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?