1. Will the Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government’s priorities for the housing sector in Preseli Pembrokeshire? OAQ54659

Certainly. Our housing priorities for Pembrokeshire are the same as for all of Wales. I want to see far more much-needed social housing built in truly mixed communities, homelessness being proactively addressed, decarbonisation being tackled, and market housing that is of good size and quality.

I'm grateful to the Minister for that response. According to figures from Shelter Cymru, there are around 3,600 households on social housing waiting lists in Pembrokeshire, and yet only 172 social houses were built in the last year, leaving, of course, a significant shortfall. In September, the Welsh Government's innovative housing programme committed a further £33 million of funding to help deliver 600 new homes this year. Can the Minister therefore confirm that some of the funding will actually reach Pembrokeshire, and can she also confirm how she's monitoring the progress of local authorities on this issue?

Yes. Paul Davies will know that we've been really working very hard to build a lot more social homes in Wales; it's been a significant priority for this First Minister to accelerate both the pace and scale of social home building. At the moment, most social homes in Wales are built by registered social landlords because, as he will know, there were restrictions on the housing revenue accounts of local authorities until only last year. So, we've worked very hard with local authorities to remove those restrictions and get the right frameworks in place for the councils themselves to be able to borrow to build housing, whether they're stockholding or non-stockholding.

In the meantime, we have been making a series of investments. So far in this Assembly term, we've invested £1.7 billion in housing, £137 million of that in social housing grant, and over £33 million in housing finance grant. For the mid and south-west Wales region, we estimate that the social housing need is 44 per cent of the new homes needed, so 44 per cent of the new homes built in the mid and south-west Wales region should be houses that are affordable if we are to get to where we need to be. So, I agree with you entirely that we need to accelerate that programme.

We've been investing £71.5 million revenue funding over 29 years under the affordable housing grant programme to support the local housing authorities to build new council homes, including Pembrokeshire County Council. Around 400 new social homes are expected to be funded directly through that initiative across Wales. We're also on track to achieve our target of bringing 5,000 empty homes back into use during this Assembly term. We've already provided councils in Wales with £40 million to support property owners to help bring back empty properties into use. Very recently, I made a statement in this Chamber about using the private rented sector to assist with social housing in the interim while we build the homes that we need, and it was welcomed from across the Chamber; I think we're all on the same page around hoping to take that scheme forward.

So, I absolutely agree with him; we do need to build at pace and scale. We have worked very hard to get those arrangements in place in only the year we've had to get that started. Pembrokeshire has had its full share of the grant, as have the national park authorities, where appropriate, for the planning arrangements. In the meantime, we're putting a series of interim measures in place.