Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:51 pm on 6 March 2019.
Diolch i bawb. Thanks to everybody for their contributions, especially those supporting the premise of our argument. I’m particularly grateful to the Minister for being so open to so many of our suggestions. I also welcome the suggestion on using the business rates system to tackle the problem of second homes. It’s not rocket science, and it’s actually something that could be done straight away.
Now, as well as increasing social housing, we propose that four other sources of supply, which our housing paper proposed, should be used to help increase housing stock in the private and social sectors, which I hope proves that we’re not being ideological about this.
Firstly, in recognition of the demographic challenges our health and social care system will face, we propose creating a Scandinavian-style social care villages system that will both provide social care and help people to live independently in suitable accommodation. Again, financing this is a good use of borrowing powers and it will also stimulate the foundational economy.
Secondly, we want to encourage more co-operative models of housing that, in particular, could be used as intermediate housing or housing for specific groups of people as part of a housing first-type model.
Thirdly, we should be encouraging smaller self-build and eco home-style developments, and kick-start what is only going to become a growing industry in the future. Again, it’s worth comparing and contrasting the quality and standards of housing in eco villages with the poor practices that we’ve seen in some new-build estates that have been referenced here this afternoon.
Finally, we want a far greater effort at bringing empty properties back into use. It appears that the Welsh Government has stopped requiring local authorities to report on this, because the most recent figures are for 2016, but they show 26,500 empty properties, and that the trend is going up. Yet, despite having the powers to impose council tax premiums on empty homes, as a result of the 2014 housing Act, our written questions found that only nine out of the 22 local authorities intend to apply a premium on empty homes. In fact, our written questions also showed that 14 local authorities—more than half—intend to provide a council tax discount to empty homes.
Now, the observant among you may have noticed that those sums add up to 23 local authorities, which either means that the Welsh Government has supplied incorrect information to us, or that there’s a local authority somewhere that is both giving a discount on empty homes and charging a premium on empty homes, which does seem somewhat strange, though legally possible, I suppose, depending on how long a property is empty. But it does illustrate that these powers are not being used, and our information is that, sometimes, officers aren’t even aware that they’re able to impose a council tax premium.
So, clearly, there’s a communication problem here and, clearly, there's a delivery problem as well, given how various housing Ministers have pledged to tackle this problem of empty homes. This is for a policy that doesn't cost any money and could be done tomorrow, so if the Government fails to achieve that, how on earth can it be trusted to deliver expensive and transformative projects?