The following amendments have been selected: amendment 1 in the name of Paul Davies, amendments 2 and 5 in the name of Caroline Jones and amendments 3 and 4 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2, 3, 4 and 5 will be deselected. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendment 3 will be deselected. If amendment 4 is agreed, amendment 5 will be deselected.

The next item on our agenda this afternoon is a debate on the affordable housing supply review, and I call on the Minister for Housing and Regeneration to move the motion. Rebecca Evans.

Motion NDM6764 Julie James

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1.  Recognises the importance of increasing the supply of affordable homes in Wales; and the Welsh Government’s commitment to doing so through its ambitious target of building 20,000 affordable homes during this term of Government—towards which good progress is being made.

2.  Recognises the Welsh Government is laying the groundwork for the prospect of building more affordable housing in the future, in response to a range of housing needs.

3.  Notes that the Welsh Government is working to create the conditions which drive innovation and improvements in terms of design, quality and energy efficiency in housing provision.

4. Notes the scope and agreed work streams of the affordable housing review.

Motion moved.

Thank you. Across Welsh Government we know how important housing is. Because of the impact it has on people's lives, we've made housing one of our five priority areas in 'Prosperity for All'. Our ambition is for everyone to live in a good-quality home that meets their needs and supports a healthy life.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

In the last term of Government, we achieved our target to build 10,000 affordable homes. We have committed to an ambitious target of delivering a further 20,000 affordable homes during this term of Government. Whilst it's early days and we can't afford to be complacent, I am confident that we can achieve this by continuing to work closely with partners involved in housing delivery.

We're making a record £1.7 billion investment in housing in this Assembly term towards the improvement of existing homes and the development of new homes. Last year alone, we invested £124 million in our social housing grant programme, and a capital equivalent of £55 million in our housing finance grant. In addition, we have protected social housing for future generations and for those who need it most, with the abolition of the right to buy and the right to acquire. 

We also acknowledge the importance of addressing a range of different housing needs. We know that what some people want is support to buy their own home. The Welsh Government now supports a range of products aimed at helping people access home ownership: an offer that was expanded at the end of February when I launched the Rent to Own—Wales and Shared Ownership—Wales schemes. Help to Buy—Wales has been a real success. By the end of March 2018, the scheme had supported the construction and sale of nearly 6,900 homes, and it will make a significant contribution to the delivery of our 20,000 affordable homes target.

We recognise that we need to continue investing in housing, as this has clear benefits for the economy, supporting the construction industry and the associated supply chain. I'm working with local housing authorities to help them start building new council homes at pace and scale for the first time in decades. I want local authorities to be more ambitious in this area. They have a vital role in identifying the need for additional housing, but they're also well placed to identify creative means of responding to this need and strengthening our communities.

One of our key challenges as a nation is reducing carbon across all sectors, and housing is no different. If we are to meet our climate change responsibilities, we need to take urgent steps to see how we can introduce low and zero-carbon homes into mainstream delivery as soon as possible. Our innovative housing programme has made a good start at looking at potential solutions to some of these challenges. I'm excited by some of the projects that we've already funded. This work has included developing a better understanding of the practical issues that surround off-site manufacturing and construction, and I look forward to seeing even bolder innovative designs and innovative ideas being presented in the coming year, and I'll have more to say to Members later in the year once these proposals have been scrutinised.

Since coming into post, I have had the chance to listen to many views on the opportunities we have to work together with partners to improve delivery in the housing sector. This has been fascinating, thought-provoking and has given me a real insight into some of the key challenges that we face. We have already achieved a lot, and we have ambitious targets for this term of Government, but as we look to the future I am clear that there's more that needs to be done to accelerate house building across all tenures.

We face particular challenges as we seek to respond to the growing need for affordable housing solutions. It is therefore important that we occasionally step back to consider whether we are taking the best approach possible, and whether we're using our resources to the greatest effect, especially given the continuing impact of austerity. This is why, in April, I announced a review of current arrangements across the affordable housing sector.

I've established an impressive independent panel to oversee this work. This will ensure that the review is transparent and robust, and the panel will recommend changes, as it sees fit, and I expect the panel to report by the end of April 2019. My intention is that the review should futureproof our housing supply policies and ensure that we're investing in the right programmes for the longer term, making the best use of our resources. The review panel is tasked with developing an independent view, but I've emphasised that its findings need to be fully informed by wide engagement with the housing organisations and all those who care about housing in Wales, and have an appreciation of our distinctive circumstances.

There is huge expertise and enthusiasm, as well as lots of energy and ideas, in the housing sector and amongst tenants, and it's important that we harness that if we are to find the best way forward. I'm pleased that we've been able to assemble a panel that offers such a strong cross-section of skills and expertise across the breadth of areas being considered by the review. As I've previously told the Chamber, the panel will be chaired by Lynn Pamment, Cardiff office senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The members bring real insight into housing supply issues and solutions both in Wales and further afield.

The panel are in the process of establishing a series of work stream areas. These work streams will involve members drawn from across the housing sector to inform the review's work. Detailed areas for investigation will include housing need, modern methods of construction, grant intervention rates, rent policy, and the use of public sector land. The full list of all the work streams identified by the panel was sent to all Assembly Members last week.

In addition to the work groups, the review panel will engage extensively with housing organisations involved in the delivery of affordable housing, as well as tenant groups. Panel members are anxious to contribute to events and conferences wherever possible. They also want to tap into the vast knowledge that we know exists in housing organisations, and amongst the people they represent.

So, I would urge Members also to engage with the review and to offer their opinions. I know that all parties in this Chamber are concerned about meeting housing needs. We all appreciate the challenge of getting the most out of our limited resources, and I hope everyone will take the opportunity to feed their views in and provide evidence for the panel to consider.

The review panel are in the process of issuing a call for evidence. This will be sent to a wide-ranging list of identified stakeholders and those believed to have an interest in the review. I know that the Chair is anxious that the review should provide a means for all those who wish to make a contribution to the discussion on this vital topic to have the opportunity to do so.

To close, Presiding Officer, I would add that the panel will certainly be looking very closely at the contributions in today's debate in terms of informing their way forward. Thank you.

I have selected the five amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2, 3, 4 and 5 will be deselected. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendment 3 will be deselected. And if amendment 4 is agreed, amendment 5 will be deselected. I call on David Melding to move amendment 1, tabled in the name of Paul Davies.

Amendment 1—Paul Davies

Delete all and replace with:

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1.  Recognises the importance of increasing the supply of affordable homes in Wales.

2. Notes the scope and agreed work streams of the affordable housing review.

3. Recognises the robustness of the late Professor Holmans’s alternative projection, 'Future Need and Demand for Housing in Wales', as a basis for predicting housing need.

4. Calls on the Welsh Government to replicate the ambition of Welsh housing associations, who are aiming to double their current rate of new house building to achieve 75,000 new affordable homes in Wales by 2036.

Amendment 1 moved.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I move the amendment in the name of Paul Davies. 15,841; 20,158; 17,236. These are not abstract numbers. Let me explain. In 1954, the number of house completions, or dwellings completed, by all agencies was 15,841: 13,197 of those were in the public sector, the largest number of houses ever built by the public sector. That was 1954. In 1967—and I will just finish this bit—20,158 dwellings were completed, with 10,936 in the public sector. In 1975, 17,236 dwellings were completed, with 8,336 in the public sector, although that year the private sector just outbuilt the public sector. I will give way if you've got a point to make.

Just for clarification: these figures are for Wales.

Yes, they are for Wales, as we are the Welsh Assembly, thank you. The question, I suppose, because of the scale that these show, is a good one to put, because of the numbers we have been routinely talking about in recent years—under both Labour and Conservative Governments, it has to be acknowledged. But it just shows you how much we need to raise our ambition.

Housing, affordable housing, ambition for housing provision: these are all areas of policy where we are simply failing in Wales at the moment and in the rest of the UK. I believe it would be a shameful blight on the record of all of us if we allow this to continue.

So, I do welcome to some extent the establishment of the affordable housing review. It could do useful work and get us to move on and approach the level of ambition that we need. I don't want to go over this old ground too much, but the target of 20,000 new affordable homes in a five-year programme is a fairly modest one. It may be a reasonable first step, but we need to have much more ambition during the 2020s—a time that we can reasonably now prepare for—than we've had in the past 20 years or more. So, I do think that we have to look at this in a very radical, profound way.

The best place to start is the late Professor Holmans report—commissioned by the Welsh Government and published in 2015—to which, as far as I know, the Welsh Government has never replied. So, I think one good thing for the review to start with would be your reply to the Holmans report, and I do hope that we can do that. The main reason I say that is, in the list of work streams and the scope of the review, the first work stream has the title, 'Understanding Housing Need.' This work stream states:

'The review will consider how we can improve our understanding of exactly how many homes are needed across Wales, in which areas, and which tenures are appropriate.'

I do wonder why you haven't looked at the Holmans report. I simply don't understand why we're going over such old ground again. We already have an excellent piece of work by the then world-leading expert in housing need, and that should be where we should start.

That report, let me remind you, argued clearly and directly that if future need and demand for housing in Wales is to be met, there needs to be a return to the rates of house building not seen for almost 20 years, and an increase in the rate of growth of affordable housing. The main estimate suggests a need to return to the kind of building rates that we last had in the early 1990s. That is to meet existing Welsh Government targets. That's not to meet the new ones, in terms of need. We're not building 7,000. We fall well short of 7,000 at the moment, whereas the actual target is 8,700. The alternative estimate, in Professor Holmans' work, implies that 12,000 additional units are needed a year. We've seen nothing on that scale since the 1970s. Again, that includes Conservative as well as Labour periods of Government.

Of course, the affordable housing supply review could provide a stimulus to improve public policy, perhaps by realistically looking at possible funding streams, and the need to build perhaps within the council sector again, and expanded in the rest of the social sector, as well as stimulating private house building. I see I'm already out of time, and this is a subject that really does animate me, because—. Let me just finish on this—I can't quite get through the rest of my speech; there's so much more data. But we should remember that, in the 1950s, they saw housing and the right to good housing as a basic right for all. It was up there with the right to decent healthcare. That's what we need again. As Community Housing Cymru have said,

'good housing is a basic right for all', and I do commend them for their increased ambition. I hope we can go even further than the 75,000 affordable homes they want to see built by 2036 in the sector.

Quite simply, our ambition—and this should unite us all; there's no need for partisanship here—our ambition should be homes for all. Thank you, Llywydd.

I call on Gareth Bennett to move amendments 2 and 5, tabled in the name of Caroline Jones. Gareth Bennett.

Amendment 2—Caroline Jones

In point 1, delete 'and the Welsh Government’s commitment to doing so through its ambitious target of building 20,000 affordable homes during this term of Government—towards which good progress is being made' and replace with 'and regrets that fewer than 3,000 additional affordable homes have been delivered in each of the last six years for which statistics are available'.

Amendment 5—Caroline Jones

Insert as new point after point 3 and renumber accordingly:

Calls for the Welsh Government to accelerate the construction of modular housing in order to deliver additional affordable housing units at pace.

Amendments 2 and 5 moved.

Diolch, Llywydd, and I move our amendments. Thanks to the Minister for bringing today's debate.

I'm sure we all agree that affordable housing is an important subject, and we want to do what we can in the Assembly to make affordable housing available to more people in Wales. Looking at today's motion, we do oppose the Government's motion, because it is somewhat self-congratulatory, and we note that many of the people involved in the housing industry take the view that more does need to be done. We can't, therefore, agree with their point 1, which says that 'good progress is being made' towards the target of 20,000 affordable homes, since there is common agreement in the sector that the target needs to be much more ambitious. Our amendment 2 reflects that. Our amendment 5 proposes that more extensive use be made of modular housing. That would be one way in which new affordable housing units can be built and delivered quickly.

Other opposition parties have raised some valid points with their amendments, but, unfortunately, in order to push our amendments through, we are abstaining on them, because, if the other amendments pass, our amendments get deselected. That's just the way it's fallen today. In spite of that, I think all of the opposition parties can say that there is common ground in the notion that the Welsh Government need to be doing much more in this field.

On the subject of what the target should be, we do have this thorny issue of the Holmans target, which David Melding has raised again today. We tend to agree on this side that, with rising populations projected for the UK as a whole, which will affect us in Wales in our major towns and cities, like Newport, Cardiff, Swansea and Wrexham, we do need a higher target. So, we don't think the Welsh Government objective is ambitious enough to begin with. We know that the Welsh Government is pushing ahead with plans for shared ownership schemes, which can work up to a point. As I pointed out the last time we discussed this—and the Minister agreed with me on this point—even assisted mortgage schemes like Help to Buy are not always affordable for many people in Wales, even those working in full-time jobs. This is because Wales is something of a low-wage economy, and house price rises, as we know, are outstripping wage increases. So, ultimately, there is this basic problem of demand and supply, which leads to galloping house price increases. This means that assisted mortgage schemes will be of only limited assistance in achieving the Welsh Government's objectives for affordable housing.

To some extent, I think we have to adhere to the idea that housing is where you live. It doesn't have to be something that you own. We have to face the reality that more people in Wales today are moving into the private rented sector, and that many people will be living in the social housing sector. So, we also need to keep an eye on rents. An issue that has arisen is the issue that sometimes rents in the social housing sector may rise by more than they do in the private rented sector. I know the Minister has explained recently that there is an expert group advising on a new formula for setting rent increases in social housing, and I think that's good, but we do need to keep an eye on that issue of rising rents in the social housing sector.

Now, there are opportunities in housing and in house building. We know that one of the problems facing the house building sector is a lack of skills. Many people working in the construction sector are getting on in years. I believe there are some figures indicating that the average age of people employed in construction is around 53, and we need to ensure that enough younger people are encouraged to enter this industry. We have now to address the problem of training our own people to get involved in this sector. There are various strands that I think the Welsh Government can thread together, with the housing Minister working in concert with the skills Minister and also the Minister responsible for the Valleys initiative, which I was speaking on earlier today. I think a lot of these things are interconnected. I know that the housing Minister has been working with the Federation of Master Builders and other bodies on this issue. She's also praised the example of Melin Homes in Newport, with their apprenticeship schemes. And I think we need to encourage more firms to take up this good practice. The Federation of Small Businesses has done some recent research demonstrating that wages in the construction industry are, in the context of Wales, comparatively very good.

We can also encourage more women to enter the construction industry as well because, with modular housing, not all of the jobs require a great deal of brawn or physicality, an issue that Jenny Rathbone noted last time. I know that the Minister today mentioned off-site manufacturing and I think we do need to encourage more modular housing, as this is a quick way to encourage more affordable housing into Wales. Of course, we do have to ensure that high standards of quality are maintained at the same time.

We should also be encouraging more small and medium-sized enterprises to be able to move forward with their housing schemes, particularly infill sites, which Mike Hedges has advocated in the past. He probably will do again today. And I know that the Minister has mentioned the Wales property development fund specifically for SMEs to access finance and I think that idea needs to be developed. Thank you. 

I call on Bethan Sayed to move amendments 3 and 4, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Amendment 3—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Delete ‘ambitious’ from point 1.

Amendment 4—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Delete all after point 1 and replace with:

Notes that independent advice and analysis has demonstrated that 20,000 affordable homes over the course of this Assembly term will not meet current or future needs.

Calls on the Welsh Government to have a long-term plan for increasing the amount of affordable housing to meet the needs of local communities throughout Wales, recognising that this can be achieved in different ways.

Calls on all new social and council housing, where possible, to have solar panels installed, to ensure that tenants can benefit from lower energy bills.

Regrets that the number of empty homes in Wales has increased over recent years, despite the Welsh Government’s Houses into Homes scheme.

Notes the scope and agreed work streams of the affordable housing review.

Calls on the affordable housing review to examine the wider context of access to public services in new estates, noting that poor access to public services can significantly increase costs faced by people living in such estates, particularly those on a low income.

Calls on the review to include tenants groups and those in the private rented sector, so that they can inform the future social and rented housing landscape in Wales.

Amendments 3 and 4 moved.

Diolch. I'd like to thank the Welsh Government for bringing forward this debate today, because it is important that we analyse how this review is going to move forward and explore some of the current issues of affordable housing. I've been keen to be co-operative on the broader housing agenda as I feel that the housing Minister does share many of our concerns and I appreciate that she has made an effort to include us in her thinking on these issues. There will always be areas of disagreement, however, and I'm afraid that using the term 'ambitious' in the context of the Welsh Government's affordable housing strategies is one of those areas.

Firstly, there is broad understanding that 20,000 affordable homes over the course of this term isn't enough, with Community Housing Cymru noting last year that over 4,000 social housing units were needed alone each year in order to cope with the basic population rise. This, of course, does not cover the private housing market, which has been under increasing pressure, particularly over affordability issues.

I'm also concerned that there are difficulties with the Welsh Government's definition of what constitutes affordable. One of the biggest problems with the definition of 'affordable' and, therefore, what this Government considers success in building these homes, includes homes bought under schemes like Help to Buy. Only 75 per cent of properties bought under Help to Buy went to first-time buyers. A quarter went to those purchasing a different or upgraded home, meaning that, for a quarter of those purchasing under the scheme, they did not necessarily have affordability issues. A serious problem identified is that 2,277 of the homes bought under the scheme—a third of those bought—were for over £200,000 in value. And we know that that's quite a hefty sum. So, why are these homes included in affordable housing statistics? How can we possibly classify that amount as being affordable? Only 701 homes were purchased for less than £125,000—a figure that is still out of reach of many people.

In terms of the rented sector, intermediate rented housing is still out of reach of a lot of people, particularly those affected by welfare changes and cuts in recent years. So, I believe that this point of what constitutes affordability needs to be addressed in this review and a narrower, clearer definition established as to what constitutes affordable. When we don't have clear definitions, we won't begin to be able to realistically assess what we need to really tackle as part of this crisis.

We do note that the number of new social housing units per year is increasing but, when you consider the overall trend going back over the last 40 years, the numbers being completed are still low. We are on a par at the moment with the late 1990s in terms of annual completions. We've also had an increase in the number of empty homes, despite the Welsh Government's Houses into Homes scheme. There has, in fact, been an increase of around 5,000 in the number of—I was going to say naked—vacant properties in Wales since 2012-13. That would be interesting, wouldn't it? [Interruption.] That woke you all up, didn't it? It's clear to us and should be clear to everyone in this Senedd that, despite Welsh Government soundbites and good intentions, we are not anywhere near enough to setting a bold enough agenda in this area in terms of availability of houses in the social rented sector, and we don't yet have the right definitions laid down when it comes to even what constitutes affordability.

I'd like to briefly turn to some other aspects of affordability, which have been touched on by the Minister. Energy efficiency is a key component to what is affordable. It matters because an energy inefficient home can make it an unaffordable home too. This is recognised in the fact that the Welsh Government has the Arbed scheme, and other Governments across the UK have their own schemes, but it hasn't allocated the resources needed to fully upgrade social housing, and the targets for eliminating fuel poverty will not be met. Its efforts have been substantially less ambitious than in Scotland, and as such it's likely that some of the existing affordable housing stock is not affordable.

Social landlords have been adapting in different ways to this problem. We had a debate recently where we mentioned what's happening in Wrexham with regard to fitting of solar panels, but this is just one example. There needs to be much more. There is a problem across the UK when building new developments also, where we are not including accessibility to services of employment centres as part of our considerations, which is why I think we get opposition to many of these housing developments, particularly in rural areas.

The effects of austerity have meant less sustainable sites, less public transport options, and less services included as part of new developments. This not only makes it difficult for those on low incomes to build a sustainable and affordable life in a new home, but also makes it less acceptable to others in a local area where a new development is based.

In the time that I have left—. I would think we need to enhance on what we're doing in relation to tenants' rights, and I would like to see a Bill to that effect go forward in this Assembly. I think we are passing a lot of legislation in relation to housing but I'm not seeing enough on tenants' rights, and that obviously has a lot to do with reclassification, but I think that they need to be engaged much more. I've been going around lots of local housing associations and people do feel not as involved as they'd like to be in management fees and how they're determined, in the rent hikes that social landlords have placed upon them. So, I would urge the Minister in all of this to consider the rights of tenants to be at the heart of any decisions that are made as part of this ongoing review.

Housing is a basic need and a basic right. I think that is something that we really do need at the forefront of our minds every time we discuss housing. No week is complete without the need for more affordable housing being made clear to me by my constituents—in the last seven days, a family of four, including a disabled child, living in a one-bedroomed flat; someone who is effectively homeless, sofa surfing, using sofas in friends’ houses, as they currently have no fixed abode, where the next stop could be the street; a newly divorced woman who is finding it increasingly hard to pay the rent being charged by a private landlord. This is the reality of living in twenty-first century Wales. Each one is a personal tragedy. The sad thing is, if I was making this speech next week, I would be talking about three or four different cases of people with exactly the same housing need. How did we get here?

Thirty years ago, finding affordable housing was not a problem. You might not have got either a council house or a housing association house in your area of first choice, but accommodation was available. A number of things have happened, some of which we've had control over and some which we haven't. There has been a decrease in the size of households. There's been an increase in population. Both have put pressure on needing more accommodation.

We had a boom in the early 2000s, where people were being given 110 per cent mortgages, where we had steady economic growth. People thought everything was going to fine forever, until we reached the problem of the banking collapse. Within Britain, the average price of a house was £100,000 in the year 2000 and £225,000 in 2007, before the financial crash brought the boom to an end. This was unsustainable.

Will you give way?

Certainly.

Do you regret that the Welsh Government at the time ignored the warnings by the housing sector joined together campaign throughout the early 2000s that there would be a housing supply crisis if the Welsh Government didn't reverse its 70 per cent affordable housing cuts? That was long before the credit crunch and they ignored that—hence where we are today.

It was also before my time here. What I will say is that councils were continuing to sell council houses under the right to buy—and I'm sure Mark Isherwood regrets the sale of council houses. Until recently, councils were not building. Low-cost owner-occupier properties have become buy-to-rent properties. That's a real thing that's affected very many of my constituents—very many people who are on median earnings, who are working, cannot now afford to buy a house, when 25 or 30 years ago they'd have had no difficulty, because these have been mopped up by people who are buying to rent. 

It is in the interest of large house builders to build less than demand, because the opposite means that they will be left with unsold properties. Help to Buy increases the demand side, but does nothing for the supply side. The shortage of houses is not at the scale of the immediate post-war period. In 1945, we had houses lost to bombing, and we had large-scale slum clearance in the 1940s and 1950s. I'm not going to repeat what David Melding said, but I think he was making a really important point that building lots of houses and building a lot of public sector houses is not unique and it's not difficult. It's been done in the past. It was done by Labour and Conservative Governments, and in Britain as a whole council housing peaked under the Conservative Government of the 1950s. The 1959 Conservative manifesto was talking about how many council houses the Conservative Government were going to build.  

There was a lot of expansion. I was brought up in a council house on the outskirts of Swansea. Lots of council housing was built on what were then the outskirts of many towns and cities, which have probably been 'outskirted', if such a word exists, since then. We've had house price booms and busts, but these were post the 1960s. In the 1960s, 400,000 properties were built in Britain. Wales's equivalent would have been around 19,000 or 20,000. On quality, the standard that is usually talked about is the Parker Morris standard, which set what the size of houses should be. It said that it's better to build flats and houses that are too large, rather than too small. Imagine a builder saying that today.  

Affordable housing to meet the needs of the people of Wales needs more land released to small builders in plots below the local development plan threshold, including infill sites, and councils to be funded and empowered to build council houses again. Unless we start building council houses, there is no way I can possibly see us reaching the number of houses in the affordable sector that we need in Wales. More needs to be done to bring empty properties back into use. If doubling the council tax doesn't work, try quadrupling it. There must be some point on the council tax amount that they pay where people will actually put those houses back into use.  Finally, I think that the key has got to be making sure that our policies are aimed at the supply side, not the demand side. Putting money into the demand side only pushes up prices. 

I'd like to focus my contribution on the various work streams that are in the affordable housing supply review document that we received, and I'm going to reflect on some things Mike Hedges said, some things Bethan Sayed said and some things David Melding said. 

First of all, housing need has been talked about, and the need, as Mike Hedges said, that exists below the demand curve means that we aren't, through the market mechanism, delivering those houses. So, it's quite nice to pick up where Mike Hedges left off. We need to build the right homes in the right places. If we leave it to the market mechanism, I don't think that's going to happen. I'll give you an example. There's a housing development in my constituency in Hendredenny that's been approved by the Government to build 260 homes. Of that, in the initial application, 60 of them are affordable, and I don't think that that affordability standard will match anything anybody in the north of my constituency would consider affordable. Of those 60, the number is likely to drop when the houses actually get built. So, if you're going to meet housing demand and housing need through the big house builders, it simply isn't going to happen; there needs to be different things happening. So, building in the south and the north are two very different issues. 

I've long argued that local development plans don't meet housing need at all anyway. I think they are subject to failure, and I think the fact that the Government has introduced this review demonstrates an acceptance of that fact, and also the fact that we're now talking about, as the First Minister said earlier, strategic development plans instead of local development plans. I think it demonstrates that we feel that the market mechanism isn't delivering what we need. Also, the fact that the Welsh Government is consulting on disapplying paragraph 6.2 of TAN 1 demonstrates the fact that we aren't delivering housing through the current model. 

If I could look at work stream 6 in the review paper, which talks about a construction supply chain involving modern methods of construction. Too often, the housing market, as I've said time and again, is dominated by the big four housing developers in Wales, and we aren't then building to need. I've cited the example in Cwm Calon estate in my constituency where the quality of build and the quality of maintenance, the quality of upkeep, is very, very poor. And I turn to an unlikely source to support my view of this cartel, this oligopoly that exists: the 'Independent Review of Build Out Rates' by Oliver Letwin MP. Now, he's no supporter of the market mechanism—and I can see Nick Ramsay nodding: 'Yeah, what a good source.' Well, let me just read to you what he says on page 26 of his report. This is June 2018:

'as I have argued, the major house builders are certainly “land banking”: they proceed on a large site...at a rate designed to protect their profits by constructing and selling homes only at a pace that matches the market’s capacity to absorb those homes at the prices determined by reference to the local...market'.

So, they are not rushing to build.

'The fact that a major house builder holds large amounts of land, is explained by the fact that the major house builders need to maintain a sustainable business...ensuring that they, rather than their competitors, hold as much of the land' as they are able, which will 'minimise market entry'.

What they're doing is holding land to maintain prices and prevent small firms from entering the market. That's classic large firm oligopoly behaviour, and as a socialist it disgusts me.

Well, it disgusts me as a capitalist.

And as a capitalist it disgusts David Melding. [Laughter.] So, I think that demonstrates that, even if you divide on ideological terms, you can still find some commonality of practice—some commonality of practice.

The traditional model of house building needs to change. I met in my surgery, just on Saturday morning, Cerianne Thorneycroft. She was born in Cardiff, she is a chartered architect and environmentalist, but she now lives in Gloucestershire. She is trying to get self-build off the ground, on which she then acts as a project manager. She said there's no need to have, in her model, any housing developer involved. There are no costs to be saved, no opportunities to be missed based on end-goal profit margins. In her email to me, she says, 'By self-build, I mean the future owners of the homes are involved from the start, before a site is even found.' So, those people are involved and she facilitates that. It's an innovative model. I think the Welsh Government should speak to Cerianne Thorneycroft and discuss with her this business called Green Roots E-cohaus. I think she's worth listening to.

And finally, with regard to work stream 9, existing powers the Welsh Government has, I think there are problems, which Bethan Sayed mentioned, with estate management charges, which we've debated. I think we need an independent property ombudsman in Wales and the adaption and strengthening of Rent Smart Wales as an arm's-length regulatory and accreditation body for those estate management companies, because what the estate management companies do is add charges on top of your mortgage, on top of your council tax, which increases unaffordability. There's nobody regulating them. Let me tell you: if we all wanted to get together and set up an estate management company tomorrow, we could and we could fleece people, but of course we wouldn't do that. But there are people out there who would, and I think we need a regulatory body. I believe, in line with work stream 9—I think the Welsh Government's got a tool there, with Rent Smart Wales, that could act as an arm's-length body, and the Association of Residential Managing Agents believes that that is entirely possible.

So, this is a great step for the Welsh Government, but I think that more needs to be done according to the thrust of this debate.

Labour is utterly failing Wales when it comes to housing. This motion claims that Labour are laying the groundwork for more affordable housing, but you only have to look at what's going on in Cardiff to see how absurd this is. Labour is simply selling out our city. Virtually every patch of greenfield in the west of the city and lots in the east are currently being built on, and these aren't affordable houses built by local companies; these are very expensive houses being built by massive, corporate housing developers. They don't care about our culture, our language or our way of life. Beautiful countryside around Danescourt is about to be lost. Dog walkers and runners won't be able to go there any more if we can't stop the building. We’ve got Regency Park being built; we’ve got the Ledger building going up in the new Central Quay development. Now, they could be anywhere, and they just don’t sound Welsh. Can we at least get a bit of recognition for the fact that Welsh people have lived here for thousands of years?

The houses are not really affordable either. Most first-time buyers would have no chance of finding £283,000 to buy a three-bedroomed house in Pentrebane. My constituents just simply can’t afford that, and they'll have to sit back and watch as wealthier people move in and live in the places where their children used to play in the fields. And you won’t be able to get a doctor’s appointment either—no new surgery places until 3,000 houses are built. Fifteen thousand extra cars on the road—please don’t talk to me about air pollution. No prospect of any decent public transport alternative.

Now, the suggestion and emotion that the Welsh Government is somehow driving housing efficiency is absurd also, because we all remember Labour completely backed down on efficiency targets for new houses, yet you’ve let the big, corporate developers do exactly as they wish. So, here’s some suggestions: do more about the long-term empty properties that blight our communities. Some have been empty for decades—decades—get them back in the market. Employ local people to renovate them. Everybody wins. I really don’t understand why councils don’t do such a very simple thing when it’s so obvious and so beneficial to the local economy. Why are we not developing brownfield sites? There’s such a surplus of employment land in south Wales, and yet these sites just remain there whilst we see the great green spaces being developed.

The new developments should also reflect Wales—Welsh place names for the new developments, and they should be fully bilingual. The houses there should be for local people and not to appeal to some international property markets. Labour have made such a mess of housing. We need local housing for local need so that local people can afford to move in to their communities. We need a policy for housing that’s localist in nature and that reflects the proud history of our country also. Diolch yn fawr.

It’s very difficult to disagree with David Melding. Good housing is a right for all, and so thought Nye Bevan. He was the one who drove the very high standards of social housing that we were blessed with in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Obviously, we would be well served to come back to those higher standards, because those houses have lasted the test of time and are sustainable.

Whilst I would agree that the Welsh Government has an ambitious housing programme, it is not sufficient to meet the needs, because for most people private housing is unaffordable and social housing is inadequate to meet the demand. I would agree with Hefin David that we cannot rely on the big six house builders to meet our needs. They simply aren’t going to build for the people who most need to be housed.

I just wanted to look at the programme of innovative housing that was approved by Carl Sargeant in October last year. There were 30 different projects awarded, some of them in Cardiff, and I think that this sort of project (a) tells us that there’s a lot of people out there who want to build innovative housing and (b) that this can be a way of providing housing that's flexible to meet people's needs and also is energy efficient. For example, Cardiff council is building eight energy-efficient family homes in the grounds of Greenfarm Hostel in Ely, which is currently going to be used as temporary accommodation while families wait for a more permanent housing solution. But they are going to be movable so that they can be relocated to another site if they no longer are needed for the purpose for which they're going to be built at the moment. 

It's indicative of how long it takes to get projects off the ground, because Cardiff council is absolutely behind what is their scheme. It's now been awarded planning permission, but they still haven't got people able to live in these projects. Nevertheless, using the shipping containers that this is based on is a way of getting quick housing in order to meet the desperate need that we have. There's a similar project being developed by Cadwyn Housing Association using sea containers for one and two-bedroomed homes with solar photovoltaics—12 homes here in Cardiff in Bute Street, on a vacant piece of land. These are excellent contributions to the desperate need, but clearly insufficient for the massive demand. 

You can see that there are many other projects around Wales: Pentre Solar, who already have some excellent housing in parts of Denbighshire, and they are now building homes using local timber in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. Other organisations are building to passive house standards, and these are the sorts of things we need. I just think we need to do an awful lot more of them. 

In terms of the land banking that's going on by the big house builders, I hope that the vacant land tax that the Welsh Government intends to bring in in the next session will help to deal with that. But meanwhile I think there are other things we might want to embrace as well. There's a Newport-based charity called Amazing Grace Spaces that is creating homes out of containers, and they've recently supplied Merthyr Valleys Homes with two fully equipped containers for families to live in, and they're in the process of converting four containers for Wrexham County Borough Council. So, I'm hoping that that sort of thing can be embraced. 

I was also particularly impressed with another organisations called Down to Earth, which is Swansea-based, and therefore hopefully the Minister knows about it. They're doing absolutely stunning housing—well, not housing, but building development, working with vulnerable people of one sort or another—some of them are asylum seekers, some of them are people with mental health issues—and it's helping to transform those people's lives. They are acquiring the skills to build the buildings that are going to enhance their well-being, and Down to Earth is now on the approved procurement list for the Welsh Government, so I'm hoping that health bodies will embrace projects like Down to Earth. 

I would urge the Minister to consider amending the building regulations to reinstate the zero-carbon standards introduced by Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and then abolished by George Osborne, because we cannot be building more homes that we then need to retrofit. But I look forward to hearing the Minister's response. 

I was going to concentrate my remarks on quality and energy efficiency. Earlier this year, I visited Swansea University's SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre, where I saw the UK's first energy-positive classroom, which demonstrates how buildings can be designed to be energy generators or home power stations. The classroom has got an integrated solar roof and battery storage, with solar heat collection on south-facing walls. It's only been there for six months, but during that time it has generated more energy than it has consumed. In the previous Assembly, I was pleased to visit, with other Members here, SOLCER house on Stormy Down, which I think was the first of its kind in Wales and cost £125,000 to build. I was extremely impressed by that and then even more impressed on visiting SPECIFIC in Swansea a few weeks ago.

I think there is a lot of this new, innovative way of building around, and there are pockets of very good design. Jenny Rathbone mentioned some of them in her contribution and has mentioned what Cardiff council is doing. When I was in Swansea University, they were telling me about this concept of being the powerhouse that is being designed into a new development in Neath by a housing association—Pobl, I believe. This development features solar roofs, shared battery storage, the potential for electric vehicle charging—because, obviously, in addressing the carbon issue, we've got to do something more about electric cars—water heating from a solar heat collector on south-facing walls, and waste heat being captured and recycled within the building, and all these combined technologies will also help to keep bills down, because these types of buildings as power stations are potentially able to cut fuel bills for households by £600 a year and reduce energy consumption by 60 per cent.

So, what can we do in Wales to ensure that we build these types of innovative technologies into new homes and, in particular, into affordable homes? Now, a few weeks ago, I met with one of the big private house builders who are building 2,200 homes in my constituency, and 30 per cent of them will be affordable homes, and we had a good discussion about community benefits that they will bring to the area—you know, cycle tracks, and bus tickets for people, and all those sorts of things—but they are not introducing any of this energy-generating technology, and they're building, you know, 2,200 homes, and it's part of a much bigger development, because the population in Cardiff is growing and we've got 8,000 people on the housing list, so we need these new homes. But I find it so dispiriting that there's going to be this widescale housing development where we ought to have this new technology built into every single one. Think what a difference that would make to the people who are going to live there—as I say, 30 per cent of them are planned to be affordable—think how it would help with their bills and how it would save the future—you know, the future generations. It would fit into all our policies, but all these houses are now going to be built in Cardiff, and my guess is that it's happening with all the big housing developers, that there's not any of this new technology being built in.

So, I wanted to ask the Minister, really, what we could do about this. What can we do to persuade the private house builders? They're the big private house builders. What can we do to persuade them to think of the future? And I would reinforce what Jenny Rathbone said about the building regulations. Obviously, we can influence them by means of changing the building regulations back to what was abolished. So, I wondered if the Minister could tell us whether there are any plans to look at the building regulations and what we can do to try to build for the future.

I call on the Minister for Housing and Regeneration to reply to the debate—Rebecca Evans.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to what I think has been a really helpful debate that will certainly set the panel off in the right direction in terms of understanding the concerns that there are in this Chamber. I'm going to try and respond to as many points as I possibly can, and I'll begin with the issues of modular and modern methods of construction, because that was raised by most Members who spoke in the debate. Of course, our innovative housing programme has already supported 21 different projects across Wales that are very much in the spirit of the kind of project that Julie Morgan has just described. In fact, that Neath project is one of our innovative housing programme projects that has been approved under last year's funding.

The window for applications for the current round of funding finishes this week. So, we are hoping to have lots more innovative ideas coming forward. So, new ideas, but also ideas that build on the programmes that we've already seen working over the last year as well. So, there's lots more opportunity to improve what we're doing there.

We really need to get to a point where this innovation is available to roll out at scale, and where it's commercially viable to ensure that it's in more houses on the kind of scale that Julie described. Part of that does involve looking at building regulations, which my colleague Lesley Griffiths has responsibility for. But I can confirm that building regulations Part L will be under review, which will commence later on this year. It was successful previously in terms of achieving an 8 per cent and 20 per cent reduction in carbon emissions against the 2010 standards for new housing and non-domestic buildings respectively. So, I think now is the time for us to consider how we can be even more ambitious in future.

The innovative housing programme also provides us with an opportunity to see what more we can do using Welsh timber. I think that's something that many of us within this Chamber, and certainly across Government, are very passionate about doing. But we're also aware that one of the challenges that we do have when we're talking about innovative housing is how we can ensure that the industry is ready to respond in terms of skills. Again, this was something that was brought up in the debate today.

There is a keenness to ensure that we are working genuinely across Government. So, the Valleys taskforce was mentioned, for example, and I can confirm that the Valleys taskforce is looking at a really exciting project involving what's called a plot shop, which Rhondda Cynon Taf is leading on behalf of the city region. That is about self-build and custom-build homes. The local authority will provide the land. It comes with the planning permission already there. The person who's interested in that self-build or custom building then chooses from a pattern book of homes, so even that's already done for them, and then they go ahead and build the house or instruct their builder to build to those standards. So, it's making self-build and custom-build as easy as they possibly can be, and it's something that we're keen to explore in the initial stages as part of the Valleys taskforce, but I think it has huge potential across Wales as well.

There was lots of interest in the debate in terms of support for SMEs. It was asked particularly how we can expand the support from the Wales property development fund. Well, we've already done that. That fund started off as a £10 million fund, but it was so popular amongst SMEs we've increased that fund now by a further £30 million. Let's not forget, that funding actually gets recycled over and over again, so there are many opportunities for SMEs to benefit from that, alongside the stalled sites fund, which we've introduced to free up some of those sites that, for whatever reason—it might be remediation or cash flow—may be a reason why SMEs haven't built on those sites as well. So, there's lots of exciting work going on in that particular sphere.

The issue of rent policy was raised in the debate, and that's one of the streams of work that the panel have identified as being important in terms of taking forward. When we're talking about rent policy, I'm always conscious that we need to be thinking about affordability for the tenants, and this is why this is our last year now of the five-year agreement that we've had with the RSLs in terms of setting rent policy. So we've asked Heriot-Watt University to advise us on potential models to take this forward, and I did ask them to undertake round-table work with tenants to understand affordability from their perspective, to make sure we are striking that right balance of doing the right thing by tenants, but, equally, by giving RSLs the funding that they need in order to continue to build homes, and particularly affordable homes and social homes, because this is all part of the wider picture. Everything in housing is interlinked in that kind of way.

The issue of the opportunity for local authorities to build at scale and pace—well, this is something that we're particularly passionate about driving forward within Welsh Government, and one of the ways we can do that is by looking at the local authority borrowing cap. We've got £17 million within the existing borrowing cap that is yet to be allocated, and we've been able to negotiate a £56 million uplift to the borrowing cap from the Treasury as well, so that means we have £73 million to allocate amongst local authorities. So, some final work is now going on with local authorities to draft the procedures to enable local housing authorities to be bidding for additional borrowing capacity, and we're doing that working in collaboration with housing and finance representatives of local housing authorities and the WLGA to agree the final documentation there.

We talked in the debate about housing need, and this was the first of the work streams that the panel identified as needing to be taken forward. There is a view that the Holmans report does need to be updated, because, as I understand it, some of the data used in that dates back to how households were forming back in the 1990s, so I think it is perfectly legitimate to be looking to update that piece of work in terms of informing the way forward, because this review is very much about the longer term. It's not about quick fixes to housing, it's about meeting long-term demand. [Interruption.] Yes, of course.

If they can build on the Holmans model and bring it up to date, that's fine, but it was published just three years ago. I think we can exaggerate how up-to-date you may feel it is.

As I say, some of the data within that does go back to the 1990s. I think whatever our data comes up with, whatever Holmans data comes up with, I think we can all agree that we need to be building more homes and that we want to be building more homes. So, we certainly have that area of commonality. 

I'll just finish on the issue of housing as a human right. This is something that various Members also mentioned within the debate today. Although Welsh Government can't legislate to make housing a human right, we can nonetheless very much recognise it and operate within the spirit of that. We do that in one way, for example, in our housing first principles. The first principle of those housing first principles is that housing is a human right, and that very much sets out the spirit in which we are pursuing our housing ambitions for Wales.

If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2, 3, 4 and 5 will be deselected. The proposal is to agree amendment 1. Does any Member object? [Objection.] We will defer voting under this item until voting time, which brings us to voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.