Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:17 pm on 24 October 2018.
Thanks to the committee Chairman for bringing today's debate. Mike Hedges raised the issue of how much regulation we need in this part of the housing market, and of course we have to be careful not to overregulate, but I think he made a good case that we need a certain level of regulation to deal with the issue of old houses and their lack of energy efficiency. So, low-carbon housing is one way in which we can do that. Retrofitting is going to be a necessary part of the programme, as Mike Hedges pointed out, and we do need quality assurance, if we're going to bring in a retrofitting programme, to avoid problems that we've had in the past with cowboy contractors entering the market, as we saw with cavity wall insulation. So, we do have to be careful that we don't repeat mistakes that have been made in the past.
Training is an issue. As Mike pointed out, we did have people that were involved in the inquiry raising issues about training. Now, new skills will be needed in the production of low-carbon homes in the future, because the sorts of skills that you need to build these are not traditional construction skills. Further education colleges could offer these kinds of courses. We heard evidence from witnesses stating this. But, of course, we need to know that there will be a market for these skills going forward, and we need to have some assurances that there will be, therefore, some kind of Government aid for the low-carbon housing schemes. Planning issues also arose in the inquiry. There was an issue raised about retrofitted walls in particular, because we were told that retrofitted walls, under a strict interpretation of planning rules—. They're not supposed to require planning permission, but we were told it's amazing how often planning inspectors decide that retrofitted walls do need planning consent, and it was suggested that this may be part of a system of local councils, who are allowed to charge their own planning fees, deciding to charge people for different things that, strictly speaking, they didn't need to be charged for, in order to raise extra revenue for their own cash-strapped local authority. I don't know how real an issue that is, but it was raised by a couple of people, so it's probably worthy of investigation, that.
The issue of accepting recommendations in principle: yes, not a very good practice, which seems to be becoming more and more widespread with the Welsh Government. But other Members have— they've made their feelings known on that, and I'm very glad that Mike Hedges did as well, and that he continues to show strong independence of mind as the Chairman of the committee. Diolch yn fawr iawn.