6. Debate: Draft Budget 2020-2021

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:38 pm on 4 February 2020.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 4:38, 4 February 2020

I agree with much of what Mike has said, particularly the issue around how we keep people well is going to be a much bigger saving on the health budget than if we are constantly piling money into things that aren't working particularly well at the moment.

I just wanted to talk about the allocation of the housing budget, particularly the supported housing grants. Because on Friday, I visited one of Llamau's supported housing for young people aged 16 to 25, an age when most young people still have, either part time or full time, a place in the family home. But these are people who, for one reason or another, are unable to live with their families and are still not ready to hold down their own tenancy, whether as a result of the trauma of homelessness, which makes them vulnerable, or being sexually exploited, or because they're experiencing the withdrawal of support that was previously available to them as looked-after children, or whether they have addiction to alcohol or drugs, which makes it impossible for them to hold their own tenancy.

We know that the pain of adverse childhood experiences makes such young people hugely more likely to end up with a serious mental illness or, alternatively, end up in prison. So, either of those routes is a much bigger drain on public resources than the preventative spend that we need to put into the housing support grant. So, the work by Llamau and others to prevent that descent into either criminality or mental crisis is a huge saving to society.

Llamau has 10 houses in Cardiff, each supporting living accommodation for between three and six people. In many ways, it's no different to the arrangements devised by the many students in houses in multiple occupation in my constituency. Each individual has their own room, and they share the bathroom, kitchen and living room with others. There are differences, though. Each tenant in Llamau gets to choose their own bedroom furniture and their decorations. Pink sparkly wallpaper is not everybody's choice, but it was the choice of a particular young woman, and it was what made her feel that it was her home.

Llamau tells me that three quarters, at least, of all these young people then successfully move on to holding their own tenancies, or a training tenancy, either in the social sector or a private-rented tenancy. One of the important features of their support is that they continue to be supported for the first 12 months by the same group of professionals that they came to trust while they were in the supported accommodation.

So, the Llamau grant from Cardiff Council's preventing homelessness service covers four fifths of the cost of this imaginative, tailored support. The rest—£250,000—has to be fundraised, and I was very happy to support the Sleep Out event in Cardiff castle in early December, which was supported by a huge range of individuals and organisations. But I do wonder whether, in light of the proven success of this Housing First intervention, it's right to only have a cash-flat settlement for this line of the budget, which in reality means a cut. Without additional investment in the housing support grant, there is a risk that services will not have the capacity to meet people's needs, and obviously that's a huge issue in Cardiff, where we have a very significant number of people either homeless already or at risk of homelessness.

Turning to another matter, which is the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee's inquiry into fuel poverty, which is ongoing, it does demonstrate that there's far more that can be done to join up the approach. I wonder whether we're really adequately using all public services boards to ensure that we are maximising the collaboration of different stakeholders.

Small sums of money can often be game changers, and I applaud the £5 million in the environmental growth budget for a local places for nature fund, which as the Minister said can be seen from the doorstep and is much more significant in its impact than the £137 million general capital for this item. So, I think we could be doing a good deal more of this sort of thing, such as the innovative housing fund, which has demonstrated, time and again, that we really can be building much better housing than the Legoland approach of the five big house builders. Thank you.