house, but we were told that there was a housing association that are planning a similarly pioneering development and they were involved in a dispute with the local authority. I can’t remember the specifics—I have a feeling it might have been Bridgend that was the authority, but I might be wrong in that. But the one question is: what discussions has the Minister has with the environment Secretary, who is responsible for planning, about tackling possible problems over planning constraints and making it easier for the housing associations to get the planning permission to develop these kind of projects in future? There’s also the issue of the private sector. The Minister mentioned that he’s planning to extend the scheme to the private sector next year, which will be—. That’s another interesting development to look forward to. So, there’s also an issue of individuals who might want to build their own sustainable homes in future because there is a remarkable statistic that in Austria, 80 per cent of new properties are self-built. In the UK, it’s only 8 per cent. So, I wonder, in the future, what steps does the Minister think the Welsh Government might be able to take to boost this sector in terms of individuals who want to go ahead with this kind of innovative project of their own?

And one last point: obviously, there’s an environmentally friendly theme underlying all this, so has any thought been given to prioritising the development of brownfield sites for the innovative housing projects? Thanks.

I’m grateful for the Member’s questions, but I would ask the Member to have some ambition, have some enthusiasm, in terms of this great programme that we’re launching today. This is—. You’ve even got the Conservatives telling us we’re doing a good job—there’s something quite amiss there. [Laughter.] The fact is, £10 million on innovation for new, quality housing is something that we should all be celebrating, party politics aside. I’ll just address some of the points that the Member raised. We’re not building poor housing here, we are trialling different types of housing, and there is a measured risk to that, and there will be due diligence around all of those projects. Yes, some will be better than others, but we have to accept that some will be taken forward and for some—maybe it was their chance to flourish but it didn’t work for the environment they’re in.

In terms of the skills agenda, I’ve worked with Ken Skates and Julie James around what the employability pathway and supply chains may look like in terms of the projects that we are bringing forward. There is a national shortage of some of those hard skills already, so the carpentry, plumbing and traditional skills. Some of these can be taken out of that traditional method of delivery and taken into the factory. What we saw—. I visited a site yesterday where a lot of these jobs are done internally, and just dropped on site—it’s a fantastic, healthy way to do business, and the quality of these buildings are very good indeed.

In terms of the partnership approach, we’ve had discussions with local authorities, RSLs, the Council of Mortgage Lenders on the important factors, and whether people will pay for these and how that will develop in the future is one that we’ve welcomed dialogue on. This all adds strength to the bidding process.

The issue of planning permission is an interesting one. With some of these module units, what’s been successful is that some of the sites that we’ll be using in this are ex-brownfield garage sites from local authorities. So, it will be a case of demolishing or clearing the land that the unused garages were on and then just craning in some modular units for homes for people to live in. So, there are—. With limited planning permission—. So, we have looked at the suite of tools that are needed to deliver this.

I must say, Llywydd, I forgot to answer a question earlier on about finance to the Member from Plaid with regard to the fact that there is £10 million this year, with a guaranteed £10 million next year, with potential for more if the programme develops into something that we feel is worthy of further investment.

Thank you very much. If the next two speakers can ask questions and the Cabinet Secretary can answer them fairly quickly we’ll finish on time. So, it’s in your hands. Vikki Howells.

Diolch, Dirprwy Llywydd, and thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your statement today. It’s really positive to hear about the response to your call for bids, and I look forward to the release of the full list of successful applicants. I know you can’t share too many details yet, but it’s really good to hear about the inclusion of small-scale foundational businesses in this programme, which fits in perfectly with the Better Jobs, Closer to Home pilot and the references to supporting the foundational economy in ‘Our Valleys, Our Future’ and ‘Prosperity for All’. So, my first question is: to what extent did you prioritise bids from smaller, home-grown companies who employ local people and therefore return their profits to the local economy? And, secondly, I’m sure you’ll have heard the comments today from Community Housing Cymru about the flawed UK Government local housing allowance cap. How has this influenced your policy, especially in regard to those parts of Wales that may have been hardest hit, or may be hardest hit by the Department for Work and Pensions’s policy changes?

I’m grateful for the Member’s question and thank her for her positive contribution. Two important points: the financing of this has been part of the business models that have been brought forward to us. We are trialling new examples of how, from investment to delivery of a model, that’s coming out. We’ve broken the traditional mould and we’re trying to break the myth of why we should do it like this. There is some risk in that, but we’re prepared to take that risk because we can deliver housing solutions quickly. In terms of the LHA point, the Member is absolutely right: there is a huge amount of people at risk because of welfare reform in the UK—the under-35s particularly. The sector is responding to that by the ability to create smaller units that are appropriate to live in. We are helping them. There will be some projects, when the Member sees the list, that, (1), she will be enthusiastic about, I believe, because of her constituency interest, but also the issue of the under-35s. There are some very specific projects around helping and supporting individuals in that space.

Thank you. And finally, Jeremy Miles.

Diolch, Dirprwy Llywydd. The statement that the Cabinet Secretary’s made is very welcome. In particular, I refer to the Homes as Power Stations project in my own constituency, which is a very exciting development. The future of this sector as a modular manufacturing sector in Wales will probably be characterised by a lot of small and medium-sized enterprise involvement that will require a specific approach in policy terms from the Government around procurement and around supply chain finance in particular. There needs to be a different way of financing some of the construction projects that don’t mean that SMEs have to carry stock on their books, which they can’t afford to do in the long term. So, I hope there’ll be an opportunity in the work that he does to explore some of those potential obstacles to make sure that we can grow that SME construction sector in the modular construction area in Wales.

Two observations I’d welcome from him, firstly in relation to the point he’s just made about small-scale homes and the impact on welfare and the welfare regime. Has he also considered the possibility of modular housing where it’s possible over the lifetime of a property to change the design of that property so that it’s available for different types of family unit over the lifetime of the property, which particularly can address some of the bedroom tax pressures? And does he also think that there is the potential here, given the focus he’s now giving on modular housing, to move towards a housing-first policy in relation to tackling homelessness generally?

Really important questions raised by the Member. The Member will be aware from the statement that we issued a bidding programme around the property development fund for SMEs across Wales, which is now £30 million for giving financial fluidity to the programme. Some of the developments that we are taking forward are box-based solutions, so movable walls and doors so it works for today and we can change it tomorrow. Again, it’s a clever innovation by housing associations who have thought about this clever opportunity, and we hope that we’ve been able to support them in the development of the schemes that we’re taking forward.

What if today’s the start of something that changes and breaks the model of traditional house development, home development, because in Wales we can be clever and we are being clever with the projects that have come forward? For me, and even David Melding—an exciting day for Wales and exciting day for housing across Wales, and we should celebrate the fact that £10 million today is available for projects that will be seen across all of our constituencies, delivering for people who are in need.

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary.