Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 4 June 2019.
The problem is that it isn't in the gift of planning authorities, often, to deliver that level of affordable housing. A recently approved development on the site of the old Virginia Park golf club in Caerphilly put 350 houses through planning committee, of which 7 per cent—7 per cent—were affordable, and the developers continually scale down their affordability provision throughout the planning process. Virginia Park in Caerphilly is symptomatic of a system I've been raising since I was first elected to this Assembly. Existing planning policy gives too much leeway to developers to build executive-style homes that price out many local people and just don't enable people to buy affordable properties. Does the First Minister agree that new housing developments need to have much stricter requirements for genuinely affordable housing and that private developers must be—must be—held to account for that?