The next item on the agenda is a statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government on the Welsh Government's response to the independent affordable housing supply review. I call on the Minister for Housing and Local Government, Julie James.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It has been clear to me since I was appointed to this portfolio that we have a shared desire right across this Chamber to see an increase in the delivery of affordable housing. And, Dirprwy Llywydd, I've been equally clear that social housing in particular is my priority. The positive impact good-quality social housing has on someone’s life cannot be overstated. This is why my predecessor Rebecca Evans commissioned an independent review of our affordable housing arrangements last year to look closely at the approach we are taking and suggest changes that would help us deliver more.

On 1 May, I received the final report from the affordable housing supply review. The review made a number of recommendations about how we can ensure we are maximising the number of affordable homes we deliver in Wales whilst not compromising on energy efficiency, quality or affordability for tenants. The independent panel, chaired by Lynn Pamment, spent a significant amount of time looking at all aspects of affordable housing supply and today I'm very pleased to share the Government’s initial response to the recommendations with you. This is the first of what will be a series of responses to reviews and consultations that are due to report over the coming months. I will have more to say in due course on decarbonisation, planning matters and building regulations. I'm acutely aware of the need for the policies in all of these areas to be closely aligned. 

I want to, once again, thank the independent panel for their work. They engaged right across the housing sector and with Assembly Members. The time they invested in this review, regularly taking them away from their day jobs over the course of a year, is hugely appreciated. They have made a real and lasting contribution to Welsh housing, which I believe will have an enduring positive implication for years to come. It was very important to me that this was not a report that gathered dust on a shelf. I've been anxious, therefore, to respond quickly and decisively. I want you all to be aware of the Government’s intentions, which is why I supplied you with a written response to all recommendations earlier today.

I'm pleased to say that we've accepted or accepted in principle every recommendation, with one exception in respect of the future of Help to Buy. We're not in a position to respond until the autumn, when we are aware of the consequential funding we will receive from the UK Government. It is not my intention to go through each and every recommendation today. I do, however, want to offer my comments on some of the key findings.

The panel highlighted the importance of understanding housing need and some of the challenges local authorities face in this area. They highlighted the strong role Welsh Government could and should play, and the importance of strengthening the links between housing need and the planning process. I accept this critique and welcome their support for the work we have done on assessing need at a national and regional level. Their suggestion that this work should now be extended to a local level is one I support and intend to pursue.

I know that the setting of rent policy was one of the most challenging and contentious aspects of the review, with strong and conflicting views expressed from different parts of the sector. I agree with the review panel that there is a continuing need for a rent policy to provide certainty for tenants and landlords and that landlords should be considering value for money and efficiencies to justify rent increases. As a result, prior to the summer recess, I will be announcing what the five-year rent policy will be once I have received all of the necessary data. I will ensure my decision balances the need for landlords to have certainty about the rental income they can expect, together with affordability secured for tenants.

Another area of the review that I know provoked robust debate was around the nature of grant funding available to partners and the way in which this is distributed. The panel have recommended a new approach, moving away from our standardised approach to grant allocation to one of longer term funding certainty and a more robust assessment of value for money. Whilst I do not agree with all aspects of the approach the panel have advocated in their report, I accept the recommendation for change and greater flexibility. Some schemes do not require the amount of subsidy they currently receive, while others may not currently come forward because the level of subsidy is insufficient to make them viable. A team that will work with local authorities and housing associations has already been established to develop a new approach. This will ultimately allow us to ensure our significant investment in affordable housing is used as effectively as possible in the places it is needed most.

One of the key ways in which we can increase the supply of social housing is through local authorities getting back to building council houses at pace and scale. The long-overdue lifting of the borrowing cap will be an important catalyst for this, as will access to grant from Welsh Government, as the review panel recommend. Where appropriate, I am prepared to make grant available to ambitious authorities, to be used alongside the flexibilities the lifting of the borrowing cap creates. Clearly, the fine detail of this arrangement is something I will wish to agree with the WLGA. This is a huge opportunity to build more affordable homes over the next decade and beyond. Working in conjunction with partners to make the most of limited resources, I want to see local authorities really grasp this opportunity.

I accept the panel's view that more should be done to use the land available across the public sector more effectively and more quickly to support house building. I also agree that some central resource to help local authorities and others in the public sector bring forward their land is needed. I accept the principle that a land unit of some description should support the more effective use of public sector land. This is an issue on which the whole of the public sector needs to up its game. We need to be far more sophisticated in the way we use public land to support a wider range of objectives than simply generating the highest capital receipt, and I want to see stronger joint working across organisations to help achieve this. Along with my colleagues, the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd and the Minister for Economy and Transport, this is a matter on which I will have more to say over the coming months.

Given the panel's principal remit was to advise us on how to build more homes without additional resource, it would have been easy for them to recommend changes that compromised the standards we currently expect for affordable homes that receive Government subsidy. However, they recognised the quality and space available in a home is an essential component of the positive impact new homes deliver. They also recognised the flexibility this offered, should someone's needs change in the future. I commend them for this and accept the need to simplify standards and extend them to section 106 properties. Our aim must be to ensure that homes delivered via the market should be of equal quality to those we grant fund, whatever the implications for developer profit.

I absolutely accept the need to move quickly towards zero-carbon homes in both the affordable and market sectors. Moving towards zero carbon is a priority for this Government; we need to achieve this as quickly as possible. We will work with housing associations and local authorities in Wales to determine whether we can achieve the 2021 target proposed in the review. But in the meantime, we continue to support and develop new approaches to the delivery of housing that depart from the traditional approach. I am very pleased today, in response to the review, to launch our strategy on off-site manufacturing that we have called 'Reimagining Social Housing in Wales'. Off-site manufacturing, modern methods of construction, and making greater use of Welsh timber will be at the heart of our zero-carbon plans. We will continue to also invest in the delivery of these new models through our innovative housing programme. I will be announcing the next stage of this development in the autumn.

The review rightly recognised that given the scale of the challenges we face, we must scrutinise and justify all of our funding decisions to make sure we are getting the maximum return on the investments we make. This includes our investment in existing homes. Dowry and major repairs allowance worth £108 million are paid annually to large scale voluntary transfer housing associations and stock-retaining local authorities respectively. I agree with the review panel that once the Welsh housing quality standard has been met in 2020, our priority must be to consider how this considerable resource should be used to accelerate the decarbonisation of existing homes. This is, of course, the issue being considered by the separate review chaired by Chris Jofeh, which I am expecting recommendations on on 18 July—next Thursday. Even in advance of receiving that report, I am clear that this is an area where we need to make urgent progress. I believe local authorities and the stock transfer organisations share that view. 

Rather than commission a further review on this matter now, which would delay moving forward, I propose to secure a revised agreement with those organisations during the course of the next year that would apply to this investment once our existing WHQS has been achieved. Commissioning a stand-alone review is of course something I would be prepared to return to later, should we fail to reach an agreement that meets our decarbonisation ambitions. The review conducted by Lynn Pamment and her team has made a hugely positive contribution to the way in which we shape the housing agenda moving forwards. What is clear from the review, and our response to it, is that the status quo is not an option. Change can be challenging and uncomfortable, but change is essential if we're going to build the number of homes we know we need.

The changes I am proposing today are not the only ones we need to make to deliver sustainable communities. I know there are areas where we disagree, but I also believe that there are far more areas relating to housing where there is consensus across this Chamber. I hope you will therefore welcome my response to the affordable housing supply review. I recognise the need for change, and that we must strive to get more from existing resource, but we must not do this at the expense of the good-quality homes people need, if we are to build communities we can be proud of. This is an opportunity to change the way we deliver the homes we need. There is a real need for social housing in Wales and this is the time to increase the pace and scale of that delivery.

I welcome the tone, especially towards the end, about the need to work together and increase the pace and scale of social home building. But also, across the piece, I think we need to look at our targets and set a really serious ambition for the 2020s. We need to do that now so that we can get all the necessary approaches in place so that we can see an increase at scale, then, in house building. I do welcome the review as well. I think it asked some serious questions and has provided some valuable insights. Some other areas that the Minister has touched upon, especially decarbonisation and Chris Jofeh's review, I think that properly will get separate treatment. Can I also thank the Minister for the advance notice and indeed the initial discussion I've been able to have with Chris Jofeh on the likely direction of the review? I think that's very, very helpful and good open government. 

Can I move, then, broadly to the areas where I think there will be real agreement? I want to start, just because of my activities yesterday, on off-site manufacturing. I was really pleased to see this being stressed in terms of what we can do with modern methods of construction. Indeed, in the Conservative housing strategy published earlier this year we did look at this quite specifically, reflecting the attention that is out there, and I'm pleased to see that the Welsh Government is emphasising this in particular from the review's work. Indeed, Minister, I think following in your footsteps, actually, yesterday, I visited the Wernick Group's modular housing factory in Margam, followed by a visit to site in Bridgend where the housing association Valleys to Coast has used such manufacturing methods to build affordable homes. I went in and was amazed at the speed of delivery and just how great those three-bedroomed homes, the ones I saw, looked. They use this much more in many parts of Europe, and at the minute, it barely is 2 per cent or 3 per cent of our housing development, so I think we do need to look at this. And indeed, in the Conservative policy, we pledge to increase this type of off-site manufacturing to up to 20 per cent of house building by 2030. So, I hope that you too will be expressing that sort of ambition.

Secondly, on public land, again, I welcome your acceptance of the recommendations in the report, especially the mapping of vacant land, along with its status with regard to development potential. I was wondering whether, with regard to public sector land, we could go even further and offer discounts to developments that deliver strong social value, which, of course, affordable housing does. According to evidence submitted by the Home Builders Federation to the Lords Economic Affairs Committee, between a quarter and a third of all potential residential land is currently controlled by the public sector. By prioritising social value for discount, for instance, public land can be put to the service of long-term public good and this type of scheme could be extended to housing for vital professions like nurses, housing for older people and general affordable housing developments and co-operative housing schemes and the like. There's a lot we can do by the way we release land and use it as an incentive and a real resource. If I look at rent, I do welcome this five-year cycle. It's something that the sector has been calling for. And as the Chartered Institute of Housing, in their response to this statement today, said, we need the right balance that provides affordable rent levels whilst allowing housing organisations to continue planned development.

So, I look forward to receiving the actual details of what your five-year rent policy will look like, but I do think that, again, that's the right strategic approach that will allow us to develop long-term solutions. Finally, on council homes and the removal of the borrowing cap—again, I think this is a very welcome development. We need it at the moment, it will help us to increase the number of homes we are building, but I do think we need to emphasise that councils can also work with housing associations and others to use these flexibilities, so they don't necessarily have to build and manage the homes themselves, though where they want to do that and they're demonstrating real value and, obviously, more flexible and smaller schemes than, perhaps, what we saw in the 1950s and 1960s—. But it's definitely part of the mix that we can have.

And, finally, I would like to put on record, as the Minister has, my thanks to the panel and Lynn Pamment. As you rightly pointed out, these people have done really good work for the public good and have given up much of their time in doing that and sacrificed, obviously, what they could have been doing in their professional careers. But we really do welcome their contribution.

Well, thank you very much for that contribution. As I said, I wanted to emphasise that I do think there is much more, across the Chamber, that connects us together on this, and very small areas of disagreement that are not really that important in terms of what we're talking about here.

In terms of the modular homes, I'm very keen on the slogan 'Not prefab but ab fab', as they call it. I was very impressed by the modular homes that you mentioned in your visit—I'd been there not very long before you—and impressed for a number of reasons: first of all, the speed with which they were built, but secondly the very low-carbon footprint, the local nature of much of the material. I think we're very much emphasising in our innovative housing programme not just the modular off-site manufacture nature—so, obviously, people who work on the homes are building them inside a factory in a warm environment, not in all weathers, not at height and all kinds of other issues there. The industry is fond of saying you wouldn't build a Ferrari in a field, so why build a house in it, and I think that's a reasonable analogy.

But also, I wanted to emphasise the sheer range available in terms of the modular homes, and just the ability to build at serious scale and pace once we've got the factories up and running. I'm very keen on making sure that we have local factories right around Wales, so we're using local materials, particularly Welsh timber, and that we help them have the lowest possible carbon footprint, both in the supply chain and then in the house as it's built. We're also very keen on stressing, as you saw in the ones that you visited, that these are homes for life, that they're easily adaptable inside, that they can be adapted to different life stages and all the rest of it, and, indeed, you can add on, Dirprwy Lywydd, three more modules at the side when your grandchildren want to come and stay, which is something I know you'll be very interested in. So, I couldn't agree more.

In terms of the public land, we are very keen to ensure that we get the best value in the best possible sense for public land, so we are looking again at our asset management guidance for local authorities and health boards to see that we are emphasising the social good that comes from the use of the land, not just the cash that can be brought forward from the land.

We do need to get the balance between using the capital receipts for delivering essential public services and being able to use the land for building the right kind of housing, so working with the emerging public land unit to get the best balance between those. I've been working very hard with Rebecca Evans and Ken Skates on a piece of work that looks at that strategic approach across the Welsh Government piece and with local authorities on what can be done to pool public authority-owned land across Wales, especially around border areas, to make sure that we can assemble the right kinds of sites.

I couldn't agree more with him about the kind of flexibilities that could be got across those pieces of land. We're not talking about a one-tenure estate in any way; we are talking about mixed-tenure estates that allow people to move around in the same community, depending on what their current life requirements are. They will be a mixture of everything from full owner-occupying to co-operatives to mixed equity to social housing and so on. My view, though, is that those houses should all look the same, it doesn't matter what the tenure is, and they should have the right space and standards and the right kinds of insulation and the right kinds of carbon neutrality so that you can seamlessly move between them.

Finally, on the rent, I think that David Melding said exactly what I think in saying that we welcome the certainty, but we do have to get the level right. So, we have to make sure that we balance off affordability for the tenant with the ability to get the income stream for the builders so that we can build the houses of the future.  

We in Plaid Cymru welcome the recommendations of the affordable housing review, and there is considerable overlap with their proposals and our proposals, which we published back in February this year. So, we're pleased to see that the Government is accepting the recommendations as well. We are particularly pleased with the recommendations that more attention should be given to the requirements of people with disabilities, and other needs should be part of the local housing market assessments. We're also pleased about the focus on improving standards of new builds with minimum space requirements, and also the recommendation of making new homes close to zero carbon by 2021. You've pretty much accepted all of these recommendations, subject to the building regulations review. I'm also aware—and you mentioned this in your statement—that you are soon to receive a report with recommendations for decarbonising the existing housing stock, and I look forward to hearing your response to that report.

I'd like to ask you, Minister: do you accept that, in order to really achieve the outcomes of these recommendations here, that is going to require a fundamental change in how the planning system works? Clearly, social housing has a role to play in terms of delivering these new units, and therefore should be far more involved at the LDP stage of planning. Furthermore, I'd like to ask whether you think the planning of public services to serve these new communities needs to play a more central role in these local developments. We achieve nothing by building homes without the communities that we need to go with them.

I'd also like to ask whether you think the developments that we've seen over the last decade have taken a step backwards. How many of these developments have been characterised by large developers using their monopoly power to exploit consumers with leasehold homes, estates going unfinished and being unfinished for years, and all the broken promises of affordable homes, new facilities via section 106 agreements and so on? Will you therefore act more urgently to prevent these problems characterising the developments that are currently going through the planning system, as the timescale of you implementing the recommendations of this report won't prevent those current developments also being characterised by this problem?

Furthermore, you'll be aware that some local authorities are reviewing and updating their local development plans. Can you confirm that those local authorities should now be doing this work, based on the principles that you'll be formalising in the various new standards and guidelines that you'll be producing as a result of accepting this report?

Finally, the panel recommends that Help to Buy should be focused more on first-time buyers with properties of a lower price. Your response says you cannot accept or decline the recommendation until you're clearer about the funding situation for this. But can I ask whether you accept the principle that a scheme subsidising homes being sold for over £200,000 to people who are already on the housing ladder should not be considered as counting towards an affordable homes target, as the panel clearly agrees that this is distorting?

I am happy to start with that last one. What we're not accepting is the detail of the Help to Buy recommendations. I just don't know what—or whether there is a consequential, so I don't know whether we can continue it at all or what the situation is. If we are going to continue it, however, we will be continuing it in a very different form to the form that we currently see. We have had a lot of unintended consequences with the Help to Buy funding, which I will be looking to close off. I've had long meetings with various officials and others about where our legal powers lie, for example, to cover off standardised 106 agreements, so that we have adoption of roads, just as one example. There are a number of others where we can assist with qualifications on the accessibility for the scheme in certain circumstances and on certain sites. So, I'm very keen on doing a lot of that. I'm just not in a position to give any detail, because I don't know whether we'll be able to do anything because we may not have any money. So, that's the only caveat, but I can assure you that it will not be the scheme that we have currently in situ.

Going through some of the others, I absolutely agree that, as I said at the beginning, I think there's a lot of consensus around the Chamber with where we are. The paper that you put out broadly coincides with ours in all but specific detail, and I'm sure even there we can work out most of it. I completely agree about the disabilities point. One of the things we'll be very keen to do is to make sure that, as we bring forward public land for these kinds of developments, we have social housing front and centre of that, but all the other tenures in that development as it comes forward matching with that, so that people can, as I said to David Melding, move around in the same community when they are at different stages of their life, and don't have to move out of their community in order to access disability-friendly accommodation when they're old or if they have somebody with disabilities in their family, or whatever. So, we're very keen on those homes for life, as they're called, and the modular housing, if you get a chance to visit any of it, is very much built in that vein, and I think very impressive. So, I completely agree with all of that.

I'm very much looking at the planning system as we put the national development framework out. It's now delayed because of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election. I will be launching it, I hope, at the Eisteddfod, the week after the election, and then we'll be having the consultation. The whole point about the planning process is that we'll then have that and the strategic level when we put the local government framework in place, so we will have all of the levels where you get housing need right down to the local level, and it will allow the LDPs to become the local plan that they ought to have been in the first place. But we haven't had the top ends of those planning systems. The planning system is designed to be a planning system in its entirety, not just at one level. Then, as the LDPs are reviewed, Leanne was quite right that we need to make sure that we review properly the way that the specifics of the local plan work in terms of the infrastructure and what the local authorities are then able to do in terms of putting in place the various section 106 obligations and so on, and on its own land, making sure that the planning process is taken as far as it possibly can be upfront, so that when people come forward to build on that land, they know what the planning situation is already, and we don't have the problems that we have at the moment.

So, I think I'm broadly agreeing with pretty much everything you said. The only thing you didn’t mention, but I will mention, is that we are very interested in looking again at the powers and the capabilities of people to do compulsory purchase as well, so that we can assemble sites in just the right way. We know there's patchy ability across Wales to do that, and we will be reviewing the CPO process to match the LDP process.

Thank you, Minister. Can I say that I'm very encouraged that the package of work that you're announcing will lead to further initiatives coming forward as Welsh Government acts to deliver more homes for the people in Wales, including, as we've already seen, the greater provision of zero-carbon houses, more council house building—that can only be good for areas like mine in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, particularly if, when we have such a house-building programme, we're encouraging the use of local builders as the primary contractors, because that obviously will help the local economy as well, and that's very much the direction of the work in the Valleys taskforce, as you know.

As an aside, Minister, can I also welcome your recent announcement on the extension of the notice periods for a section 21 in the Housing Act? I know that's not part of this statement and part of this review, but, nevertheless, I think as an overall package in terms of housing measures in Wales, I hope that that will eventually lead to the abolition of section 21 and the improvement of conditions for the most vulnerable people in the housing sector.

However, returning to your statement, and not wanting to repeat what others have said, or what you've already dealt with, there's one aspect of the report that I would be interested to hear more about from you, and that's the idea of an arm's-length body to act as a hub for public sector land management. I'd be interested to hear about any early thoughts that you have about such a body. The need and purpose of those powers clearly need some careful consideration, so can you tell us what benefits you would expect to accrue from it, and how you would see it operating in relation to the city region deal or the Valleys taskforce, or even local government, and in particular any of the empty homes initiatives that local authorities have at the moment?

Thank you very much. On that last one, what we're looking to do—in my statement very recently on local government regional working, I did outline that we are putting in a new vehicle for regional working for local government in that Bill, and that's something called a statutory joint committee. The word 'statutory' doesn't mean mandatory; it just means that the committee has a legal entity in its own right—it can employ its staff directly and so on. It's a perfect vehicle for this kind of economic development and land use because it allows us to pool the scarce human resources that are really the crux of this problem. As local authorities have faced austerity over the last nine years, they’ve lost a lot of the discretionary skills that used to exist in the local authority around the negotiation of 106 agreements, the compulsory purchase order skills, the land management skills—they’ve necessarily lost those as they’ve concentrated on the big statutory duties. And so what this will do is enable them to be employed regionally and also to hold the land regionally so that we don’t have the boundary issues. We’re looking at ways that we can put Welsh Government land into that via some kind of land division. We need to look at the legals for that, because everybody who puts their land in will want to have some say in how the development is done. But that’s the whole purpose of that regional arrangement—in order to make sure that we have democratic control over what is, effectively, a regional land arrangement, to employ the scarce human resources. It’s that scarce human resources bit that’s the real crux of it.

It also allows us then to speak regionally about, for example, grant support, different ways of allocating different kinds of grant support, depending on what the development is and so on. And we're very keen that local authorities move away from just selling their land to developers in order to bring forward housing to actually keeping an ownership in that land and getting part of the land-value uplift that you get from the development of the land, so the public service retains the value of the land, that uplift. So, it’s very much around retaining those kinds of value uplifts for the future in a mixed development of that sort.

You're absolutely right, Dawn, that the whole issue around the foundational economy is fundamental here. So, we are looking to use SMEs where at all possible. We will be looking to see whether some local authorities will do that with direct labour as well, where that’s the only way of doing it. And we will be looking to utilise project bank accounts, which are a feature of Welsh procurement, in order to make sure that we smooth out cashflow for small builders who might otherwise not be able to come forward. But I’m very keen on making sure that we do a whole series of measures around ensuring that small builders can come forward—even if they can’t do a whole site, whether they can do small parts of that site—to make sure that we retain the skills in the economy that we so desperately need.

Can I welcome the Minister's statement? We have many people who are homeless and living on the street. Minister, we saw several of them after leaving St Mary’s Church in December after attending a concert for the homeless charity Crisis. However, we have far, far more people who are sofa surfing, living in overcrowded accommodation, and others living in homes that are cold and damp, being neither wind nor waterproof. I agree with the Minister that we have insufficient social housing. Does the Minister agree with me that we need substantially more council housing built, at the 1950s and 1960s level?

And we must also remember that in the 1950s and 1960s they used precast reinforced concrete in order to create part of them off-site. We also know, of course, that they brought in the Parker Morris standard, which produced a very high standard for social housing. Is the Minister interested in creating such a standard again, not necessarily Parker Morris, because that was of its time, but certainly a standard that all social landlords—housing associations and councils—have to build to? The 1950s and 1960s also saw a huge increase in council house building. What that did was it released low-cost housing that was previously privately rented for owner occupation. The problem for our people on relatively low wages to buy a house now is all those houses that are suitable for them have all been snapped up by landlords for £50,000, £60,000 in parts of my constituency, and rented out for £400, £500 a month. Sixty-thousand pounds, a £6,000 a year return—financially, for those who are doing it, it’s very good. But what it's done is it's stopping people who would have otherwise, on relatively normal wages, been able to buy a house in maybe Hafod or Landore or Plasmarl or St Thomas and now are unable to do it because landlords are snapping them up in large numbers. So, if we increase council housing, won’t that increase owner occupation, because the houses that are currently privately rented will then become back into owner occupation?

If I just finish with this, the place that I come from is Plasmarl—it’s gone through the whole stages, and other people have probably lived in areas very similar. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was almost all privately rented. Then, in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s it became owner occupied almost exclusively. And then, from the 1990s onwards, it’s been bought up by landlords—some of them living many, many miles away. There’s somebody living in Basingstoke who owns six houses in one street. That's removed the opportunity for local people to buy. So, isn't the answer increasing council housing, which is a win-win situation for low-cost private ownership and also making sure everybody has a decent house?

I couldn't agree more. Clearly, one of the issues with homelessness is that we have a large tap, if you like, of people who are sliding into homelessness because we have an insufficient housing supply and it's a vicious circle. What we need to do is cut into that circle and make sure that the supply increases exponentially in order to cut off the number of people who slide into homelessness. To do that we have to build thousands and thousands of council houses, not hundreds—thousands. We have to build around 4,500, that's including the ones we've already built, that's the absolute number, just to stop people being in temporary accommodation. That's without touching the waiting lists or the waiting lists of people who don't bother to go on the waiting lists because they know that they've got no chance of getting there. So, we are talking about thousands and thousands, not hundreds and hundreds. So, I completely agree.

We will have a standard. I still remember my grandmother and my aunties used to talk all the time about how great it was when they first moved into their council housing in Swansea. They were very impressed by the standard then, and those houses have stood the test of time, because they're very high standard even now. We want to build houses that stand that test of time, that are still fit to be homes of the future some 80 or 90 years later on. Absolutely, those houses have been retrofitted for higher insulation standards and so on, but, basically, the house is a sound house, so it's capable of being improved in that way. That's what we must build for the future; I couldn't agree more. 

There is a big issue around whether we need to interfere in the market for investor houses. I'm very seriously looking at what we can do to allow local authorities in Wales to buy houses in that market themselves for social rent, where it's obvious that there's a large PRS, private rented sector, developing. Mike Hedges will know that in my own constituency, right in the middle of it, I have a very large swathe of houses that have done exactly what he said. So, I'm very keen on that. I just want to emphasise at this point that the Deputy Minister, Hannah Blythyn, has been looking very hard at the houses into homes grants and the regeneration of empty properties in particular, around what we can do to bring some of those back into beneficial use. But the market is dysfunctional in some areas, and we do need to look at ways that we can interfere in that; I completely agree with him.

Thank you for your statement, Minister. We welcome the independent review also. The lack of quality affordable housing is resulting in families living in overcrowded homes or in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and individuals in hostels or on the street. I've seen first hand people placed in prison for vagrancy telling me they were not looking forward to being released because they had a bed and hot meals. Families, as we know, can wait several years for suitable accommodation, which is why achieving the Welsh Government's target of 20,000 new affordable homes by the end of this Assembly term is so important. Unfortunately, less than half the necessary affordable homes have been built. In 2017-18, we saw a 9 per cent decrease on the previous year.

Hopefully, the recommendations of the independent review will help address the shortfalls and help put an end to homelessness in Wales. Minister, I am pleased that your Government have accepted the majority of the review's recommendations. Supply simply hasn't met demand, and I welcome the review's recommendations relating to local housing market assessments. Minister, can you expand upon your reasoning for changing the recommendation for a review every two years to one in every three years? Surely, you agree that having accurate, up to date information in this area is vital.

I am grateful that you accept that there needs to be a greater granularity to the LHMA process. Minister, what role do you foresee local health boards and social service departments playing in capturing requirements for housing for those with disabilities, those needing some level of care and those looking to downsize and enter into a sheltered housing arrangement? There are many instances of older people stuck in three and four-bedroomed homes, homes that would suit a young family, and yet they cannot downsize as they haven't built anywhere near enough properties suitable for elderly people. Modular homes are easily assembled. 

Finally, Minister, while I welcome the emphasis being placed upon reducing the carbon footprint of new homes, we must ensure that any new building guidelines take account of our changing climate. You mention low-carbon heating systems, but what about low-carbon cooling? How will your Government ensure that new and existing buildings are not so heavily insulated that they overheat in the summer months, with the increasing likelihood of soaring temperatures? 

I welcome this first step in addressing our housing crisis and look forward to further measures to increase the supply of affordable homes in Wales—affordable homes that we so badly need. And I look forward to working with you to achieve this goal of providing enough affordable housing for the people of Wales. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you for that contribution. Just to start off with the affordable homes target, I would just like to assure the Member that we will reach the 20,000 affordable homes target in this Assembly term. What this is about, though, is saying that that's not enough and that we need to build an awful lot more, if we possibly can, and about making sure that we start to build at scale and pace. It was not possible to do this when we set that target, because we still had the housing cap for the housing revenue accounts in local authorities. I'm going to choose my words carefully, Deputy Llywydd: I think that I've had the privilege—I think I'm going to use that word—of looking at the draft housing revenue account guidance most recently. I have to say, it's an arcane art, the housing revenue account, and so the guidance was—I think it's fair to say it was detailed. So, I'm looking forward to feedback from treasurers around Wales about how they respond to our new guidance. The new guidance is designed to maximise the flexibility in housing revenue accounts to accelerate the pace by which local authorities in particular can build new council houses as they release funds in order to do that. And I answered in response to Dawn Bowden the issue around bringing public sector land forward in order to be able to do that as well. 

In terms of housing need and demand, I'm accepting the independent panel's recommendation in terms of housing need. They rightly point out that there's much more consistency at local level, and that the information can be more granular and better linked to the planning process in that regard. We also accept the importance of Welsh Government gathering the information from authorities and analysing the responses ourselves. I don't want to introduce those changes quickly, however, because it's possible to destabilise the system if we do that. We want to take time in partnership to look exactly at how those changes should be implemented, although I'm being very clear that we are changing the system; we just want to work through with partners exactly how the system will look afterwards. And, as I said in response to Leanne Wood, it's important to get whole stages of the plan in place at national, strategic and local level while we work through the changes to do that. But I'm very clear that we do need to have those changes.

In terms of downsizing from the family home, I think it's absolutely right that we are not building sufficient units of single bedroom or one and a half bedroom size. But I don't want people to be beguiled by the idea that we think all families should move out of their home. People have grandchildren and they have the need to have family gatherings and so on. It's not always optimal to move out of a big house. So, what we want to do is ensure that people live in a house that suits them and that they are not forced out of any family home if they don't want to be so. And I don't think the bedroom tax has been anything other than the most appalling instrument of, well, just misery for people. So, I don't want to be associated with anything that sounds remotely like that. However, I will accept I think the point the Member was making that we need to build more smaller units for people who do want to downsize, and we are certainly looking at the mix of units in there. 

In terms of the decarbonisation points she made, I'm not going to respond. The temptation to respond is overwhelming, but I'm going to resist it, because I will be waiting for the decarbonisation report to come forward. It is being announced next Thursday, so I'll look forward to responding to that in due course. 

Thank you very much for your statement, and I'm very pleased to see that you are proposing to align the planning framework, the decarbonisation agenda and the building regulations. That seems to me really absolutely the way we need to go. 

In your aspiration to use vacant public land, I want to ensure that—. It's a question as to whether you will ensure that the locations of this available land for new homes will also be aligned with our requirement to decrease carbon emissions from transport, and that we ensure we're only building homes where there are good public transport and active travel links, because some of the homes that have been built in my friend Julie Morgan's constituency are going to be an absolute nightmare for my constituents in terms of the increased traffic that's resulting, because there is not sufficient public transport links.

At the climate change committee's round table on climate change last week, we looked at the requirements for new homes, and one of the points that was emphasised was the importance not just of having well-insulated homes, but having lifetime sustainability homes. Having spent a lot of time recently in the Cyncoed ward in my constituency, I'm impressed by the way in which homes built between 80 and 100 years ago have been made adaptable to the needs of people with decreasing mobility—easily adaptable. You can see that these people have lived for a very long time in these homes, but they're able to continue to do so because they are adaptable. And there are huge carbon emissions costs of building these rabbit hutches that are only designed for 30 years, so I'm a little alarmed by your long-term aim to put a stop to this maximising of profitability regardless of the obligations of the climate challenge, and I'm hoping it might be a little shorter than that. 

Thirdly and lastly, I just want to emphasise the importance of ensuring that we are building for the future climate we are going to have. We're all aware of the extreme heat that was experienced by France last month, but this is the sort of thing that could happen here. And I want to point out to you some really important research that was done in Geelong in Australia, that showed that their urban forest strategy has enabled them to keep a 20 per cent reduction in the temperature of those homes that are benefiting from this urban canopy, both from the shade but also the use of lighter coloured pavements that deflect the temperature; by green roads, which is in line with our default 20 mph aspirations, that have porous surfaces to allow water to seep in and grass to grow through—all these as well as, obviously, fruit trees being a source of food. So, I'd be very happy to forward you the Geelong research, which I think is something we really, really need to build on in terms of building the homes that need to be resilient for the future we face. 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank the Member for her contribution. I don't need you to forward me the research—I'm familiar with it already. We have been looking, as part of our regeneration work with Hannah Blythyn, at what we can do to green our developments in exactly the way that you mentioned. Joyce Watson has long talked about the need for porous surfaces and the absorption of water run-off and all the rest of it, and we're very much looking to make sure that we design in all of those kinds of things, not least because they help the climate, as you've rightly pointed out, but actually because they're just more pleasant to live in. So, the whole issue around having community gardens, community orchards, the First Minister is very keen on tiny forests in the Netherlands example, where you plant an area the size of a lawn tennis court, you plant a deciduous forest effectively that provides enormous amounts of biodiversity, but a real pleasure, actually, as well. So, we're very keen on building those things into our innovative housing programmes and testing them out.

We're also very keen on building in the ground source heat pump and all that sort of stuff that people have, but also the skills to go with that, because we have had some feedback from some of our innovative housing projects that people who wanted to live in those houses—nobody has to live in an innovative housing project if they don't want to—didn't have the skills to be able to adapt their own behaviour to some of the ways that those houses worked. So, we do need to put some more effort into making sure that people are able to adapt to the change necessary to live alongside some of the new arrangements. 

Now, I'm being called down the rabbit hole of decarbonisation, Deputy Presiding Officer, so I'll stop there. In responding to the report that we know is coming next week, we'll go further into some of the things that we want to do in response to that report. 

And finally, Hefin David. 

Is the Minister concerned that whatever you do with Help to Buy, you're still putting public money in the parasitic claws of big housing developers, who could simply sell their overpriced new builds for less? 

Well, it's interesting language, that's for sure. I understand the sentiment he expresses, and, as I said in response to Leanne Wood, we certainly will want to look very carefully at what we are putting public money into and what we're building with it. So, I appreciate the sentiment and I agree with the sentiment; I'm not sure I quite agree with the language. But, yes, we'll be looking very—.

I want to be sure that we help first-time buyers who would otherwise be a long way away from getting a foot on the housing ladder, that we're not talking only about owner-occupiers but some kind of mixed equity schemes and so on to allow people to move in. I'm very keen on exploring what we can do to help people who won't be able to get a deposit or very much of a deposit together, for example, so that you're helping people further away from the market. I'm very keen on ensuring that we have better standards, that we build to the same standard as social housing. Isn't it ironic that we have a situation now where social housing is of a considerably better standard than private sector housing? Who would have thought that I would be able to stand here and say that, but it is in fact the truth? People would much rather live in a social house than in one of the private houses that he mentions. So, I agree with the sentiment entirely. We will be looking very—. If we are able to continue the Help to Buy scheme, which is completely in the balance—I have no idea if there will be a consequential from the UK Government, but if we are able to then we will certainly be designing out many of the examples that he brought forward.

Thank you very much, Minister.