3. How is the Welsh Government supporting the regeneration of towns in Wales? OAQ55028

I thank the Member for that. The Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government's transforming towns announcement last week set out the significant investment the Welsh Government makes in supporting the regeneration of towns across Wales. We now intend to adopt and promote a town-centre-first approach to new developments.

Thank you for your answer, First Minister. I was really pleased to hear about the package of measures brought together under the transforming towns agenda, and they show, I believe, the Welsh Government's commitment to towns like Mountain Ash and Aberdare in my constituency.

Now, with my interest in a vacant land tax, it will come as no surprise to you that I particularly welcome the additional £13.6 million funding to tackle empty and dilapidated buildings and land. Can the First Minister say a little more about this, especially in the context of the recent consultation on compulsory purchase orders, which will give local authorities enhanced powers to drive this forward and to tackle urban blight?

I thank Vikki Howells for that. I thank her for her recognition of the transforming towns package and the way that it will reach into towns in her constituency. The Member's interest in vacant land tax is well known, having led debates on it here on the floor of the Assembly.

Llywydd, my view is that most empty properties and undeveloped sites in Wales can be remedied by agreed actions between owners, developers and public authorities. That's why we're putting £10 million into bringing empty homes in Wales back into beneficial use; that's why our £40 million stalled sites fund works with developers and owners to be able to invest in those sites so that they have a new commercial value. But, right across Wales, we have buildings that stand stubbornly empty, where their owners have often disappeared, where attempts by public authorities to reach out to them so that the blight caused by those empty properties can be remedied have no answer. That's why we have a £13.6 million fund to tackle empty and dilapidated buildings and lands, and that's why we need strengthened compulsory purchase orders to give local authorities the power they need when persuasion has broken down, when all the efforts that public authorities make to try to bring about improvement on an agreed basis—where those buildings and those empty pieces of land cause a blight on communities, prevent the regeneration of town centres, public authorities need the money we are giving them and the powers that we will supply to them to take decisive action.

A vital step towards regenerating town centres has to be taking firm action to deal with the terrible plight of homelessness that causes so much great suffering to vulnerable people and has a very visible impact on town centres and city centres. Now, new figures on homelessness released by the Welsh Government today do show an increase in rough-sleeping. I know it's only a snapshot, but they do suggest an increase of around 20 per cent for a two-week period in October 2019 compared with the previous year, and I note that Newport and Caerphilly fare particularly badly.

Now, First Minister, the answer isn't criminalising vulnerable homeless people, surely, and taking away their meagre possessions, as some councils are doing, but surely the answer is properly funding homelessness services and implementing robust action plans, such as the one put forward by the Crisis organisation. So, could you tell me, please, what steps your Government will be taking to deal with this increasingly desperate problem of homelessness on Welsh streets?

Well, I thank the Member for that question. I completely agree with her, of course, that criminalisation is not the answer to homelessness and rough-sleeping. I thank the Member, as well, for drawing attention to the figures published today. Some Members here will remember the debate we had last year when the figures went down, when there was a general feeling, from people's lived experience of seeing a rise in street homelessness, that it was hard to square a falling figure with what we are seeing. And, as a result of the discussions we had here, the methodology for this year has been revised and improved, and I think you can see some of that in the figures that were published today. They show, as ever, a mixed picture: five local authorities showing falls in the number of rough-sleepers, including Gwynedd, Wrexham and Cardiff, with significant falls, and then rises in other parts of Wales as well.

The Welsh Government is investing record sums in responding to homelessness. We have new ways in which we are trying to respond to rough-sleeping through the Housing First initiative, which is already helping over 60 people over this winter to go directly into accommodation. We do it in the teeth of the gale of austerity, which is the underlying cause of people losing their homes, losing their livelihoods, and finding themselves in this desperate situation. We will use the figures published today to work with our colleagues in local authorities, in the third sector, to see what more can be done, using the report that was commissioned by Julie James for this winter, chaired by the chief executive of Crisis, so we can learn lessons from elsewhere as well.