5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Update on Building Safety

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:06 pm on 22 October 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:06, 22 October 2019

Thank you for that, John. I concur broadly with the thrust of that. You will know from various interchanges we've had on this that the road map recommends further work is required to understand what the capacity issues and what the resources to undertake that kind of testing might be in Wales, and we've got continual engagement with the UK Government and their competence steering group on the same issue, because those capacity issues are similar across Wales. So, we've got workforce planning and consideration of capacity issues both right now and in the future as a key part of the design and construction task and finish group of the road map working group, and we've already begun the work with regard to future workforce planning.

I would love to be able to say to you, 'Yes, we will do that', but I know that local authorities wouldn't be able to do that at the moment. So, what we're doing is working to see how fast we can do it with the capacity that we have, and how fast we can grow the capacity, because just announcing that we're going to do it doesn't produce magically the people who can and are competent to do that, and can carry out an inspection to the right level of competence and so on. So, I'm still accepting in principle what you say; we're still working very hard on increasing the capacity to be able to deliver it.