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.