Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:32 pm on 9 October 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:32, 9 October 2019

That's obviously out of competence for the Assembly, but I certainly think that something needs to be done, in terms of remedial impact for some of the pieces of work that we've seen. Only today I met with house builders in Wales to discuss a way forward, and to set out our ambition for better homes, better space standards, better carbon design, better community planning, better placemaking, and that was a relatively consensual meeting around what can be achieved if we work together. I would just like to reiterate at this point, Deputy Presiding Officer, that we are very happy to work with all the builders in Wales, as long as they come along this journey with us, so that we get a sense of place and community back into our planning process.

I will say that we are working very hard on our part L of the building regs, which we'll be coming on to in questions later on in this session, so that we can put a regulatory system in place, which will prevent some of these problems from happening. We're particularly concerned where, for example, fire breaks in cavity walls have been left out because of the speed or competence of the construction methodology used. So, we're working very hard to cover off some of those, but that doesn't help the people who are already in that situation. We are also looking very hard at the new homes ombudsman arrangements in England. I don't yet have enough detail to say whether we'll be able to go along with that, but we're very keen on having a system of that sort, so that people have redress if they do find themselves in those very difficult circumstances.