5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: The Welsh Government response to the Independent Affordable Housing Supply Review

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:02 pm on 9 July 2019.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 5:02, 9 July 2019

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.