2. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on support provided by local authorities to homeless people in Mid and West Wales? OAQ52495

The five local authorities in Mid and West Wales have successfully ended homelessness for 2,907 households and successfully prevented homelessness for 2,421 households since commencement of the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. We have provided over £900,000 directly to these local authorities last year for homelessness services in addition to the revenue support grant.

I thank the Minister for that informative reply. Unfortunately, homelessness in Wales has been rising in recent times. In 2016-17 the average for Wales as a whole was 82 people per 10,000 households. That's up from 52 in the previous year, although part of that increase may be explained by improved data collection. But nevertheless, it's still a worrying trend, and we all heard what the Cabinet Secretary said a moment ago, and I thought it was quite a moving response to the leader of Plaid Cymru. Carmarthenshire's figures are much higher than the national average—well over 100 in 10,000 designated homeless people.

I'm concerned to ask today about one aspect of this, which is that proportion of homeless people who are ex-armed forces veterans. A Northern Ireland veteran and chief executive of Veterans Association UK says there are 13,000 homeless veterans at a UK level, but the figure could be higher. We don't know what the figures might be for Wales, but it's fair to assume that there will be quite a number of veterans, ex-armed forces people who are sleeping rough and are homeless.

Carl Sargeant was a great friend to veterans and was responsible for significant improvements in provision for homeless veterans in particular, and I was wondering, therefore, whether the new Cabinet Secretary, who I know shares Carl's concerns, and you in particular, Minister, would consider going further than the code of guidance that was issued in 2016 and give social housing priority to ex-servicemen and women and those returning from active service as a step to ensuring that armed services personnel get the aftercare service they deserve.

I thank you very much for that question, and I completely agree with you about the worrying trend in terms of homelessness, particularly rough-sleeping. But I think we can be proud of the record that we do have in terms of prevention. I gave you some of the figures of the thousands of people who've had homelessness prevented and relieved in your region, and the figure now across Wales is 14,000 families, which I think is something to be celebrated. I know that other countries are looking at our legislation really carefully to see what they can learn from us. But, nonetheless, as long as there is homelessness, and as long as there is rough-sleeping, then clearly we need to be doing more work in partnership with those local authorities and our other partners.

In terms of support for people who are leaving the armed forces and for veterans, I know that the housing pathway has been in place and has had some success, but I've also been having some discussions recently with representatives of the Royal British Legion in terms of what more we can do to be supporting people who are veterans and also people leaving the armed forces, and also their families as well, because often they find themselves in difficult positions regarding housing, and potentially facing homelessness when divorces happen and so on. So, it is a complex picture, but one that we are very much engaged with and we are keen to see what more we can do to support veterans.

Minister, I would be keen to get a greater understanding of how local authorities measure and collate the reasons for homelessness. As you know, in my constituency, we have a case of a significant number of park home residents who, through the changes in law made by Welsh Government, are under threat of becoming homeless. Now, in response to a letter of mine, you said that you'd already had your officials to be in touch with Pembrokeshire County Council to talk about their potential needs if they become homeless. But I would like to make the point that these are very elderly people, they are very vulnerable, they've sunk all their life savings into buying their park home, and for them to face this at their time of life is really just a complete abrogation of duty all round. 

I wonder what further action you can take on this. I know you make the point, in your letter to me, that they have until 2019, the park home owners, to start making small adjustments, but some of these park homes are very, very finely balanced. Pembrokeshire may be the first place where this issue has raised its head, but I am concerned that, throughout Wales, there may be other park homes where they are on a knife edge in terms of their ability to carry on going. And if we're not careful, we will suddenly find a very vulnerable section of our society made homeless at a time of their lives when they are going to find it very, very difficult to manage that. I do think that we need to have a more proactive response to how we're going to handle the unintended consequences to the legislation that Welsh Government put in place.

I thank you very much for raising this issue. Of course, the legislation is not yet in place; it will be subject to a vote of the whole Assembly in the early part of next year. Of course, the approach I tried to take was a pragmatic approach, trying to be fair to both the park home owners and also the park home residents. I know that the Conservative Party was very much pressing the approach of completely abolishing the park home fees, which would've had a very different impact, I think, on park homes.

I'm quite limited in terms of what I'm able to say on this particular issue now, because I understand that there's potentially the intention to issue some court proceedings. So, I'll probably leave it there for today, and if I am able to say more, I'll write to you.