Small and Medium-sized House Building Enterprises

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 23 January 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:25, 23 January 2019

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.