Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services – in the Senedd at 2:27 pm on 11 July 2018.
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.