Questions now from the party spokespeople. Conservative spokesperson, Mark Isherwood. 

Diolch, Llywydd. On 10 January, a letter was sent to you by, or signed by, the leaders of all six north Wales county councils regarding the local government settlement for 2020-21. And, it said, 'Even with a positive settlement this year, we'll all be looking at some service reductions and above-inflation council tax increases. In light of the continued challenges, we wish to ask you for a funding floor of 4 per cent in the local government finance settlement, to be met from Welsh Government reserves.' And they said this was primarily because, in the provisional settlement for 2020-21, four of the five bottom councils are from north Wales, and, without a floor, most north Wales councils will be faced with the biggest challenge in terms of seeking cuts to service, whereas a floor will help to protect services and work against above-inflation council tax rises in the bottom six councils. How will you be responding to this request, which I believe has also been shared with the Welsh Local Government Association and the Secretary of State for Wales?

We've asked for more evidence as to the hardship that having the biggest uplift in any local government settlement that they've ever had would bring. And you can hear from the way I've answered your question that I'm a little sceptical about that. The purpose of a floor is obviously to prevent people from having to make enormous cuts in services that they would otherwise have had to make because of population projection changes, or some other issue in the distribution formula that disproportionately affects a particular council, and where an unexpected drop of million of pounds in terms of support would mean swift changes to services. 

In this case, what we're looking at is that no council in Wales will have less than a 3 per cent uplift. Most of the councils that you're talking about are somewhere in between 3 and 4 per cent. And what we're talking about is asking for a floor to bring them up to 4.7, I think they said—it might be 6 or 8; I can't remember—per cent. I don't think that's the same point, and, whilst I understand their argument that there's an average, and that some should come down in order for others to go up, they're not facing the kinds of service cuts that they were facing during the previous nine years of imposed austerity. So, it's very difficult to understand quite what the reasoning for that is. This is above the settlement that any of them could have been expected to be predicting, and it's very hard to see how they would have unplanned service cuts as a result. 

But, having said all of that, if they want to present some evidence of what that might look like, I'm very happy to look at it. But, again, I will emphasise that, when we are looking at putting more money into that sort of settlement, we are looking at where to take it from. So, we would also have to consider how much such a floor would cost, and where that money would come from. 

Well, as I said—I won't go down the austerity line—they said that 'even with the positive settlement this year'—so they're acknowledging that, and it's cross-party signatures on this letter—they're saying that in order to meet pressures in demand-led priority services like social care and children's services, they will be facing cuts without a 4 per cent floor; it is 4 per cent this letter asked for. 

However, moving on to the integrated care fund, you produced your annual report on 16 January, which said that:

'There are now numerous multi-disciplinary teams of health, social care, housing and third sector professionals working together to develop tailored interventions'.

And, you said,

'making better use of resources through collaborative working and moving away from traditional ways of delivering services' have been identified, but you recognised that the fund

'must demonstrate best use of public money and its impact should be clearly evidenced' and that you would be addressing the recommendations from the Wales Audit Office review of the fund. That Wales Audit Office review said:

'A key aim of the fund is to promote joint working between statutory and third-sector organisations' but the

'third-sector representatives that we spoke to identified a range of challenges which have affected their ability to access the fund' and had

'left the third sector disconnected from the wider programme where they could equally have valid contributions to make to some of the larger-scale projects.'

Their particular report on north Wales was even more concerning in this context, where it says that

'the way the fund has been managed at national, regional and project levels have limited its potential to date...little evidence of successful projects yet being mainstreamed and funded', and it specifically said that:

'Third sector representatives told us they felt they have insufficient access to the fund and that they benefit predominantly when spending on other projects slip' and it called for

'ways to ensure fair access to the Integrated Care Fund for the third sector'.

This replicates concerns raised with me just in the last week—a debate last week here on bereavement support charities' funding. I've had a letter this week from charities supporting people with vision and hearing impairments. We're all receiving correspondence from the network of third sector bodies providing housing-related support, all of which should, and can, reduce significant pressure on statutory services for relatively small proportions of overall budgets. So, how do you respond specifically to the concerns raised by the auditor general regarding the need to better integrate the third sector, not just in the share of funding, which is critical, but also in the decision making and design of services as they go forward?

I think it's a fair point, to be honest. It's early days in some ways for the integrated care fund, and we want to make sure that we are getting the kinds of ambitious projects coming forward. And to do that we do need a good set of cross-working across sectors to make sure that we hit all the right things that we want the integrated care fund to do. And that's quite complex, because, as Mark Isherwood is rightly pointing out, it interacts with a whole series of other things that we also fund. So, I think it's a fair point. Very happy to look again at the report's recommendations, and see how we can better integrate third sector partners in the planning for that. You'll know that we've recently put housing as statutory partners onto the regional planning boards—regional partnership boards, sorry; we should stop calling things almost the same three-letter acronym, for the benefit of struggling Ministers—the regional partnership boards, I should say. And the reason for that was because we wanted a wider input into the way that those funds are looked at. So, I'm very happy to look at that. If you want to write to me with better detail of some of the issues that have been raised with you, I'd be more than happy to look at that.

Okay. Then, if I move to a specific council, if I may, it's nearly two decades now since Flintshire's internal audit manager successfully took action against the council, and at the core of his complaints were denial of access to documents and failure to respond to correspondence. A few years later, we had the housing maintenance scandal, where similar problems were identified by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the independent Roots report. A whole tranche of people left the council, allegedly with non-disclosure agreements. A few years later, we had the AD Waste scandal, a similar pattern—again, two members of staff leaving the authority, but, again, the police saying they couldn't prosecute, because of the lack of documentation.

In 2018, Flintshire council had a debate and called for action after a councillor named and shamed officers who didn't reply to calls and e-mails, and called for further action to be taken. And now we have, this month, an ombudsman's report by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales into Flintshire County Council, which found that, despite identifying in 2014 a statutory nuisance, the council didn't open an appropriate case file until 18 months later. The council was aware from at least 2012 that they didn't have appropriate planning consent, but almost no planning records from before August 2018, failures in interdepartmental communication and co-operation, lack of records, the council failed to respond to the complaints appropriately, there was an absence of clearly established ownership at senior levels in the council, compounded by the length of the time the failures continued, and a lack of regard for the difficulties faced. These reports, going back 10 years, and 20 years, are all identifying the same problems, irrespective of the political leadership as it comes and goes. What are you going to do about it? Because last time I raised this with you, you said it's matter for the council, and your predecessors over the years have always said it's just a matter for the council. But surely this can't go on unchallenged and uninvestigated, when the same problems keep arising.

It is a matter for the council, but I understand your concern. I don't know this—because you'll know that I haven't been in work for the last week or so, but I don't know whether the public services ombudsman has raised anything as a result of the reports with the Government. So, I will look at that. We would expect, if there's a pattern emerging that the ombudsman was concerned about, for the ombudsman to flag that up with us. So, I will check that. And I'm more than happy to have a meeting with you about your wider concerns about it, if you like. So, apologies—I haven't seen that report, since I've been off work, but I will look into it.

However, it is always tempting to find a pattern in incidents over 10 years, when, actually, they're incidents. So, I'm happy to look at it with an open mind, but I'm not convinced that a set of incidents of one-offs, over 10 years, necessarily represents a pattern of culture in an authority. But I'm more than happy, Mark, to look at it, alongside you, and see whether there is something concerning emerging.

The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Delyth Jewell.

Diolch, Llywydd. Can the Minister explain why the Welsh Government is still counting the 7,129 homes sold through Help to Buy since 2016 as counting towards its target of 20,000 affordable homes, of which you've claimed 13,143 have been delivered already? 

Yes. Because Help to Buy has helped people buy a house that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to buy by assisting them with a deposit scheme that they wouldn't have otherwise had access to. And we count affordable homes in that wider sense as homes that are available to people that they wouldn't have had access to them unless they'd had Government support. So, that's the short explanation. 

Thank you for that, Minister. It seems to me the crux of the problem with the term 'affordable' is that the definition of it is so relative. So, a staggering 78 per cent of homes, so that's 5,564 that were sold through Help to Buy, were sold at a price of over £150,000. Over 1,000 homes that you count in the statistics as affordable were sold for over £250,000. I just can't see how any reasonable person can count these homes as affordable. Is that not statistical manipulation on an industrial scale? 

I don't disagree at all that the definition of 'affordable' is unhelpful and rather more flexible than we'd like in terms of what we're trying to do. And we've been very upfront about the numbers in terms of that, because I'm not disagreeing with the fundamental premise of what you're saying, which is, actually, we should build social housing or homes that actually are within people's range without having to have Government help to get them there. But the current definition is that, if you've had Government help to get you into your house, then it's an affordable home. So, I'm not going to argue with you; I don't disagree with the basic premise that you're saying. But the target we set included that definition and so it's being counted against that definition. 

Rather more importantly, we're very engaged now on trying to release land and resources so that we can build social housing. So, that is houses for social rent, and that's either via our councils who are stockholding authorities—the 11 councils who still are stockholding authorities—or via our local housing associations, or both in some areas. So, some stockholding authorities are working hand in hand with the local housing association to bring forward houses for social rent in joint or partial ownership, and in other non-stockholding authorities they're working with their local housing associations to bring them forward. And it is really accelerating fast.

So, from a slow start—if you will remember, councils weren't allowed to use the money that they got from right to buy sales in order to do this, and there were caps on the housing revenue accounts and so on. So, from having that to the Conservative Government finally seeing sense and removing those caps, we've managed to accelerate quite considerably, and I hope very much that this year will see another acceleration of growth in houses for social rent, which is the tenure that's most needed in the Welsh economy. 

Thank you, Minister. I welcome the tone that you're engaging with us on. I'm glad that you do agree with the general thrust of what we're saying here. So, just to put on the record, then, that, if we were to take a more reasonable look at the track record of the Government in delivering affordable housing in the definition in its wider sense of what it should mean, which I think that you agree with us on, we'd need to remove those homes that were beyond the price range of so many people and take out those 5,500 unaffordable homes, and that would actually mean that the Government has delivered 7,579 and you're thus on course to fail in reaching that target. So, I'd welcome your—

Okay, so my answer to that is, however, the target was set in light of the definition that was available—

I don't think the Member had quite finished her question, if you don't mind. I know you're keen, Minister, but if you allow her to finish her question. 

Huge apologies. 

No, thank you for agreeing with me on that. I wait to hear your answer more fully. But, as you were just saying about social housing, I also think that that is where we really need to be focusing delivery on. I welcome again what you've been saying on that. The figures show that, since 2016, there have been just 4,397 completed homes for the social housing sector, and that's around half of the rate that we need to reach, according to most estimates, the target. So, given this, and the findings that around half of the affordable homes that were promised through planning obligations over the past decade haven't been delivered, because developers, they exploit our failing planning system, when do you think that we will see the radical changes to planning that you've hinted at? 

Okay. So, as I was saying, I don't think it's fair to say that we don't meet the target, because the target's set in the light of the definition of affordable homes that existed at the time, and the target was set in that light. So, if you're going to take the Help to Buy houses out of that you'd lower the target necessarily, because we wouldn't never have set it in that way if we weren't including those houses. So, although I take the point you're trying to make, I think that's beating us with a stick unnecessarily, shall we say? There are other sticks that you can beat us with that are perhaps more justifiable.

One of which is that one of the biggest problems we've had in the delivery of the element of affordable homes in private sector planning applications is that councils have really had their score base decimated. And so, actually, in negotiating the 106 agreements, councils have not necessarily been able to hold the line that they would have liked to have held against the house builders and developers in that negotiation. So, very much a part of the local government Bill, that we were discussing in committee together this morning, is making those regional arrangements so that we can pool the skills necessary to get councils to be able to withstand those kinds of conversations. 

But at the same time, there's a whole series of other things we need to do. Actually, I think we've done rather well considering the level of constraint there was in building social housing over the last two years. But you'll see a huge change in scale and pace now that the caps have been taken off and we've changed the way that we hold public sector land. 

So, just to remind the Chamber, Llywydd, we've changed the way that the Welsh Government holds its land. It's been centralised into the public land division with my colleague Rebecca Evans and their instruction is that all land going for housing that's in Welsh Government ownership will have 50 per cent social-rented housing on it and then an element of affordable on top of it. And that land supply makes a huge difference to the acceleration of the way that we build social housing.

We're in conversation now with the Welsh Local Government Association and health boards and other things to really sell the public sector land under a similar scheme, because the biggest problem for the building of social homes is the acquisition of the land, not just the building of the houses. So, we're very much stepping up to that plate, and I think you'll see a step change in the numbers coming forward as the starts accelerate. What you're seeing at the moment is the completion of starts done under the old system, which was obviously much more restrictive.