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.