Item 6 on the agenda is a debate on the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee's report on empty properties. I call on the Chair of the committee to move the motion—John Griffiths.

Motion NDM7212 John Griffiths

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

Notes the report of the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, 'Empty Properties', which was laid in the Table Office on 10 October 2019.

Motion moved.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'm very pleased to open today's debate on Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee report on empty properties, and I would like to start by thanking all those who contributed to our inquiry. Empty properties is a real issue that impacts upon all of our communities. There are around 27,000 long-term empty properties across Wales, so swift action is needed to address the problem. We made 13 recommendations in our report, 12 of which have been accepted fully or in principle by the Welsh Government.

During our inquiry, we heard about initiatives that have had some success in bringing properties back into use, but progress has stagnated. We believe that a strategic approach is needed for significant change to happen. We would like to see the Welsh Government take the lead on this, engaging with local authorities to prioritise the issue and understand the support it can provide.

I'm pleased that recommendation 1 has been accepted. This is a key recommendation relating to the Welsh Government working with local authorities to develop a national action plan for tackling these empty properties, which should include setting priorities and targets. We recommended that the action plan be published by October next year. This will be an important step forward in setting national priorities and giving local authorities the strategic direction they need to prioritise tackling this issue.

Of course, having the right level of resource in place is absolutely key if local authorities are to be fully equipped to tackle these matters. Having a dedicated empty property officer in post can make a significant difference; it can bring more focus to the authority's work and co-ordinate the various activities being undertaken across departments. Of course, we all know resources are tight, but the long-term impact that empty properties can have, both economically and socially, justifies identifying this as a priority area. We heard expert advice that a dedicated officer should pay for themselves multiple times over, so it does represent good value for money.

I'm pleased that the Welsh Government has committed to ensuring that local authorities have a support package that's necessary for their needs and to provide an update on the resources needed by September of next year.

We were concerned by evidence we heard around the usefulness of data used in measuring progress in dealing with empty properties. In particular, that the data only includes properties on the council tax list, meaning it excludes derelict buildings and non-residential properties—the source, of course, of many empty property-related complaints.

We also heard that properties empty for over 12 months were more problematic and more likely to have a negative impact on neighbours and communities. Those empty for shorter periods often came back into use without any intervention from the local authority. We therefore recommended that, going forward, a 12-month time frame is used to define empty properties rather than the current six months, and that relevant performance indicators are updated to reflect this.

I'm pleased that our recommendations 5 and 6 around data have been accepted. These changes should ensure that the data collected is more useful and accurately reflects local authorities' work to tackle this problem. Local authorities already have a range of enforcement options available to them, but we heard that using those powers isn't straightforward. Some of the powers are rarely used, often due to their complexity, which has led to a situation where officers haven't developed sufficient expertise to be confident in exercising them. We recommended that a regional or national source of expertise be developed, which would be available for empty property teams to access when it is required. This has been accepted, as has our recommendation that training for local authority officers and members on the enforcement options be rolled out. I look forward to the update we've requested from the Deputy Minister on progress in delivering these sessions by Easter of next year.

We heard some examples of good work being done by social landlords, particularly the United Welsh housing association, which has taken a proactive approach to bringing empty homes back into use. We would like to see Welsh Government working with the housing association sector to understand the schemes it has in place, how good practice can be shared and effective schemes rolled out across Wales. I welcome the Deputy Minister’s commitment to collaborate with the sector to achieve this.

Another option available to local authorities is to implement a council tax premium of up to 100 per cent on long-term empty properties. This is discretionary and some authorities have opted to introduce a premium.

When the policy was introduced in 2014, the explanatory memorandum accompanying the Housing (Wales) Bill noted the Welsh Government’s hope that local authorities would use the additional powers available to them and the revenue collected to help meet local housing needs. We heard that Gwynedd Council has decided to allocate its additional revenue for housing purposes, but we're concerned that there is little evidence elsewhere of funds being directed in such a way.

We are therefore disappointed that our recommendation that the Welsh Government explores whether it would be possible to ring-fence the revenue has been rejected, particularly as the Deputy Minister expressed a desire to research such options in her evidence paper to us. Whist we realise that revenue collected through council tax is unhypothecated, it seems that not using the money for housing purposes goes against the aims of the original legislation. So, I would ask the Deputy Minister to give further consideration to how the Welsh Government can work with local authorities to ensure that this resource is used to alleviate housing problems.

We also heard anecdotal evidence of people trying to avoid the premium by applying to change the category of their empty property, either by claiming that it is being used as self-catering accommodation or that a family member has moved in. We would like more information gathered on this in order to get a better sense of the extent of such practices. I note that local authorities have been invited to bring forward examples they have, and I look forward to an update on this work in due course.

There has been a lack of progress in bringing the number of empty properties back into use over recent years, but I believe our work will contribute to making this important issue a priority area. We welcome the establishment of a dedicated team within Welsh Government and the Deputy Minister’s acceptance of almost all of our recommendations. I hope these actions will bring renewed focus and result in real change. We will continue to monitor this issue as a committee, including the effectiveness of the approach, and we very much look forward to the updates the Deputy Minister has committed to providing so that we may further assess the effectiveness of new policies, new teams and new thinking.

As our report states, around 27,000 private sector homes in Wales have been empty for more than six months. Many owners, we said,

'do not wish to see their properties lying idle and should be supported to bring them back into use. When attempts to tackle the problem informally fail, local authorities have powers to deal with empty properties; but this isn't straightforward.'

The Welsh Government accepts, as we heard, 10 of our lucky 13 recommendations. Having a national action plan in place, adopting genuinely community-based approaches, accountability measures and establishing a source of legal expertise for empty property teams to access will be critical. As we stated, this should include work to understand the impacts that having a specific officer with responsibility for empty properties can make, and training for local authority officers and members on the enforcement options available will be essential, as will the provision of flexible funding solutions that are sensitive to local needs and assist property owners.

As a former housing association voluntary board member, I welcome the Welsh Government’s recognition that housing associations play a key part in bringing empty properties back into use, but we'll need to see evidence that they have been genuinely involved by both Welsh Government and local authorities.

Although the Welsh Government rejects ring-fencing for housing purposes of revenue collected by local authorities through the council tax premium on empty homes, we must see evidence that local authorities have been encouraged to use the funding to address local housing supply needs.

It is deeply regrettable that the Welsh Government have only agreed in principle to our recommendation that they undertake a review with the Welsh Local Government Association of the current statutory enforcement powers available to local authorities to tackle empty properties in order to simplify them and make them more effective.

It's also concerning that they've only agreed in principle to our recommendation that they and the Welsh Local Government Association undertake an exercise to assess whether second home owners are avoiding payment of the council tax premium by falsely registering their property as a self-catering business or claiming that a family member has moved in. Serious allegations about this were made to us and we need the facts, especially where this could involve fraudulent activity.

However, as I stated when we were debating Stage 3 of the Housing (Wales) Act 2014, there is the danger that second home owners who have put their life savings into realising their dreams will be hit hardest by the council tax premium, and therefore rent out their second homes rather than lose them, when the people that can afford it will shrug this off. Responding to me in committee, Gwynedd Council's representative stated:

'this idea that a lot of our empty properties are owned by people from outwith Gwynedd isn't...complete, because many people within Gwynedd own these vacant homes'.

He added that over 1,000 properties had transferred. And as I said here in October:

'working with the valuation office, the Welsh Government must therefore give attention to this perhaps inevitable consequence of its legislation...they must penalise neither the contribution made by...self-catering businesses to our tourism economy, nor...second home owners...forced to generate extra income on affordability grounds...who are playing by the rules.'

We heard from witnesses in committee that, in England, multiple authorities will adopt a regional partnership model, appointing an officer between them to share the cost and resources; that having an empty homes officer is critical and that a corporate strategic approach helps tackle huge delays and barriers; that six community-based projects in England pulled in £3 million for empty homes refurbishment and created 65 homes for local people over three years; that longer term funding is needed if the Houses into Homes scheme is to stack up; that, in England, the new homes bonus was bringing long-term empty homes back into use; that, in Scotland, probate and bereavement are a specific exemption from the council tax premium; that Wales was behind the curve in the context of the simplified fitness housing standard adopted in Scotland; and that effective community-led approaches play a key part because people feel involved and have a real say in how homes are renovated.

As I said here in 2011, quoting Denbighshire's empty homes officer at that time, who was funded by north Wales housing associations, every empty home has a different story, the key is to understand why it is empty and to work closely with the owner to bring it back into use. Diolch yn fawr. 

There's no need to rerehearse the central argument in detail here, with around 27,000 empty homes in Wales, bringing these back into use could make a substantial difference to our housing supply, particularly if we could enable social housing providers to buy them, refurbish them, and use them to house low-income families. While houses remain empty in communities, they potentially represent a blight on those communities. And these arguments have been pretty much accepted throughout the Chamber, and they've been accepted for quite a few years now.

So, why then has the problem of empty homes not been sorted? Well, partly this is because the homes that are empty today are not the same homes that were empty a year ago. Just as one gets brought back into use, another one becomes vacant. But it's also because the various layers of Government are not using the powers that they have to make a serious dent in the problem. Some local authorities are not using their powers to impose punitive council tax rates on the owners of empty properties. For this financial year, a staggering 14 local authorities are still giving a discount to owners of empty homes, and there are loopholes in the law that mean that those local authorities who want to charge extra for empty homes have been frustrated.

There is also some confusion. One Plaid Cymru councillor reported to me that, in a council debate on removing this discount, officers in that particular local authority, which I'm not going to name, seemed unaware that local authorities had the power not only to remove the discount but also to impose a punitive rate. And this shows that there is a clear communication problem between Welsh Government and local authorities.

Furthermore, we know that not all local authorities have dedicated empty homes officers, which our committee evidence demonstrated is pretty essential on this. When empty homes officers are in place, not all of them are then able to access legal support and, sometimes, using enforcement powers can carry uncertain risk.

Other barriers highlighted by our report relate to the difficulties within local authorities of sharing data, as well as the resources that are taken up by investigating attempts to avoid the council tax premiums. There are a number of recommendations made here to address these barriers, although we could argue that a crucial one is missing, and that is that continued austerity for local government is incompatible with many of the objectives on this agenda that most of us want to see.

I hope that this is a useful debate for the Minister, if only to establish that some more basic infrastructure is needed to deliver on the policies that we've all supported and that we all want to see actioned. 

Although I'm not a member of this committee, I would like to commend them for what I think is a really important piece of work. We'll have all seen the shocking findings from Shelter that, across Britain, the highest number of children for 12 years will be in temporary housing this Christmas. Now, Welsh rates are lower than elsewhere in the UK but are still up over a quarter over the last four years. Austerity and savage welfare changes have much to answer for. But one solution to this is to turn empty properties into homes and it's really good to see that this report gives us a chance to focus on this concept today. For my contribution, I wanted to focus on what my local authority, Rhondda Cynon Taf, is doing to deal with empty homes, and their empty homes strategy has been mentioned in the report, so I thought it would be useful if I explored it in the Chamber in greater detail. 

The council developed the policy because they recognised that the empty homes in the borough presented an opportunity to provide much-needed affordable housing for residents, and also recognised the problems caused by deserted homes. They can cause harm to community well-being, distress to residents affected by their unsightly appearance, and act as magnets for crime and for antisocial behaviour. So, over the last few years, RCT council has developed a range of different tools and approaches to encourage empty homes to be brought back into use. And I'll just run through some key elements of their strategy.

The first is housing enforcement activity; secondly, the provision of Houses into Homes loans, utilising Welsh Government repayable funding; the third is the provision of grants, utilising the council's own funding, and that came to over £4 million in the years 2016-17 alone; fourthly, affordable housing schemes that bring empty homes back into use; five, advice and assistance to potential home owners; the sixth strand of it is the provision of homes above retail premises in town centres, and that's been a particular success in Aberdare, bringing historic empty buildings back into use; seventh is removing the 50 per cent council tax reduction for empty homes, and key to this has been the council's discretionary empty homes grant, and that supports the delivery of the council and Welsh Government's investment priority of returning empty properties to use.

It offers suitable accommodation for local people, but also helps to regenerate wider communities too. Robust eligibility criteria are also put in place to ensure the sustainability of the scheme. So, crucially, for example, applicants must be potential owner-occupiers, not landlords, who plan to live in the property as their main residence for a period of at least five years. The property must have remained unoccupied for a period of six months prior to purchase and at the time of the grant application, it must meet the housing needs of the applicants' family who intend to occupy the property, and applicants are required to make a 15 per cent maximum contribution to the total cost of grant-eligible work. That grant can be anywhere from £1,000 to £20,000, and is then used to make the property safe and secure.

The initiative has been an overwhelming success. Since 2016 it has been used directly to bring 165 empty homes back into use, and, overall, the council's approach to tackling empty homes is having a significant impact on the number of empty homes across the borough. So, if you look at council tax records, for example, they show that between 2017-18 and 2018-19, the period that the empty homes strategy was actually implemented, the number of empty homes across the borough has reduced by 671 properties. I think that's a really outstanding figure. Furthermore, in the last financial year, RCT brought a total of 213 empty homes back into use directly from council intervention. At 7.4 per cent, this is an increase on the previous year and nearly 3 per cent above the Welsh average.

RCT's approach to tackling empty homes is bold and forward-looking. I'm really glad that the Welsh Government have recognised their practice as sector-leading. In particular, it's excellent news that the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, as chair of the Valleys taskforce, has agreed to provide funding of £10 million to roll out RCT's empty homes grant across all Valleys taskforce authorities. RCT will act as the lead body and co-ordinate the delivery of the grant. This successful investment will further support and accelerate the number of empty homes being brought back into use across the whole of the Valleys. I was very pleased to join the Deputy Minister, the Minister for housing, councillors and officers from RCT for the announcement of this roll-out in Ynysybwl, and I look forward to following the future progress of the policy.

I would like to put on record my thanks to the committee clerks and all those who took part in our inquiry into empty properties. I was not on the committee at the beginning of the inquiry and did not get the opportunity to question the majority of the witnesses, but I am grateful to all those who took time to inform us.

We have a housing crisis in Wales, with over 60,000 households on a waiting list, yet only a handful of new social housing is being built each year. Shelter Cymru yesterday unveiled shocking figures that show that around 1,600 children will spend Christmas in temporary accommodation due to homelessness, which has risen by almost half in four years. Data uncovered by ITV Cymru last month showed that there were just over 43,000 empty properties in Wales, and as our committee discovered, there are around 27,000 private properties that have been empty for more than six months.

With so many families in desperate need of housing, it is awful to see empty homes in such huge numbers, and it can often be a blight on the landscape, encouraging vandalism. However, we also have to be mindful that there can be a multitude of reasons for a property to be empty. The property could be in probate, which can take many years to resolve. Once out of probate, the new owners may struggle to sell and be unable to foot the inheritance tax bill. Landlords can often struggle to find tenants, meaning that their properties can lay empty for months. Properties can be left derelict because the owner simply can't afford the repair bill to make the property habitable. And I accept that there can be an issue with holiday homes, but these are a smaller part of the whole picture, and with advances such as Airbnb, these properties have become less empty.

The largest numbers of empty properties are in Rhondda Cynon Taf and not on the beach, so there are so many causes to empty properties that we can't take a one-size-fits-all approach. We also have to use the carrot more than the stick, and Governments often talk about enforcement action and penalising the owner of empty properties via stringent property taxes, and this approach doesn't help those struggling with property they cannot use or cannot sell and the lack of legal support regarding enforcement does make the enforcement officer's life more difficult. This is why I support the committee's third recommendation: a specific officer with responsibility for empty properties can get in touch with the owner of a property and establish the reasons as to why it is empty. Together, they can work out solutions, whether that is assistance to make the property habitable or allowing a council or registered social landlord to purchase the property to use as social rent. Council discretion on empty homes varies from council to council, which causes uncertainty to both owner and council employee, but the knee-jerk reaction is often to say that these properties will solve our housing crisis, and it would be wonderful if it would, but being realistic, it will help address the housing need if we can bring these properties into use, but that does not absolve successive governments from their abject failure to provide sufficient affordable housing.

The committee's recommendations will go some way to address the problem of empty homes. No-one wants to see empty properties, least of all the owners of those properties. I urge Members to support the committee's recommendations. Thank you.

I speak as someone who's not a member of the committee, but I do have the privilege of speaking on housing for the Welsh Conservative group, so I've taken a great interest in this report. Now, it's true that despite a number of good initiatives implemented over the years by the Welsh Government, such as the empty homes good practice guidance, which, I think, was 2010, and the introduction of the Houses into Homes scheme, we still don't seem to have solved the problem, and, indeed, progress may have stalled a bit. So, I think it's very appropriate that we're looking at this issue again.

We've heard the figures: around about 27,000 private sector homes that are empty. Now, it's inevitable that a certain number of homes would be empty at any one time, but this level, surely, is well above that sort of frictional element that you would expect in a housing market. So, it is something that really needs to be sorted. When we compare it to the Welsh Government's target for the whole five years of this Assembly to build 20,000 affordable homes, it puts it in perspective, just the scale of the challenge and the number of empty properties that are out there. I certainly think that some of the schemes that have been suggested, making it easier when people do inherit property that may not be in a very good condition or they don't have the wherewithal, really, to deal with it anyway, and if a housing association, for instance, or the council could offer a reasonable deal to that homeowner to sell the property and then that becomes available as a social home, that's a very attractive, I think, and imaginative way of helping to solve this problem and then also reduce the danger of homelessness or—. The other thing we have—and Caroline mentioned the wider housing crisis—we have an awful lot of embedded households. These are households that have not been able to form because there isn't any appropriate housing for them to go to. So, they're in inappropriate housing, often with their parents, and this, I think, has been a real blight on this current generation, and one that most of us—certainly those of my age, anyway—didn't face when we were in our 20s. So, the supply of housing does need to increase markedly, and this is part of the solution.

Earlier this year, the Welsh Conservatives published their housing strategy, 'Housing a Nation', and we revealed statistics that showed about 4,000 empty social homes were currently in Wales. Now, I note in this report it says 1,400, and there is an issue about how you count empty homes—what's the threshold at which they should be categorised as such? But I do think there's a general problem about our data collection, and improving the statistics would help us a lot. And I welcome, in particular, recommendation 5 of this report as a result. So, I think that needs to be looked at, and having a strategy—I think that's really key. I think the Government should have firm targets and we shouldn't have the drift that we've had since, say, 2010—the last determined effort to move us forward on this particular issue. And I do think that the Government should aim, for instance, to bring all empty social homes back into use; they shouldn't be left vacant for very long, and certainly not for over six months. So, that's something I would really like to see as soon as possible.

I also think that using the council tax database for a lot of the data collection itself has problems, because—and I think Caroline, again, mentioned this—it doesn't tell you much about why a property is empty, and that's really what we need to get to. And I do commend the organisation Action on Empty Homes for their work in this area, where they've outlined the many reasons why a property may be empty, and it is carrot rather than stick that's going to really improve the situation. So, there are a variety of reasons, then, why properties become empty, and I certainly think the state and local authorities have a role to play here.

I finish just by commending the committee for its report. It's very useful, and I do hope that we will see greater implementation of the sort of policies that we need—many of them have been accepted now for 10 years or more, with party consensus, as Leanne indicated earlier. So, we really need to get on and do this.

Can I begin just by thanking my fellow members of the committee and also the Chair for, as always, his excellent stewardship of this? It was great that the Chair and the committee decided to return to this, rather than park previous reports and leave them sit, but to actually come back with the intention of encouraging, assisting, showing the Government where we still need to make progress. And I think it's worthwhile committees doing that as a matter of practice—revisiting work that they've done. I'd also like to thank all the witnesses who did come in front of us and gave so much of their time and expertise as well.

Vikki, my colleague—we share a local authority in Rhondda Cynon Taf—went through the good practice that has been carried out there and the fact that Rhondda Cynon Taf now is seen as an exemplar by Welsh Government. And, in fact, the work that it's done will be rolled out now across the south Wales Valleys taskforce area. In fact, it's probably slightly ahead of the curve here. A lot of the things are referred to in the report about that expert-led approach, the community engagement, including with, I have to say, elements such as co-operative and community-led housing initiatives as well. They've gone ahead of us here, and they do point the way very well. So, we know it can be done, and they've used every tool at their disposal, not simply enforcement powers, not simply grant funding and other financial mechanisms, but actually working with the owners of the properties and the occupiers as well to say, 'Right, how do we use this, not only to regenerate homes but to regenerate communities on a much wider scale?'

I really do welcome the report and the positive response from the Government to this as well—all but one recommendation have been accepted. One has been rejected, which I'll come back to in a moment, and a couple accepted on principle. But the first basic one, this call for a national action plan—I very much welcome the fact you've agreed to bring that forward, and to bring it forward by what I think and—we had some discussion in committee—we thought was a challenging date. We pinned it down to October next year and we thought, 'Can the Government do this?' Now, you've agreed to bring forward the draft by then, which I think we can probably live with. And then, two months later, by December—October, November, December—two months later, actually bringing forward the final one. That's quite ambitious, but I think we're content with that, and particularly the fact that you've agreed to do it.

On these community-based approaches, can I recommend to the Minister, as she seeks to both respond to what the committee has said and look forward—? There was an excellent presentation here in the Senedd buildings the other day, which was organised, in fact, by my colleague, in her role as chair in the co-operatives and mutuals organisation of the Tai Fechan housing initiative in the Gellideg estate. That's the ultimate, actually, in community engagement there, because those people are not simply involved in the regeneration of their homes, they are managing the regeneration of their homes in concert with the local authority, and have set themselves up as a collective. Now, there is much more potential in this, so I would be interested in hearing from the Minister, in line with our support for the co-operative movement and also community-led housing initiatives, how much more we could do on this.

We have got 137 co-operative homes in six different local authorities in Wales. It seems to me that this could be a significant part of the solution in communities where properties have lain empty for not just months, but years and years and years—empowering them to step up and actually take control over the regeneration of homes and affordable homes in their areas.

I want to turn to the issue of the expertise that resides within an authority. This is a common theme that we picked up, and that's why we brought forward recommendations to actually have an officer with an authority. Now, I think that the Minister in the Government's response has accepted that, of course, but I'm not sure that they've pinned down that there should be an officer within each local authority, that all the tools should be available. So, I'd be interested in the Minister's thoughts on that: if not an officer, how do we make sure that the good practice that we've heard about is happening in every single local authority?

The legal expertise is a critical recommendation. We heard repeatedly that, in some local authorities, there was a concern that their officers were not able to draw upon in-house sufficient legal expertise when they were using some of the more stringent enforcement powers, and I'm glad that the Welsh Government has accepted that recommendation. I'm also glad that we've not turned down the idea of exploring further the compulsory sales orders that they're trying in Scotland. I'm intrigued by the Government's response:

'We are content to review the Compulsory Sales Order in consultation with our planning colleagues and ascertain if the implementation in Wales is feasible.'

I know, Minister, that you've got to look at whether it works effectively in Scotland, but we were told that this has real potential, because it strips out the bureaucracy and the costs and the risks to local authorities of going down compulsory purchase order lines.

My final question to the Minister is: how does this lead us as well to deal with commercial non-residential properties—those equally eyesores within communities that are commercial properties that have been left empty for year after year after year, often on the gateways to communities, and they really do drag it down. Are there lessons to be learned from this that we can apply to those as well?

Can I now call the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government, Hannah Blythyn?

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I'd like to start by thanking the Chair and the committee for what was a detailed examination of the many issues around empty properties, and the Members who also contributed to both the inquiry and today's debate. Both the inquiry and the report were detailed and impartial, and the analysis and resulting recommendations will help us form a comprehensive and inclusive programme to support our work around stepping up enforcement.

We want the programme to make it the norm, rather than the exception, to tackle empty properties through enforcement. We want to develop knowledge and capability and make it clear to the owners of these properties that this blight on our communities and our towns is no longer acceptable and that we will be targeting them. As a result, we accept or accept in principle—as we heard—the majority of the committee's recommendations that were addressed to the Welsh Government. Our reasoning is set out in more detail in my formal response to the report, so it's not my intention this afternoon to repeat in any great detail that response.

But, in actioning this agenda, our first challenge as a Government is to create an environment for collaboration. We know that resources are under pressure, and tackling empty properties can often be seen, or has been seen, as a 'nice to have' when compared to maintaining key statutory services such as health, social care, education and so on. But it is important to establish the conditions where our delivery partners see the benefit of this work, whether it is through lower instances of complaints around safety, environmental health or, as we've heard today, anti-social behaviour, which often seems to be drawn to or congregate around empty properties. All of this has a knock-on effect both on our communities and also the workload of officials, and could be tackled through early intervention on empty properties.

We need to break down the internal and external barriers to dealing with empty properties by finding better ways of working, providing bespoke solutions and identifying how local authorities can work smarter and more efficiently. To back this up, Welsh Government is procuring an industry lead to implement a comprehensive training package and assist in the implementation of local action plans. We want to develop the skills of all our authorities to be the most effective and efficient at dealing with the empty properties in their areas, creating an unparalleled pool of expertise, where authorities collaborate on innovative ways of working, rather than actually perhaps feeling challenged or necessarily on the offensive. But, to be clear, this new approach is not a reflection on past performance, more of how we want to reset our approach to work together in Wales to tackle this problem.

The Welsh Government will be focused on providing the right tools and resources to achieve this, and a more confident team will be able to create more innovative solutions and identify better links to get to grips with the problems we currently face. We are committed to identifying these gaps, finding the right tools, and supporting our partners to navigate this problematic path. For example, we are currently reviewing the compulsory purchase order circular and operating manual to enable local authorities to maximise the levers at their disposal to try and bring empty properties back into use.

I think people and places have to be central to what we do. Local intelligence and understanding is often, I think, an underrated and untapped resource, and we need to make sure that more proposals involve the community to increase both the sustainability and accountability of our plans, and need to identify more community-based solutions and create a platform for best practice, and continue to nurture this resource so our delivery partners have more options available to them. We've heard today about the Tai Fechan co-operative, and it's something that we're keen to examine in more detail about how we could look at that and use that. I understand that I'm due to meet representatives just next week to look at how we take this further.

Would the Minister give way there? I wonder whether the Minister would look as well at smaller-scale community trust regeneration models. I've been involved with these in my past, and, on a street by street level, their local knowledge and intelligence, and some well-minded people—if they have the right expertise behind them and the right financial support to get it off the ground, my goodness, they can do a tremendous amount in their particular area, in their neck of the woods, in regen. So, beyond the larger co-operatives and the housing association involvement, these smaller community trusts, I think, have scope as well.

Absolutely, and it's about providing the support and bespoke solutions, so, if any Members in this Chamber have examples in your constituencies or locally, then please do get in touch and feed those in to make sure we can use that expertise and build on it.

So far I've outlined what it is we're going to do to support our partners, but, to be clear, this support is not about us taking a back seat, but actually taking a firm stand. The Government's message to owners of empty properties is: work with us and we will work with you and help resource you as is appropriate to bring your empty property back into use, but, if you do not engage with us and think you can carry on regardless, you'll be sadly mistaken, and we will take whatever action is needed.

We will give the local authorities as much support as necessary to take as much enforcement action as is necessary, and the result will be the same, but it's the empty property owners' choice on how they wish to get there.

Will you give way? Referring to the comments previously regarding community trusts, actually, previously, the Welsh Government did have a programme for this, delivered with Keith Edwards at the Chartered Institute of Housing Cymru, when he was the director, and with the Co-operative Centre for Wales. I went to the launch of this in Rhyl West, for example, initially hosted by a housing association, with the objective of transferring to a community trust, but the problems encountered were where there'd been a failure initially to properly co-productively engage with that local community, and that must come first, I hope you agree.

Yes, absolutely. As I referred to earlier, I think local intelligence—it's not just local intelligence that's often an underrated and underused resource, but, actually, if we're going to make these solutions work for the communities in which they're based, then the community does need to be properly a part of that. So, in taking this action forward, we'll be supporting authorities to become what I describe as a source of constant nuisance—constant nuisance to those who don't wish to engage or think it's okay to do the bare minimum. And, as part of this, we're addressing how we can implement tougher penalties and identifying more successful routes for enforcement.

The Chair of the committee in opening said that empty properties were a problem that impacts on all of our communities, and I don't think there's an elected representative here or outside of this place who hasn't had it raised with them, or had representations. In closing, I really want to reaffirm that this Welsh Government very much welcomes the report, which, happily, reinforces some of the steps we are taking and the plans that are in the imminent pipeline. I want to thank the committee once again for its findings, and I'm pleased that both I and my officials were able to play what I hope was a constructive and productive part, and I look forward to taking this work forward so that Wales is no longer a place where empty properties are left to rot, to become a blight on our communities, and impact on our pride in place. We are taking and we will take action.

Thank you. Can I now call on John Griffiths to reply to the debate?

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. May I thank everybody who took part? I think it's clear that there is a strong consensus about the importance of these issues, and also, in general, the sort of steps that are necessary to deal with them. But there was also, I think, something of a consensus around the fact that that consensus that I've just described has been in place for quite some time, but we haven't really seen a continuation of the progress that had been taking place over recent years. So, we need to redouble our efforts and renew our focus, and I hope very much that this report will be a catalyst for that.

Mark Isherwood began by talking about the need to work with owners and understand their individual circumstances. And I think that came across strongly in the evidence that we received that that is the approach from local authorities. In the first instance, they obviously want to work with owners rather than coming at problems with a heavy-handed approach. They want to work with owners, understand their circumstances, and see if they can help those properties to be brought back into use. But, obviously, that's not always possible, and that's why I do welcome the commitment that the Minister gave us towards the end of her speech that, yes, it's necessary to work with owners as effectively as possible, but if some owners—and I'm sure it would be a minority—are not amenable to whatever suggestions and whatever help is offered, then, obviously, there has to be a fall back that's about enforcement and a robust way of ensuring that those properties do come back into useful use.

Mark also spoke about housing associations and how involvement with Welsh Government and local authorities needs to be genuine, and, again, I think everybody would agree with that. Mark touched then, and also came back to it in his later intervention when the Minister was speaking, on a community approach. And, again, I think there was quite a lot of support for that. We had wonderful examples from Vikki Howells and indeed Huw Irranca-Davies in terms of how those approaches are bearing fruit. RCT was rightly, I think, mentioned in the report, and it was great to see Vikki actually setting out some of the component parts of their effective strategy, and rightly calling for that to be recognised and, I would hope, good practice spread around Wales.

I know Huw has a great involvement with the co-operative sector and community groups, and it must be that bottom-up approach. As was said, it has to be genuine. It really must be about that co-production that's meaningful right from the very beginning, and there's no sense of anything being imposed or a lack of openness and necessary communication.

I think Leanne described some of the difficulties—Leanne Wood—of layers of government being involved and powers not always being used effectively, and, of course, the effect of austerity over the last 10 years and lack of resource. And I think, again, many of us here will recognise that, and I think that's something as well that came through the committee's evidence gathering. So, I hope what the Minister said, and the Government's written response, would go some way to satisfying the concerns around those matters.

Caroline Jones talked about the need to help address housing need, and, indeed, Vikki Howells started off by mentioning Shelter's report and the continuation of the terrible homelessness position that we have, and, of course, the ability of empty properties brought back into use to make a contribution towards increasing that supply of affordable housing. And that's one very important aspect of this report, isn't it, and its significance.

David Melding talked about inherited property, and how the social housing sector might engage with inheritors of property who are having difficulty, really, in finding a way forward for those homes. And I think we need innovative approaches and we need many ideas to be put forward, and I welcome all ideas and potential initiatives that are put on the table. 

And it is very important, as David Melding said, that we have the right data that's going to properly inform us as to where we are and also let us know whether we're making the sort of progress we have to make. So, I think our recommendation 5 is significant and will be an important improvement in what we have now. 

I think the Deputy Minister addressed many of the concerns and talked about the significance of blight. And you know, this is at the heart of these matters, isn't it? And we heard that as a committee—that empty properties are a real blight on communities. They attract environmental health problems, anti-social behaviour, they make regeneration and investment in communities more difficult, and they also make people who live in those areas feel—they have a lower sense of well-being as a result of those empty properties and that blight than they would otherwise have. So, it's really, really significant in so many ways. Some of it's very practical and some of it is about the image and the reputation of an area. So, I was very pleased, as I said, to hear the Deputy Minister's commitment to really focus and prioritise these matters now, act on the committee's recommendations and take our views and recommendations forward. 

And just in closing, I would echo what the Minister said, that all of us, as elected representatives, would be aware of these issues; I'm sure they've been brought to all of us by our constituents in surgeries and otherwise, so none of us are under any misapprehensions or illusions as to the need to make progress on this report. 

Suzy Davies took the Chair.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to note the committee report. Does any Member object? The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.