2. Will the Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government’s support for the housing construction industry? OAQ54814

Yes. We provide a range of support for house builders, including support specifically for small to medium-sized businesses. I do recognise housing construction is challenging; I regularly meet with builders in order to discuss some of the challenges they face. The Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport and I last met with sector representatives in October, focusing on addressing construction challenges.

Thank you for your answer, Minister. Hughes Architects is a business that operates across mid Wales, and they have said that the draft national development framework has little thought for mid Wales. They're talking about it being backward-looking with no real vision, and also that it resembles previous strategies, which they say have failed to deliver. Mr Hughes specifically goes on to talk about the continued focus on affordable housing at the expense of general housing that has hit rural regions hard, and that has very much been misunderstood by strategic planners. There's also the wider point of mid Wales being included in a much wider region, being included within the south Wales region, but they are very different economies. And I know that other stakeholders have raised this concern with you also. I wonder how you respond to these concerns, and will you commit, Minister, and your officials, to considering carefully the stakeholder responses from mid Wales that have warned that the current draft development framework policy document fails to address what it actually set out to achieve?

Well, the current document is a consultation draft, as I know Russell George knows. The consultation has now closed. We've had over 1,000 responses to it and those responses are currently being analysed. We'll then publish the report on the consultation responses and we'll be bringing forward any recommended changes as a result of that consultation. So, I assume the firm that he's mentioning has returned a consultation response.

In terms of why we're emphasising social housing, all the evidence shows that we build enough market housing in Wales. Clearly we need to carry on building that much going forward, but we're several thousand short of social homes in particular. We need to build around 4,000 social homes a year for the next 10 years. We're not getting anywhere near that, whereas we have been building sufficient market housing. So that's the emphasis, though I accept the point that he makes, which is, as I said in response to Mohammad Asghar, we need to make sure that we build the right type of house in the right place for the right people. So there are a number of complex things.

The NDF framework is also intended to be read alongside 'Planning Policy Wales', and he will know that we've just started the passage of the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Bill through the Senedd, and that has regional arrangements specifically around strategic planning, which will address some of the issues around the spatial issues and particular areas.

So, I take the point. We are looking at the consultation responses at the moment and as soon as I am in a position to share those responses and our response to them with the Assembly, I will do so—probably, Llywydd, very early in the new year.