1. Will the Minister make a statement on funding provided by the Welsh Government to improve the quality of housing in Wales? OAQ54050

Welsh Government provides £108 million each year to social landlords in the form of the major repairs allowance to councils and dowry gap funding to large-scale voluntary transfer housing associations. This is to ensure that everyone living in our 225,000 social homes in Wales will live in good-quality homes by December 2020.

I'm very grateful to the Minister for her answer. I'm sure that she would agree with me that it would be extremely unfortunate if Welsh Government funding from other sources inadvertently had a negative effect on housing quality in Wales. I have a number of constituents who have been having real difficulties with inappropriately sold or inappropriately installed cavity wall insulation. I know that this is a matter that has been raised on a number of occasions, recently by David Rees.

Obviously, this matter isn't directly in your portfolio, Minister, but it is having a real impact on the quality of the housing of some of my constituents, and I know of many others. What is unfortunate is that the evidence that is being sent to me is that the Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency, which is supposed to put this right, is in fact being profoundly unhelpful. There is one particular case that I am going to write to the Minister for environment about because they are really just not responding and, when they are responding, they are offering to partly put the work right.

The particular family that prompted this question are not well-off people. They have worked very hard to be able to afford their own home. So, can I ask the Minister if you will, with your housing quality hat on, have a further conversation with the Minister for environment to see if there's any more that the Government can do to ensure that the guarantee agency is fit for purpose and that it responds in an appropriate, but also in a compassionate way to people who are dealing with really difficult damp problems in homes that they really had to struggle to purchase?

Yes, I'm happy to do that. If you send the details to the Minister for environment, we can, between us, look at the specific matter that you are dealing with. Actually, much more generally, we are about to receive the report of the decarbonisation of housing working group. They are looking at housing across the piece, not just social housing. So, we are expecting recommendations from them about a number of the things that you raised more generally in terms of the specific things there: so, the skills available to private home holders—sorry, private home owners; I got my tongue in a twist there—in Wales; the advice that they can receive about the best way to insulate their homes without causing some of the difficulties that you are talking about there; and whole issues around energy efficiency and condensation and such things. So, we're expecting that report imminently, and I am expecting to have a really good conversation across the Government and with the Assembly about how we can best implement some of the recommendations.

Minister, earlier this year, my colleague here, David Melding, led a debate that recognised that the number of homes being built in Wales is inadequate to meet demand, and during the debate we all recognised that there was a shortage of social housing across Wales. But there is also a shortage of other types of homes that will attract younger, aspirational home owners to move to Wales. I understand that Shropshire, for example, the next county to my own constituency, has a more flexible planning policy that allows landowners to develop their land for executive level homes, therefore attracting younger professionals, including teachers, business people and doctors, which we desperately need, of course, in mid Wales, to move to Wales and set up home in Wales, to make a career and invest in the local economy. Can I ask what intentions you have to review planning guidance to give local authorities the flexibility to implement their planning policies in such a way that will ensure that the demand for these types of homes is met to encourage younger families and professionals into Powys and counties such as mine? Or, indeed, do you believe that local authorities don't need that flexibility because they've already got that flexibility, and no change to planning guidance is required?

This is actually a question on the quality of the housing supply, and that's a question about the actual housing supply. But we've only just reissued 'Planning Policy Wales' just before Christmas. That emphasises a place-building approach, with an emphasis on sustainable place models. So what we're asking local authorities to do, within their LDPs, is to look at sustainable place making with mixed tenure developments there. Actually, all the market statistics show us that we build enough market homes; the things that we're desperately short of are homes for social rent. So, at the moment the market is providing more than adequate market homes, and our Help to Buy scheme has driven some of that, but what we actually need to build far more of—thousands more of—are homes for social rent, so, rather different to the picture you've just painted.

We have too many poor-quality houses in Wales, many with very poor energy efficiency, meaning those who are poorest end up either cold or paying more for heating their homes than you and I do. What is the Welsh Government doing to improve energy efficiency, especially in the private rented sector and the very low-cost part of the private rented sector?

So, at the moment, we've concentrated on the Welsh housing quality standard for publicly provided housing. Mike Hedges knows very well that the Welsh housing quality standard asks social landlords to get to a standard assessment procedure rating of 65 or higher, or an energy performance certificate D rating equivalent. About 97 per cent of our stock so far is up at that standard and we've got a small amount more to do before we meet the entire Welsh housing quality standard. What we've been trying to do in the private rented sector is change the relationship between landlords and tenants and ensure that tenants have a better deal all round in terms of the way that properties are let, the sorts of property that are available and the regulation through Rent Smart Wales. We haven't at this point in time got any particular energy efficiency indications there, but as I just said in answer to Helen Mary Jones, we are expecting the decarbonisation working group report imminently, and they were asked to look across the piece in Wales, and I am expecting a set of recommendations around what we should do across every tenure in Wales to improve energy efficiency and indeed insulation and standards to go with it.