Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:38 pm on 27 March 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:38, 27 March 2019

Yes, I share her ambition for a system that produces that. I don't think we need a full comprehensive review; we have a large number of reviews ongoing, actually. We have the affordable homes review—I met with the chair only yesterday morning; my time sense is not very good, it might have been this morning—certainly very recently. I had a very good conversation with her around what we're expecting her to come back with with her review. I've met with the decarbonisation working group, which my colleague Lesley has also met with, to talk about some of the problems with retrofitting our current housing stock, which is a real issue for decarbonising—bringing those up to standard; about the continuation of the Welsh housing quality standard into its second phase, to raise the standard of carbon outputs, energy efficiency, utility and so on in the existing housing stock. We're at about 91 per cent of housing that meets the current Welsh housing quality standard at the moment, so we're nearly at the point where we'll be able to say that we've reached the first stage of that.

There are a number of other things. We are looking to raise the bar for what kind of houses we are saying in 'Planning Policy Wales' ought to be permissible to build, around space requirements and around insulation requirements. I personally have a big bee in my bonnet, as you'll know from a previous portfolio, about making sure that builders cable estates to ensure that they can receive high-quality broadband, even if they can't get the thing connected, so that it doesn't have to be retrofitted, and there are a number of other things that councils around Wales want to put in place of that sort that are just standard in the building requirements of any development that comes forward. And on top of that, we have several pieces of work going on around stalled sites and planning problems, where we're looking to smooth the path of small and medium enterprises across Wales, so that they don't have the cash flips that they get when they encounter difficulties in planning and so on. So, there are a number of things we're doing with the Development Bank for Wales, and the stalled sites fund and so on, to afford a cash supply to local builders who want to do the right thing, so that we can encourage the local workforce to build the houses that their own community needs, rather than the big builders coming in and building the kind of one-size-fits-all homes that I personally do not think are what we need for our communities.