4. Will the Minister make a statement on the funding available to renovate houses for older people? OAQ54072

Yes. There is substantial Welsh Government support available to home owners and landlords, including older people, to renovate properties. Across Wales, £148 million has been made available to local authorities to invest in Welsh homes.

Thank you very much. We know, on Anglesey, that, within the next five to 10 years, there's going to be an increase of around 30 per cent in the number of older people—that's people over the age of 60. We already know that there’s a shortage of appropriate housing for older people with mobility needs and other health needs. We need to build new houses, of course, which are appropriate, and we also need to renovate houses within the current stock, and of course we need to invest in adaptations for homes for older people. Whilst you, as the current Government, can’t give a commitment beyond the next election, of course, do you agree that grant levels from the Welsh Government to local authorities such as Ynys Môn for adaptations should increase at the same rate as our population is growing older?

Actually, only this lunchtime I was at the launch of the 'Adaptations without delay' report done by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, which my colleague Dawn Bowden had sponsored. We had a very good conversation about how we can accelerate the care and repair schemes in order to make sure that—. They have a number of functions, as the Member will be aware. They are preventative, obviously, and they help people stay in their own homes and not have to go into any kind of social care or NHS care, and also they are ameliorative in the sense that they get people back out of those settings into more independent living. My colleague Julie Morgan and I have had a couple of meetings very recently with various agencies delivering care and repair schemes, to see what data we can make the most use of to see what we need to do with it in the future, including actually looking to see whether we've got the demographic spread right, whether we've got the right kind of adaptations, and, frankly, whether we're building in our innovative housing programme the right kind of houses so that we build a 'house for life', as they call it, so that you don't have to have it adapted—they're built with stairs wide enough and all that sort of stuff.

I've been to some very good programmes. As it happens, only last week I was up in Ynys Môn and I went to see the new modular factory being built there for the passive house. The council leader was at the opening of that factory, and I know that they are commissioning bungalows especially with that in mind—with the increase in the older demographic in mind—with a view to having them being as flexible as possible so that people can stay in them for as long as possible. What we're doing is looking to see whether we can use the data coming back from our care and repair agencies to help us to decide which homes are worth adapting, which houses it's impossible to do it to economically, what the best options for people are, so that we can get them the right kind of accommodation in the right place, and what ameliorative programmes we can put in place to ensure that people stay as independent as possible for as long as possible. So, I think that's kind of a 'maybe' answer to your question, but I would be very interested in discussing it further.

Many of the older people who come to me have been very grateful for the grants that they've had to adapt their homes or to renovate them, because as you and I and most of the Members here know, stability in your home is incredibly important as you get older because you are able then to stay connected to your community, things are more familiar, and it helps with mental health issues, loneliness, isolation and the raft of it—it's very important. However, the issue with the money is that, very often, the councils will give out that money, they've awarded the contract and then the contract itself, or the builders who provide it, are sub-service: the renovations have not been to the right standard, the adaptations do not meet the needs of the person, and they have not done what they said they would do. You go back to the councils and they say, 'But we've given out the money; our job has finished'. What can you do, as a Minister for this area, to encourage councils to actually just be a little bit more savvy in their business dealings with these organisations, and to do simple things like have a 5 per cent or 10 per cent retention fee, so that once the householder, and only when the householder, has actually signed off on it and said, 'Yes, that disabled bathroom is now fit for purpose', or 'Yes, that renovation is allowing me to stay in this home safely and securely', does the council then pay the balance? Because it's a loss-loss situation—the council have got money that's not being utilised properly, the poor person involved in this has got the stress, at an older age, of trying to deal with a recalcitrant company and they're not getting what they need.

I said in response to Rhun that what we want to do is look to see what the evidence coming back to us is telling us about the way that some of the care and repair schemes across Wales are managed. Actually, it's my colleague Julie Morgan who has overarching portfolio responsibility for that, but I have the housing bit of it, so it overlaps almost entirely. So, we've been working together to try and get the best out of it.

If you've got very specific examples, I'd be very happy to hear about them and see what we can do. It is helpful to us to know where the problems are. As I say, we are looking at data collection so that we can redesign the schemes appropriately. We're also looking to see whether the way we currently deliver it is the best way to deliver it or whether there are other methodologies available.  It's not done in the same way in every part of Wales, so it'll be interesting to see some of the detail of the things that you're telling me.

Minister, we all agree that we must do everything we can to ensure older people remain in their homes for as long a possible. Home adaptations are essential in ensuring this. What is your Government doing to reduce the inordinately long waits for such adaptations?

I don't accept there are inordinately long waits. Actually, over the last two Assembly terms, it's improved out of all measure. I don't know if I speak only for my surrounding AMs, but we've had this discussion. Certainly, when I started as an Assembly Member, I had a fairly large postbag full of people waiting for adaptations. I certainly don't have that now because the service has improved out of all measure. So, I don't think waiting is the issue.

There are some quality issues that Angela Burns highlighted, and there are some issues around at what level you get the support. I think there are some issues about, if you're an older person living in your home and you have a couple of steps going down to your garden, how you would know how to get hold of that assistance. We're very keen to make sure that we have the right information out there, that people know how to access the assistance, and they have a relatively simple and user-friendly way of getting hold of it. But I don't accept that there are long delays. That's not what the evidence is showing us.

We have invested just short of £3.5 million into core funding for care and repair agencies to support this work, with a view to making sure that we are not having long waits. Long waits are in no-one's interests, as I said in response to Rhun ap Iorwerth. These are both preventative in the sense that they keep people out of expensive secondary and tertiary services, and ameliorative in that they get people back out of those services as fast as possible. So, in terms of value for money, it's an absolute no-brainer to spend the money on this rather than on the more expensive acute services. But if the Member has any specific examples of long delays, again, I'd be very grateful to hear specifics from her, because that's not our general experience.