2. What advice does the Welsh Government provide to local authorities and other housing partners to support small and medium sized house building enterprises? OAQ53260

The Welsh Government has a strong track record in supporting small and medium-sized house building enterprises. We provide support directly and, where possible, provide advice to local authorities and other housing partners.

I thank the Minister very much for that answer. My question partly follows on from the previous question, curiously. Her predecessor announced the £40 million of funding that, because it will quadruple, goes up to £160 million because it's recycled to SMEs over 17 years to help them build more homes in Wales, and I'm really interested in how that is going to be analysed and granulated so that I can see, for example, if not in Ogmore, in the Bridgend area, or even in the Mid Glamorgan area, exactly what effect that is having over time. Now, I know it's still fairly recent, and the announcement was only made in Parc y Scarlets last year. As an Ospreys supporter, I don't mind that, that it was made in Parc y Scarlets. But it would be good, another 12 months down the line, to know what parcels of land have been used within my area or my region, who's been involved in it, and how many of our SMEs have actually been involved in it and have benefited as well, and how many jobs have been created. So, I wonder if we'll be able to do that, not right now, but maybe in 12 months or 24 months.

Yes, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be able to do that. I don't think we can do it at the moment, and, frankly, I haven't asked the question at that level of detail, but I will—I'm very happy to do so. But yes, we absolutely will have a record of where we've lent the money and on what sites, and clearly what we're looking to do here is two things simultaneously: we're looking to stimulate the SME sector in Wales, because at the moment we've got a switch around from 15 years ago, so we've got very large house builders doing most of the house building and not so many SMEs, and we'd very much like to see home-grown SMEs stepping into that space. We'd like to assist with that, and we know that the big problems that they face are around cash flow and with expertise. So, we're looking to put various forms of support in place, as I said. There's the property development fund, which is a facility loan from the development bank, for example, that would allow people to overcome their cash flow problems in circumstances they wouldn't otherwise be able to. We have the stalled sites fund, which has a range of other expertise around it to try and sort out some of the planning and infrastructure problems around that. I actually had a meeting only this morning with officials supporting the Infrastructure Commission for Wales around some of the things the commission might do around planning for infrastructure around Wales—all with a view to bringing forward more sites, to making them viable, and to making sure that our SME builders take advantage of it and, as I said in response to Mark Reckless, trying to be as innovative as possible in that space. So it's not a one-size-fits-all approach at all, it's just trying to fit the finance and the scheme around whoever comes forward to take advantage of it, with a view to getting as wide a range of people as possible to do either a self-build or a build of four or five houses that would be possible in a local community where the big house builders are just not interested.

Minister, the flight of SMEs from house building is a UK phenomenon, and it's really stark. In the 1980s, about 40 per cent of house building was conducted by the SME sector; it's as low as 10 per cent in some parts of the country now. We clearly need to turn this around, and I think you're right to look at the stalled sites. Welsh Government research in 2015 said there were nearly 400 such sites in Wales, and many of them, in fact, most of them, would be suitable for the SME sector. We really need to engage that sector. A lot of it is still there and they've gone to other types of building work, but part of the problem has been the unavailability of smaller sites for development, and they're often more efficient in terms of filling in in urban areas, and don't use vast tracts of greenfield land, for instance. So, I really think you're right to identify the stalled sites fund and see some progress in that area, and we need, obviously, if we're going to build at scale again, to re-engage the SME sector.

Yes, I completely agree with that. There are a number of policy areas that we're hoping to pull together in a more effective way—so, the housing issues that you've already mentioned and that I've mentioned in the previous two answers. But, we've just done the review of 'Planning Policy Wales' in the middle of December, and that shifts to a more place-based approach, in general, to the planning system.

So, we're looking for planning authorities to set locally determined targets for the delivery of housing on small sites, not just housing in general, and to maintain a register of suitable sites to enable the provision of housing by SMEs, registered social landlords and the custom and self-build sector—so that we smooth, if you like, some of the planning difficulties. As I said, we're looking to see that we can map the infrastructure that's already available, and map the infrastructure requirements, and see if we can fit the finance to that. It's exactly for that purpose: to enable the SME sector to be able to step into that place.

The last piece of that is the skills bit. So, we're also looking at how our apprenticeship programmes can facilitate shared apprenticeships, for example, across small builders and small firms because, often, a small firm struggles to give an apprentice the full range of—. But, the shared apprenticeship schemes have been very successful in that space. We need a lot more skill in that area, and as the Member will know, I share the FM's ambition to build social housing at some scale and pace. We need the SME sector to be able to step into that space as well.