Diolch, Llywydd. I'm grateful for the opportunity to update Members on the work of the Valleys taskforce and outline its direction for the remainder of this Assembly. We should all be grateful for the huge amount of work done by my predecessor, Alun Davies, in establishing the taskforce, and to those who made significant contributions as its members.

I've been keen to take the opportunity to take stock, and I set out in a written statement to Members on 18 July how the taskforce has now agreed to focus on seven priority areas, each with a sub-group of its own of the taskforce to take forward their area of work. Some of the original members have taken the opportunity to step away and allow new members to join—I'm grateful for all their work, and I'm pleased the main group will now be gender balanced.

I'm also keen that our plans are scrutinised, and it's important that today we have a proper debate to help inform our next steps. I have already engaged with Members representing Valleys constituencies and I've met with each council leader across the area to test emerging ideas and to ask for examples of best practice that we might scale across the whole area. Rather than imposing ideas on communities, it is much better to identify local good practice and seek to spread it to neighbouring valleys. 

In my first meeting with Councillor Andrew Morgan, the leader of Rhondda Cynon Taf council, he explained to me the success that his council has had in bringing empty homes back into use. Their own scheme of giving grants to people who take on properties that have been empty for six months or more is one other council leaders agreed would benefit them too, and they've endorsed housing becoming the first of our new strategic priorities. We're setting aside £10 million for the scheme over the next two years and, crucially, this is funding that will flow across the Valleys, not just into the strategic hubs as originally intended, but in the northern Valleys too. We'll emulate the RCT scheme and look to add to it where we can. For example, we're looking at how we can retrofit energy-saving measures as we regenerate the housing stock.

In my meeting with the leader of Swansea Council, Councillor Rob Stewart, he persuaded me of the case for allowing local authorities to access this funding to bring empty homes into council ownership too, to make them available to people waiting for affordable homes to rent. I'm pleased that my colleague Julie James, the Minister for housing, has embraced this suggestion with enthusiasm.

The chief executive of Carmarthenshire council convinced me of adopting the model used in the twenty-first century schools project of match funding to make the funding pot even larger and to give councils skin in the game, as he put it. We'll be looking to adopt these ideas as we approach the second year of the scheme. Our priority now is to crack on with rolling out the project. And in an excellent example of regional collaboration, RCT council are taking on the role of lead authority, using their expertise and experience to help deliver this for all councils in the taskforce area. And I'm delighted that the people in the Amman and Gwendraeth valleys will be able to benefit from this too, now that we've extended the taskforce boundary to encompass the western edge of the old coalfield.