Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Plaid Cymru spokesperson—Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, the chief executive of the Huggard Centre has been quoted in the media as calling on people not to donate tents to rough sleepers. Do you agree with him?

It's a very, very difficult thing, isn't it, to know exactly what to do when you encounter somebody who is street homeless, and I do understand entirely the impulse that people have to do something immediate for somebody in those circumstances. The difficulty is that we know that, once people have a tent of that sort, they actually access other support services less well, and in a strange sort of way, you are enabling the inability of them to access other services that they need to support them into sustained housing. So, I would never want to criticise somebody who actually wants to help somebody who is street homeless, because your heart goes out to them as you walk through.

A better thing, though, is to engage with the StreetLife project and to bring them to the attention of the local authority. We do fund, in Cardiff and other places, a range of projects that will allow people to get into secure housing, including some of the housing first initiatives that allow people who wouldn't be able to cope with, for example, a large hostel to be able to get off the street and into sustainable housing. So, I'm not going to criticise somebody who wants to do that, but there are better ways of helping people who are street homeless. 

Well, I'm glad that you disagree with the sentiment, Minister, because it's got to be said that a lot of people are very disappointed with those remarks. They seem to suggest that rough sleeping is a lifestyle choice, as opposed to being a consequence of austerity. The homeless people quoted in the story explained that shelters for homeless people could actually be very dangerous, with a lack of security, lack of support, and substance use being rife. Many shelters too often end up warehousing people who have little supervision, and they can then go on to pose a problem for other people who are vulnerable, particularly women, who may have experienced violence.

Whilst we in Plaid Cymru want to ensure that houses are available for all homeless people, in the short term, shelters are still needed to prevent rough sleepers from freezing to death. So, will you commit today to reviewing the existing provision of shelters and hostels, with a view to removing funding from those shelters that are considered to be unsafe or inadequate, so that it can be used, and the funding can be targeted specifically to fund a variety of types of shelter that offer safe and supportive environments, rather than prop up organisations that still blame homeless people for not wanting to be warehoused?

We are looking to review the whole concept of priority. We've got a review ongoing at the moment, which I inherited from my predecessor in post, Rebecca Evans. I share entirely the sentiments that the Member is expressing there in terms of homelessness. It's a really complex problem, as she knows. I know that she knows that. I completely agree with the statement about warehousing and so on. It's completely unreasonable to expect somebody to go into a 15-bed hostel with people they don't know, leaving their pet outside, for example, and cope with their substance misuse as well. For some people, that will not be the answer. For others, it is the answer temporarily, because they can access other services. She's right: we need to make sure that we have a housing sector fit for purpose, with a proper pipeline—it's a terrible word, but you know what I mean—the proper path, that's a better word, a proper path of people to get their lives back, with all of the things that they need, and we know that a secure home is the absolute core of that. So, making sure that people get into that secure home as fast as possible, because a hostel, where it is suitable for somebody, will only ever be a temporary stopgap to getting them into that secure home, and, actually, making sure that secure home is a home that that person would actually choose for themselves, so they have some volition in it; they're not just pushed into something that they just would never have chosen. 

I visited a housing first project run by the Salvation Army in Cardiff last week—my time sense is very bad, as the Member knows; I think it was last week—and it was very impressive indeed. And I met a gentleman there who said that without the housing first strategy, he personally would never have got from his position—which was actually sleeping in a vehicle, but that's just as rough-sleeping as any other sort—into the permanent and secure housing he had because he would not have been able to access the hostel system. So, I agree entirely. We are looking to reassess our systems and our social housing grant, and see how it can best be used to get that proper path, and to actually build the housing, and assisted housing and sheltered housing that people need sometimes in order to be able to cope with the circumstances they find themselves in. 

And just to be absolutely clear and cover off all the bits she said: it's quite obvious that it's not something that somebody's choosing, it's just sometimes they're choosing it because the alternatives available to them are even worse. And that's a completely different use of the word 'choice'. 

Thank you for your full answer to that question, Minister. You will know that I've been an advocate for some time of the Welsh Government adopting all of the recommendations in the Crisis report, which outlines very clearly how we can end homelessness. However, we know that deaths among people who are homeless has risen by 24 per cent over the last five years, which isn't surprising given more people are homeless and facing that situation. So, tackling rough-sleeping is a national emergency, and we can't now wait for any more reviews or task and finish groups. So, will you therefore commit today to just adopting one of those recommendations, and that is: will you introduce a duty to provide immediate emergency accommodation to all those with nowhere safe to stay until priority need is abolished?

I wish that I could say just 'yes' to that—I am looking at it. I'm about to meet with Crisis to talk through where we are with that, and I've commissioned a brief for myself. Housing is a new area for me, and I've only been in post for however many weeks it is—six weeks or something. So, I've commissioned a brief for myself around that report to understand where we are at the moment, and to see what the way forward is. So, I'm going to stop short of committing it today, but I am very seriously looking to see what we can do in that space. 

Conservative spokesperson, Mark Isherwood. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Speaking after the 15 January publication of the Wales Audit Office report on the standards of financial management in community councils, the Welsh Government Trefnydd, or business organiser, said last week: 

'I know that the Minister clearly will be considering that report. Members will have the opportunity to question her on that in her question time next week.'

So, here goes. [Laughter.]

In the report, the auditor general called on the Welsh Government for urgent action. He said the current standard of financial management in Government remains disappointing, as too many town and community councils in this financial year had suffered qualified audit opinions, with the number of opinions doubling; that town and community councils continued to manage increasing sums of public money; that income continues to outstrip expenditure as reserves continue to increase; and the report concluded that a significant number of councils failed to comply with their statutory responsibilities for preparing their accounts and ensuring that proper arrangements are made for the statutory audit. 

Well, obviously, a number of days have elapsed since then. Have you reached any conclusions? What actions do you propose, and will you potentially revisit the reserved powers available to you under the 2011 Local Government (Wales) Measure, to introduce a statutory scheme for the accreditation of quality in community government?

It's a very interesting report. As you know, I've only been in post six weeks, so I haven't had the time, in any way, to fully—. I've skim-read it—that's the best I could do in the time I had available. I do, however, plan to read it thoroughly and to take it into account. I have a number of views of my own around town and community councils, which I'm happy to share with the Member, and with the Senedd in general. Some of them are excellent. We have examples across Wales of excellent town councils. Some of them are very far from that because they haven't got the governance strength, if you like, to be able to conduct themselves. That report is pointing that out. What we need to do is look to see whether we have the best fit for our town and community councils across Wales, whether their own communities support them, and what we can do to strengthen the governance arrangements. So, I find nothing that I disagree with, in a quick read of the report. I'm not yet in a position to respond fully to it. But I will tell the Member that I will be responding fully to it, and it raises a number of issues that I have myself personal concerns with, from previous experience in life.

Thank you. And of course when I was a community councillor it was an excellent community council—despite me, but nonetheless. Clearly, it's not a universal problem, but it's a serious enough problem to have been flagged up in this way. The independent review panel's final report on community and town councils in Wales was presented to your predecessor on 3 October. It had many recommendations, including the belief that there should be a comprehensive review of boundaries of community and town councils, without delay; it called upon all community and town councils to be working towards meeting a criteria to be able to exercise the general power of competence; a recommendation that community and town councils, or a representative of them, should become a statutorily invited participant on all public service boards. I'll just give one other example: it recommended that all clerks must hold or be working towards a professional qualification.

The Welsh Government's response, by your predecessor, took the form of a written statement on 30 November, and said that:

'Some of the issues identified…merit further consideration…I look forward to exploring these wider ranging and, in some cases, more contested ideas…I see this as a start of a conversation'.

How do you respond to the county councillors, after attending a workshop recently in north Wales, who wrote to me concerned that they had been advised, quote, that it seems the Welsh Government is now minded not to enact any legislation to implement any of the recommendations the IRP panel set out?

Well, I certainly haven't reached that conclusion. As I said to you, I haven't fully considered the recent WAO report. I have had slightly more time to consider the findings of the review. I think it's a good basis on which to move forward, and it certainly will inform our policy approach moving forward. There are a number of issues with town and community councils—around size and capacity and so on—which need to be looked at. In some areas of Wales, we don't have any town and community councils; in others, we have lots and lots. So, clearly, a one-size-fits-all approach has not grown up organically, and we need to have a look to see whether a one-size-fits-all approach is necessary, whether the boundaries—or whether, actually, a community that feels like a community is best represented in a much smaller council. But then that council wouldn't necessarily be well placed to have the resource to sit on, for example, a public services board. So, I just think it's impossible to respond to that by saying all community councils should have a place on a public services board, because, frankly, if they represent a tiny village somewhere, they're just not going to have the capacity to do that, although it may be a perfectly well-functioning council for all kinds of other reasons. So, I think we want to look very carefully at where we know there is good practice, what that might look like. But I think, actually, in the end, a community council should be what it says it is—a council for its community—and we should allow communities to make those choices in accordance with the local democracy that they ought to enjoy.

Well, this recommendation did include a representative of town and community councils, rather than necessarily—

I take the point the Member makes, but there are capacity issues there, and how you get that—

Allow the Member to finish his third question. You're overexcited in your new ministerial brief, it's obvious.

I beg your pardon.

Allow Mark Isherwood to continue.

I'm overcome by enthusiasm.

As you've heard mentioned by more than one Member in the Chamber, last November, Flintshire council launched its #BacktheAsk campaign in full council, and received full and unanimous cross-party support to, quote, take the fight down to the local government department in Cardiff to get a fair share of national funds. In a subsequent letter to the Welsh Government, he stated, alongside the chief executive, that disparity in formula-based funding inevitably creates a wide variation in the financial risks in councils in Wales, and Flintshire is at the extreme end. I've now been copied in on a series of e-mails between councillors of all parties—including the leader—where they're proposing to come down, as a cross-party group, here, to, quote,

'Take our budget grievances direct to Cardiff'.

And the e-mail from the leader states that he will be seeking a meeting with Ministers during that visit. Will you be willing to meet the Flintshire councillors who come down, to discuss their, quote, 'grievances', and see whether there are any grounds for addressing those together? 

I'm afraid I don't know the date on which they're planning to come down. If it's possible for me to meet them, I certainly will. However, I've just come from the finance sub-group of the partnership council for Wales this morning where the leader of Flintshire council was a participant. I think we had a very amicable and useful conversation there about the way that the formula works.

I specifically asked if there were any areas of the formula that people wanted to revisit. We're very open to revisiting the formula, as long as it produces the kinds of results that all of local government want to see, which is a fair and equitable distribution mechanism, which irons out some of the winners and losers, and, as you know, we fully fund the funding floor on the basis of that. That meeting went very well and there were no dissenting voices to that. The distribution sub-group that works on the formula will be meeting. Today's meeting was able to sign-off the work programme for the distribution sub-group. So, I don't really recognise the picture that the Member paints there.

There's obviously a completely different and perhaps misunderstanding issue around the size of the pot in the first place on which the distribution formula takes effect. And the size of the pot in the first place is, of course, driven by the austerity measures of the Conservative Government in the UK. So, we are only able to distribute the funds that we have available to us, and so I don't think that I'm going to be taking any lessons from the Member opposite about how to deal with the fund overall. But if he's talking about the distribution mechanism, then Aaron Shotton was one of the members of the group. The group was amicable, the Deputy Minister and I attended it, and we had a very useful meeting with local government. I was very grateful to them for the friendliness of their approach and no issues were raised with me of that sort. 

UKIP spokesperson, Gareth Bennett. 

Diolch, Llywydd. I'd like to welcome the Minister to her new post. Minister, I see that planning is now part of your portfolio, it wasn't previously included with the local government and housing department's responsibilities. I appreciate what you've said today that you've only been in office for six weeks, but do you have any initial thoughts on how well the planning process works in Wales? 

So, the reason that we've combined planning into this portfolio is that we can bring together as many of the levers that we have here in the Welsh Government to solve some of the endemic problems that we have with, for example, building sufficient housing or some infrastructure issues. I'm looking forward to being able to use all of those levers together in the process. We did just reissue 'Planning Policy Wales' back in December, so it's early days to see yet whether that's working effectively. 

Thank you for clarifying some of the reasons why the planning element has been brought into the department. I think, certainly from my point of view, it's probably useful. I always thought that planning was something that straddles a couple of different possible departments. But I always thought putting it together with housing would perhaps make things easier.

Of course, we do need to respond to housing need, but there is also an argument that the planning system isn't always responsive to local needs going the other way, when sometimes we have planning decisions made that have been rejected sometimes by local councils, but which then get approved by the planning inspector going against that. Now, obviously, I'm not going to bring in any specific cases, because you wouldn't be able to comment on them, but do you think that there is a valid argument that planning isn't responsive enough to local needs? 

So, the planning system is extremely complex, and the quasi-judicial nature of it makes it very difficult to comment on particular cases. The Member will be very well aware that at local authority level the local authority sets the local development plan, and they are enabled, through that plan, to take full account of the democratic wishes of the people they represent in setting out the spatial needs of their area, with a set of planning rules, part of which are 'Planning Policy Wales', but a set of planning rules stemming from various planning Acts at UK level, as well as at Welsh level.

We have a system of call-in to the Welsh Government, which works, because we take a very careful judicial view of whether the very specific criteria for call-in do or don't work. And where something is called in, it is handed over to professional inspectors for them to take a view on behalf of the Government. I think that works perfectly well. I do think there are capacity issues, sometimes, with the speed of that, but I don't see any reason to upend the legal part of that. However, it's very important that the policy parts of that interact correctly with it and that we set the policy agenda properly within which the quasi-judicial system can work.

Thanks for you assessment of how it works with the call-in system. I'm glad you've given your thoughts on that. How about the issue of how effective the local development plans are as a measure of setting local needs, because there has been criticism of the LDP system itself in recent years?

I think that the issue with the LDPs sometimes is the speed and the capacity with which local authorities are able to put them together. We have been working very closely with local authorities across Wales to ensure that they have the expertise to put the local development plans in place. It's something we are always keeping under review around the capacity to do that and the way that we have the agreements with the local authorities about the timescale for doing that.

I think personally that there's room for improvement in the liaison between ourselves and local authorities around how they structure their LDPs and what provision we help them with in order to accelerate some of those processes, because a local authority that doesn't have a local development plan in place will find real problems in controlling its development-control functions and being able to resist planning applications outwith its plan. So, it's not a good plan not to have a plan—sorry, that seems really obvious—but it isn't a good plan, and I think we could work with our local authorities better to accelerate that process.