Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:44 pm on 29 January 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:44, 29 January 2020

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.