5. Will the First Minister make a statement on the provision of affordable housing on new-build residential estates? OAQ53971

Llywydd, increasing the number of affordable homes is a fundamental priority for this Government. Our planning policy requires local planning authorities, through their development plan policies, to ensure the provision of affordable housing to meet their communities’ needs.

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?

Well, I thank Hefin David for that and I agree with a great deal of what he has said in his analysis of the way that the current system can be manipulated to secure outcomes that the system is not intended to secure. It is certainly why we have introduced changes already in 'Planning Policy Wales' that will reduce the room for renegotiation on affordable housing when that has been entered into between a local authority and a developer. When we see those agreements struck we expect to see those agreements honoured. And 'Planning Policy Wales', as I say, reduces the room for developers to come back to the table and to try to renegotiate. We will publish shortly the national development framework for Wales. That will include further actions that we can take to make sure that our system supports our ambitions for affordable housing to be produced in all parts of Wales, in the places where it is most needed, at volumes that help to meet the demand for affordable housing and do so in a way that illustrates genuine partnership working between local authorities discharging their responsibilities and the developers who they rely upon for those houses to be built.   

I've got a problem with the term 'affordable housing', because that can be misleading. Affordable housing within the context of technical advice note 2 includes homes owned through shared equity schemes, including Help to Buy. Since the 2016 election, 40 per cent of the 3,458 homes sold through Help to Buy were sold for more than £200,000. That isn't affordable in most people's books. We need to get real about the housing crisis that is preventing many young people from getting onto the property ladder and forcing many to leave the communities that they grew up in because they can't afford to buy a house there anymore. In a housing paper Plaid Cymru published earlier this year, I proposed setting a target of 20,000 new social housing homes in the first year of a Plaid Cymru Government. The market is failing way too many people. First Minister, Wales cannot and should not have to wait until 2021 for the housing crisis to be alleviated. Will you give an undertaking to match our ambition and determination to provide housing that is within genuine reach of those currently priced out of the market? 

Well, Llywydd, I agree that there is a problem with the term 'affordable housing'. I don't agree entirely with the Member about what she has said about Help to Buy, which genuinely has helped many young families in Wales to secure housing that otherwise would not have been available to them. But affordable housing rents are 80 per cent of market rates, and, for many people, including people entering professions such as teaching and nursing, 80 per cent of market rents in some parts of Wales are not genuinely affordable. It is why the vast bulk of the houses we are building as part of our 20,000 affordable homes during this Assembly term are actually at social rents rather than affordable rents. So, that's around 50 per cent of market rates, which are genuinely, then, in the sphere of affordability for people in those circumstances. I want our housing policy to be ambitious. I want it to be focused on those people who most need assistance in the housing market. We are confident that we will reach the target that we have set during this Assembly term, and then we will look to see what offer we would make to the people of Wales were we to be in Government in the next Assembly.