Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:56 pm on 21 November 2017.
LDPs have to be up to date. The difficulty of running a local authority is that if any local authority has a development plan where the five-year housing supply is no longer relevant, they are at risk of speculative housing developments, and it is hugely important that there is a development plan in place. But his point is well made. It is hugely important that there is a proper balance between houses and the availability of housing according to what people can afford. That's why, of course, local authorities can retain the money and build new council homes, following the successful exit of the housing revenue accounts subsidy system, so that local authorities can build council houses again. We have the affordable housing grant, of course, which looks to help people to get accommodation that is affordable to them, and, of course, there's making sure that people don't become homeless in the first place—Supporting People is an example of that. We have to make sure—and we've been successful in doing that—that people don't actually become homeless. But it is right that local authorities should be aware, as they develop their development plans, of the need to secure the right balance of housing; they can't all just be housing at one end of the market—that's true.