Item 6 on the agenda is a statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: update on the housing support grant. And I call on the Minister for Housing and Local Government, Julie James.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. A home of your own is at the heart of a happy and productive life. This Government believes everyone should have a warm and decent home, but for many this is not the reality.

For many, homelessness and the threat of homelessness is very real. How to pay their rent, how to manage a benefit claim or simply how to find a bed for the night can be a source of constant worry and stress. The causes are varied and complex. It might be the result of a background in the care system without the support networks of family and friends, it might be the result of a change in circumstances, such as a job loss or relationship breakdown. The trauma of homelessness can often result in, or be exacerbated by, existing mental ill health or substance misuse issues. One of the key policy principles that underpin our approach to homelessness prevention is that we take a person-centred, trauma-informed approach to understand the root causes and prevent homelessness becoming a reality.

The housing support grant is one of Welsh Government’s most significant grant programmes, aimed at tackling homelessness. It puts over £126 million into the hands of local authorities every year. In turn, they commission thousands of projects, providing services to tens of thousands of people to reduce the worry and stress they face, helping them to avoid homelessness and providing ongoing support where needed to ensure a home can be maintained in the longer term. It delivers services to prevent homelessness wherever possible and, where that cannot be achieved, to ensure that homelessness is rare, brief and unrepeated. 

The housing support grant brings together three previously existing grants: Supporting People, elements of the homelessness prevention grant, and Rent Smart Wales enforcement funding. It is part of a wider funding alignment project that seeks to create more coherent programmes that reduce bureaucracy and increase innovation. The housing support grant is characterised by a more flexible specification, allowing authorities to create and adopt new approaches. Importantly, it requires authorities to take a whole-system response to homelessness—a response that focuses not only on statutory definitions of homelessness, but also on the underlying causes. This facilitates the earliest interventions, which we know to be both the most effective and the most economical.

The housing support grant has been designed to provide sustainable impact that can address the adverse childhood experiences that often lie behind the vulnerabilities that lead to homelessness. In doing so it allows local authorities to focus on real prevention, the impact of which reduces demand on health, social care and criminal justice services. It has been designed to support the policy principles set out in our strategy for preventing and ending homelessness.   

Today, I am pleased to announce new guidance for the housing support grant, which will change the way we approach this important public service. The new grant is based on a single strategic planning mechanism, which builds on the existing duty of local authorities to produce a homelessness strategy. This ensures that resources can be targeted at the point in the housing system where they have the most impact. We know it is not enough to provide funding; we must also have a framework that allows good decisions to be made.   

My confidence that the housing support grant delivers such a framework has been bolstered by the extent of the engagement with stakeholders. We have worked hard to make sure we are working in the spirit of the well-being of future generations Act's five ways of working. The subsequent advice can be described as co-produced and therefore has fully tested the question: can this be delivered in practice?

This advice has led to a framework that is built on integration and collaboration. The guidance requires local authorities to consult with stakeholders to inform their local strategy. It also requires local authorities to work collaboratively across their regions and with key partners to achieve a cross-sector vision. The new regional housing support collaborative groups include a wide membership including police and crime commissioners, substance misuse area planning boards and service users. This very much acknowledges that homelessness is a public service issue and cannot be addressed by housing alone. The result will be that services are joined up and offer the user a more seamless response to their needs. 

I am also keen to ensure that we have a vibrant and sustainable provider sector, that important relationships between the provider and the user are not broken without purpose, and that contracts reflect the real costs of service provision. I'm particularly pleased that the guidance reflects our fair work principles. In a funding environment that has been so constrained, the pressure has often been felt in the terms and conditions of the committed workers at the heart of services. Whilst I'm committed to offer services to as many as possible, I strongly believe it is a false economy to do so at the expense of a living wage for the people who staff them. We will use housing support grant as a test bed that commissioning and procurement can deliver fair work.

The housing support grant changes the relationship between central and local government in a way that supports cultural change within authorities. It creates the space for them to shape the service response to homelessness and homelessness prevention. This cultural change starts with the framework but will require ongoing support and challenge to make it a reality. The work of the homelessness action group will provide vital input to support this change. I know Members will want to play their part in that process and I want to test our success against our intention to make homelessness rare, brief and unrepeated in Wales. Diolch.

Can I thank the Minister for this statement? A most important area of public policy, I'm sure we all agree. The housing support grant has been welcomed by many in this sector, and I note the intention to drive forward more effective public spending through more integrated and strategic approaches, and I look forward to a full assessment of this approach, because it obviously was quite controversial when it was originally proposed. But I do think that getting maximum value from the Welsh pound is a very, very important principle.

I note a recent report by Community Housing Cymru, Cymorth Cymru and Welsh Women's Aid, and it states that, by their calculation, over 60,000 people are helped at the moment through this grant to avoid homelessness, escape abuse, to live supported in their own homes and to thrive in their communities. That does give you, I think, an indication of how important this grant scheme is. However, those organisations have also stressed the level of demand and need, and call for increased expenditure indeed on the housing support grant to, and I quote,

'deliver person centred, trauma informed services'.

I was pleased to note that the Minister used that language about the trauma-informed approach when making this statement. I think the new guidance does emphasise the need for integration and collaboration to achieve a co-produced homelessness strategy. I know my colleague Mark Isherwood has pursued this issue that we've got to involve the whole sector in designing an effective strategy, and co-production is key to that. So, again, we do welcome that as part of the approach.

I do think the Welsh Government falls short of a full housing first approach to end homelessness; though, obviously, that model can be explored through the grant. But I think we do need that systematic examination of what we're going to do to end homelessness. Just last week we had, as a result of the latest survey, an indication that rough sleeping has increased. I welcome the fact that we're trying to improve the data, incidentally, because we didn't necessarily have a very clear picture before, but again I think we can all agree that we're a long way from really making the transformation that we want to see in terms of preventing homelessness.

So, we're giving a cautious welcome to the approach, but I do think that we need a homelessness tsar, and I think we need the local authorities, when they're producing their homelessness strategies, to set targets to end homelessness, and follow the example set by Manchester, where Andy Burnham, the mayor, has led with this approach, setting a realistic target—an ambitious target also, but not one that's tomorrow.

But I do think it's that concentration that we need to bring to this most pressing problem, because some of the most vulnerable people in society then end up, in addition to that vulnerability, being rough sleepers, and many more obviously are in very fragile housing conditions and are homeless. This really is not something we should tolerate in a modern society.

I thank David Melding for those comments. Today, we're very much launching the new guidance, which is around how the system works; it's not really about the funding amount. There's no doubt that, were there more money, I would like to be able to put it into this area, but I'm also very much aware that we have the homelessness action group, chaired by Jon Sparkes, working. Members will be aware that we implemented all of the recommendations of the action group on rough sleeping just before Christmas. Actually, just two days after the rough-sleeping count, so not sufficient to change that, although the rough-sleeping count, as David Melding has acknowledged, is a pretty rough-and-ready way of working out who is sleeping on the streets.

I'm very much looking forward to receiving their next report in the next half term. Hopefully, slightly before that, but I know they're working as fast as possible. I can't emphasise enough that that includes stakeholders from across the sector working together to see what the most effective way of tackling homelessness is. I agree on the housing first approach. We will be transitioning, through this advice and others, to a rapid re-housing situation, but it doesn't work for everybody, so making sure that the system works for as many people as humanly possible, and taking that person-centred, trauma-related approach, really matters.

So, what we're trying to do here is shift the culture inside the local authorities and the way that they commission these services. First of all, to make sure that they get the best staff on the ground, which is a really big issue, and that we aren't ourselves driving insecure employment and relationship breakdown by driving insecure conditions of employment into the very sector that assists people. Secondly, that the local authority is best placed to know what services it has at the moment and doesn't need to bolster, and what services it needs to put in place pretty rapidly to make sure that we can shift. So, what we want is a set of guidance that gets people to work regionally and collaboratively and co-productively, whilst knowing what they themselves have in their area on the ground, without us trying to put a one-size-fits-all across Wales, which we know will not work.

So, I accept the reservations that you set out. Obviously, we're transitioning to this system, but I too will be looking with great interest to see how that works, and I look forward to receiving the housing action group's report on the next stages as well, so that we can mesh the two things together.

I'd like to thank the Minister for sharing a copy of the housing support grant practice guidance ahead of her statement today. Now, of course, good intentions from the Government would mean little unless those responsible for delivering crucial services that help to tackle homelessness on the ground are on board, so I do welcome the emphasis placed on securing all around buy-in for the cause of tackling homelessness.

The Minister may want to reflect on how the Government can drive this message home, when we have, for example, Newport council, which is under Labour control, evicting homeless people from a car park where they'd been staying and confiscating their meagre possessions. Now, I'm certain that she would oppose such measures, so I'd urge her to consider what action can be taken in order to ensure that this culture change is reflected across all levels of local authorities.

We know that homelessness is growing on a yearly basis. Welsh Government snapshot statistics show that increase in people sleeping on the streets. The snapshot shows—and again, I'm sure that she's very familiar with the figures—240 people sleeping rough over a two-week period in 2015, and that's increased to 313 in 2016, 345 in 2017, 347 in 2018, and 405 in 2019. I do think it's important to put those statistics on the record, because there is a clear pattern of an increase there. And we know that the real scale of the problem is likely to be much larger, because homelessness is notoriously difficult to measure. But the fact that Cardiff Council had 4,000 requests for help with homelessness in 2018—these figures just start to hint at the scale of the problem.

So, there's nothing in the Minister's statement today that I disagree with. The guidance and regulations seem to be striking the right note, but I do think it would be remiss not to discuss one of the main drivers behind the consistent growth in homelessness, which is of course funding cuts. While the cuts to welfare since 2010 are outside the Welsh Government's control, the £37 million cut to the homelessness support grant since 2012 is within the Government's control, and this year's budget once again delivers a real-terms cut to the budget because of the effects of inflation on the static budget.

Now, the preventative course set by the Welsh Government is the correct one—I agree with it—but it cannot be delivered unless it's supported by an adequate level of funding. If the Welsh Government really is serious about making tackling homelessness a priority, and I believe that the Minister is serious about this, it has to be reflected in budgetary decisions.

So, Plaid Cymru wholeheartedly supports the Housing Matters campaign that's advocated by Cymorth, by Community Housing Cymru and by Welsh Women's Aid, which is in favour of increasing funding to the housing support grant, and their call is supported by the evidence collected by the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee. Their inquiry found that the current budget—again, I'm sure that you're aware of this, Minister—for the grant does not meet the Welsh Government's apparent prioritisation of homelessness, and recommends an increase in funding in order to meet the ambition of homelessness being 'rare, brief and unrepeated'. They found it's nigh on impossible to achieve this aim in the face of previous cuts to the budget, and in the face of increasing demand on services and complexity.

In terms of the kinds of real-life effects we're talking about here, I'm sure the Minister has looked at some of the case studies on the Housing Matters campaign website. Just for the record, I'd like to read one of them out to the Chamber. This is a direct quotation:

'Through the Housing Support Grant, we have recently helped a young homeless person who is wheelchair-bound move into temporary accommodation, supporting him in applying for benefits, emergency funding, white goods, and pre-tenancy support in preparation to move into permanent housing.'

Again, looking at the holistic way of helping a person in this very vulnerable situation. I know the Minister is of course aware of the impact of the grant for which she's responsible. I would urge her, please, to press the importance of increasing this budget on her Cabinet colleagues, so that it's reflected in the final budget allocation, so that other people like this individual who I mentioned can be supported.

I'm very glad to see that you're supporting the issuing of the guidance. Today isn't actually about the quantum that we're putting into the support grant; it is around whether the guidance is the right guidance and whether it will achieve the right results.

I don't disagree, of course, that we would like to put more money into the housing support grant. There are quite a lot of areas where we'd like to put more money in, but we have to take it from somewhere in order to do that. We've just delivered the best local government settlement in nine years. This money also goes to local government, so trying to ensure that the services are holistically supported is very important.

It's also very important to make sure that the public service sector is joined up together. So, the example that you've just read out is a very good one, because you would need a whole series of public services to work together to be able to achieve that. That's very much what this grant and its guidance is about.

So, this guidance is about local authorities having a homelessness prevention strategy that encompasses all of the public services necessary to come together to do that, and that includes disability services and housing services, obviously, but also mental health strategies, substance abuse strategies and benefits advice and guidance. We also put a lot of money into our benefit advice—I can't remember what it's called; the single advice fund, isn't it—in order to do that as well. But we're fighting a rising tide, I'm afraid, because of the way that universal credit is being rolled out, and I know that we don't disagree about that either.

What I hope this guidance will do is put local authorities into the very best possible position to make the most of what money they have got. Of course, depending on what the UK Government does in terms of its budget, if there is more money then I will certainly be putting my hat into the ring very firmly in order to get it. 

I very much welcome the statement. I welcome yet another opportunity to discuss supporting housing and the housing support grant, which I seem to have spoken on at least four times over the last two weeks, alongside David Melding and others. But I think it really is important. I don't think we can overestimate how important housing is. Being homeless is one of the great fears of many of us, and, as we go home tonight to warm, dry houses, just think of those who don't. And we've seen what the weather's been like over the last few days. I don't think sleeping outside would be up on the top of any of our lists of things we would like to do. But it is, unfortunately, the reality for far too many people.

It's incredibly difficult to count the number of people who are homeless. A lot of people, especially women, sleep all day and walk during the night. Now, if you're walking in Wind Street on a Saturday night or a Sunday night, to tell if you're homeless or just somebody who's out for the night would be incredibly difficult for anybody. So, female homelessness is always underestimated. But some men do it as well; they think it's dangerous to sleep during the night and much safer to sleep during the day.

I welcome the fact that the Minister stated that a home of your own is the heart of a happy and productive life and that the Government believes that everyone should have a warm and decent home. I think that that is something that would be echoed right the way across the Chamber.

The housing support grant is aimed at tackling homelessness and it's incredibly important in what it does in commissioning projects to tackle homelessness, but we also know that just giving somebody a home is a temporary measure if it's not supported. Some people need support. Their lives are chaotic; they don't come from a stable background, whether they've been in care or have lived in an unstable home. Sometimes, we talk about care, about this number of young people who have left what has been a very unstable home where they've moved around continually, where—. And I deal with a school in my constituency where, at one time, there was a pupil there who would go home and sit on a step outside a house to wonder who was going to pick her up and which home she was going to live in that night. I think we really do have these problems. That wouldn't be picked up under any of your surveys or anything else, but there you had somebody young and in primary school who was effectively homeless. 

I think what I'd like to say as a question to the Minister, I think you can take it that you've got cross-party support here to ask for additional funding for this area, and if you want to know where you need to take it off, I'm sure that many people can come up with a number of areas that appear to take up large sums of money and don't appear to be particularly productive. But I think that it really is important that this is adequately funded, and if somebody—. If the Minister wants me to name some of them, I will: the economy, which seems to have large amounts of money to give out to companies to come here because we offer them more money than anybody else; they come for a short period of time and then leave. I've never thought this would be a sensible economic policy, but it's certainly a very expensive one. But dealing with people who are homeless, I think, is really high up on everybody's agenda, and I would hope that additional money is found.

Well, thank you very much for that, Mike Hedges. I mean, I agree with a very large part of what you said, and just to emphasise that the housing support grant is based on a single strategic planning mechanism that builds on existing duties for local authorities to produce the homelessness strategy. And he's just pointed out the need for an integrated system to pick up people such as the individual he described, which would need an integrated service between the school education service, the care system, the family support system, the housing system and so on in order to be able to pick up that person. 

We're just running a public awareness campaign, which I hope Members will have seen, around 'This is homelessness', showing people doing exactly that—sitting in cafes or sleeping on people's sofas. Anyone who doesn't have a secure place to leave their things that they think of as home is technically homeless, and what we're doing is wanting people to come forward as early as possible in that process so that they can access housing support grant services, the whole point of which is to keep vulnerable people—to help them find and keep a home or accommodation and to live as independently as possible, and make a significant contribution to maintaining them in that secure home.

So, I can't emphasise to the Chamber enough that what the housing support grant guidance does for local authorities is talk about the practical ways in which each local authority is expected to contribute to that holistic strategic planning for these services that are so important in Wales to preventing homelessness.

Can I thank the Minister for her statement? Housing is a key priority area in the Welsh Government's 'Prosperity for All' national strategy. In the past, we have criticised Ministers of this Welsh Government of carrying on regardless rather than listening to those who deliver vital services. It is therefore appropriate to acknowledge the efforts of the Minister, who has clearly listened to, and acted upon, the advice of, amongst others, Cymorth Cymru, and is engaging with them to deliver what we hope will be a much-improved service for those who, unfortunately, for whatever reason, find themselves without a home, or perhaps more importantly, require assistance in retaining their home, thus avoiding homelessness in the first place.

It is accepted that without the support of networks, some are clearly unable to cope with the pressures of modern life. Although initially meeting opposition from the stakeholders, the establishment of a regime where a number of available grants are reduced to just, I believe, two, does appear to have been a successful one. The collaboration between the Government and the umbrella organisation, Cymorth Cymru, whilst not totally satisfying Cymorth Cymru and other service providers, is undoubtedly a significant improvement on the previous situation. The setting up of two housing grant systems, a housing grant and—[Inaudible.]—housing grant, seems to be the result of this collaboration. It takes away the uncertainty on landlords' ability to borrow funds in order to develop supported accommodation housing for vulnerable people.

The primary aim of any administration should be to enable access to housing and also to prevent vulnerable people from losing their homes, but also to give help and support to those who may still lose their homes and help in developing the skills and confidence to live their lives independently. We acknowledge that local authorities are in the front line and will consult with all stakeholders to inform them of their local strategy, working collaboratively across their regions with key partners. However, the sting in the tail, Minister, is that the settlement for the housing grant shows that it remains static at £126.8 million, which is, in effect, a real-terms cut. As mentioned by both David Melding and Delyth Jewell, Cymorth Cymru have stated that this settlement in 2020 will not be enough to achieve the shared ambitions of the Welsh Government, landlords and support providers. Minister, in respect of the budget allocation, do you share their concerns?

Thank you for the welcome. I think it's right to say, as you've acknowledged, that we have worked very hard with stakeholders to produce guidance that everybody thinks is fit for purpose, and I really do think it will produce the joined-up public services we need in this area.

I do think in terms of the money, it is important to say that in the face of very vicious austerity settlements over nine years, we have maintained this; this has not been cut. So, the idea that we're now being somehow denigrated for not having cut it when everything else was cut, I find, very difficult to take. Of course we'd like to put more money into it, but that money must come from somewhere. If there is extra money as a result of the UK budget settlements, then I'd be very happy to discuss with my colleague, Rebecca Evans, putting some of that money into homelessness prevention.

We've also—as I said in response to Mike Hedges, I think, and Delyth, and probably everybody, David Melding as well—got the housing action group working very hard for us, and I want to be certain to be able to action the proposals that come out of that group. I don't know what they are yet, but that is a cross-stakeholder group right across Wales, and I'm sure that they will have a number of things to say to us about the best way to make our homelessness and housing services work together. And I want to be certain that we'll be able to implement those in a timely fashion as well.

I welcome your statement today, Minister, and the publication of the housing support grant guidance for local authorities. As you know, the equality committee that I chair has been doing a lot of work on rough sleeping, and in particular, in our recent work, we've dealt with co-occurring disorders and issues around commissioning. Indeed, we'll be debating that report here in the Chamber tomorrow.

But I very much welcome that the guidance makes clear that commissioning drives procurement, because that's been a theme throughout the committee's work on this subject, and we do believe that effective commissioning should lead to effective services that meet the needs of the people accessing them. I also welcome that the guidance emphasises the importance of involving and engaging people who use the funded services in all aspects—the planning, the procurement, the monitoring and the evaluation. That's clearly very important. I'm particularly pleased that the guidance highlights the importance of considering the length of contracts within the context of establishing a stable environment that enables recruitment and retention of staff, and stability, of course, for people using the services. We found that the current levels of instability within the sector have been repeatedly highlighted as a barrier to establishing effective relationships with the people accessing those vital services.

While I welcome much of the guidance, I continue to have concerns about the level of funding in the system. As you know, our committee called for an increase in the housing support grant as part of our budget scrutiny, and along with colleagues from across the Chamber, these calls were repeated last week during the debate on the draft budget. Our recommendation was based both on our budget scrutiny and on our ongoing work. We’ve received correspondence from Cymorth Cymru, Community Housing Cymru and Welsh Women’s Aid saying that the cash-flat settlement in the budget is simply not enough, with services reaching a tipping point.

So, while getting the commissioning of services right is obviously essential, it’s also vital that there are sufficient funds to enable the right services to be delivered in the right place and, of course, in a timely fashion. I heard what you said earlier, Minister, and I note that the Minister for finance, in responding to questions last week, suggested that, were additional funding to be allocated to Welsh Government, then that could provide extra funding for the housing support grant. So, I very much welcome what you said earlier about those discussions, and we look forward to hearing the outcome.

But it would also useful if you could clarify what consideration has been given to reallocating funds to provide the necessary increase to the housing support grant, because, of course, we don't know that additional funds will be forthcoming from the UK Government. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you for that, John Griffiths, I completely agree with you. Chapter 7, which is the commissioning and procurement of housing support grant services chapter, very much reflects the committee’s work on procurement and commissioning, so I'm very glad to hear you welcome it. I think a lot of what's set out in this chapter is what we would all consider to be good ethical practice and procurement. So, I just emphasise that. For example, we're very pleased, in the guidance, to set out our fair work principles and to say that people delivering these services should not be driven into insecure, unfair work because of the need to maximise resource, because that actually has the opposite effect that we want. I know the committee has come to similar conclusions.

I just want to emphasise one short thing, which is that it does say as well that commissioning plans must reflect the most appropriate approaches to market development and procurement in the local area, including different contract forms, grants or in-house provision. So, we're not—. In saying commissioning guidance, that’s just an overarching term for how you get these services in place; it doesn't mean that we're necessarily getting them through one particular structure. And I cannot emphasise enough that each local authority will know what the provision in its area is, and that will be a mixture of in-house, third sector and private sector arrangements. And they should be ensuring, through this grant and this guidance, the best possible combination of those services to deliver the best service on the ground, exactly as the committee report has asked us.

In terms of the quantum, I do think, as I've said in response to a number of other people, of course we'd like more money; we’d like more money for virtually every service, or every service—I don’t know why I’m qualifying it—every service in the Government. I'm pleased that we have been able to do what the Welsh Government said it would do, which is protect health and then the next call was for local government. We’ve just delivered the best local government settlement in nine years, I’m very pleased with that, and, of course, this money goes to local authorities to deliver those services. So, it must be seen within that best settlement.

But, obviously, if there is additional money as a result of the final budget settlement round and also because we've got this somewhat unusual, shall we say, situation with a budget a week after our budget, if that does produce any extra money, then, obviously, homelessness is a top priority of the Welsh Government. But I would say, to put that in context, housing is the top priority, as well, because this is more than the sharp end of homelessness; this is about building the social houses necessary to get long-term sustainability. So it's not just about the acute end. And then, on the acute end, of course we have put an additional £20 million on top of the housing support grant for homelessness prevention this year. You'll know that we did that in response to the housing action group over Christmas, and as I just said in response to David Rowlands, we're awaiting the next report of the housing action group.

I worked with housing support providers before I came to this place, and throughout my time here, since 2003, I've worked on every campaign—this isn't the first one—for Housing Matters every year, before that we had the Let's Keep Supporting People campaign from Cymorth Cymru. Unfortunately, this has become a bit of an annual ritual. Usually, it's produced good news at the end, and I pray that that's the same in this instance.

You say that we know it's not enough to provide funding, but we know that without enough funding, the new grant will not build on the existing duty of local authorities to produce a homelessness strategy. As we've heard, responding to the cash-flat settlement for the grant in the Welsh Government's draft budget, a cut in real terms, Cymorth Cymru, Community Housing Cymru and Welsh Women's Aid warned that services preventing homelessness and supporting independent living have now reached a tipping point. And in north Wales a supported living service provider I recently visited told me the consequences would be increased pressures on the NHS, A&E and blue-light services.

You stated, understandably, that to put more money into this would mean money being taken away elsewhere, but why won't the Welsh Government do what it says in terms of the preventionally intervention agenda and recognise this isn't about taking money from elsewhere, it's about saving multiples more money for elsewhere by taking pressure off statutory services? Smart budgeting in this area, protecting budgets in this area, will save hundreds of millions more for health, social care and other key services.

What plans does the Welsh Government currently have for its planned redistribution of the housing support grant? Key providers in north Wales tell me that the plans that they understand are in place would see five local authorities in the north losing between 25 and 40 per cent of their housing support grant funding. Is that still something under consideration by the Welsh Government? If not, what is its current position in terms of the redistribution previously referred to by it?

As David Melding indicated, you referred to co-production. You talk about engagement with stakeholders and that subsequent advice can be described as co-produced, but you then contradict that by saying the guidance requires local authorities to consult with stakeholders to inform their local strategy, where consultation is the antithesis of co-production and is meant to be the evolution to get us beyond that. So, if this is going to be co-produced, how will the guidance ensure that third sector housing support providers, the key providers of preventionally intervention work in this field, are required to be helping to design and deliver the local strategy with statutory partners at the core, so that we can address some of these other points raised?

Finally, how do you respond to the call by Welsh Women's Aid to ensure that the housing support grant commissioning covers all forms of violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence, rather than, as they say, a default assumption that a focus on domestic abuse meets the varying needs of all survivors of violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence?

As I say, today isn't the day that we're discussing the budget. Today was the day that we were discussing the guidance, which has been co-produced and welcomed across the sector.

Mark Isherwood mentioned some previous campaigns that he's been involved in, and I know that he has been involved in those campaigns, but one of them, for instance, was about stopping the abolition of Supporting People, but actually the sector very much welcomes the way that the new housing support grant works, and although I understood their concerns at the time, now it's very obvious that we were right to do what we did and that this is a much more efficient and effective system. So not all of the campaigns—although I understand the concerns of the sector—are always the best thing to do, because actually it turns out that it was much better to combine the grants and have a system that is a much more flexible set of housing support grant availability. So I'll just use that as a demonstration that sometimes change is resisted because it's change, and actually it turns out to be a better situation than we had in the first place. So, this is clearly one of those times.

In terms of the rest of Mark Isherwood's remarks, of course we're talking about the co-production of the guidance, and we're also talking about the homelessness strategy, which has to be consulted on as part of the original homelessness Act. Sorry; I've suddenly got a tickle in my throat. It's important not to conflate the two. I'm not suggesting you were, Mark Isherwood, but I do think it's very important to understand that what we're talking about here is the guidance and the way that the guidance is being produced, and then what the authorities have to do in order to commission the services that come out of it, and the way that that works together with the homelessness prevention strategy overall. I'll leave it there then.

Will you? Are you sure? Rhianon Passmore.

Thank you, Deputy Llywydd. Minister, I very much welcome this strategic guidance for local authorities and the £20 million for homelessness. It is important that housing and homelessness services are person centred and able to meet the varying needs of people, including those with pets.

The housing first approach is now well recognised as a groundbreaking and innovative approach in Wales and as supported by Welsh Government. I'm really pleased to see the emphasis in this new strategic guidance about the need for services to be psychologically informed, and the importance of building trusting relationships with people, especially considering the trauma that many have experienced earlier in their lives. And I also welcome the focus on providing therapeutic support for staff who do incredibly difficult jobs every single day in supporting people to overcome trauma and homelessness. I also know that deep austerity has made it extremely difficult for local authorities and support providers to have the resources they need to ensure that services are truly person centred and psychologically informed.

The rising tide of homelessness is being driven by universal credit, the bedroom tax and other welfare cuts and restrictions, and this is a fact that is driving homelessness and demand. So, Minister, would you also give me assurances—and you've already made some today—that should additional money become available before the final Welsh budget, or following the UK Government budget in March, that you will allocate this to this very important housing support grant, so that local authorities and support providers have the resources that they need to deliver the truly person-centred trauma-informed services that this guidance strategically and holistically outlines?

I very much thank Rhianon Passmore for those remarks. I think it is just worth reminding ourselves, as a result her remarks, what the purpose of the housing support grant actually is. This is not a grant that's meant to do everything there is to do in the housing field. This is a grant that's specifically there to prevent homelessness and support people to have the capability, independence, skills and confidence to access and/or maintain a stable and suitable home.

So, this is not about the sharp end of rough-sleeping—although it can help in that area—this is much more about maintaining people in the right kind of accommodation. So, if you take the Housing First strategy, for example, it's all very well to have somebody put into the house, but they also have to have the skills to be able to get their benefits sorted out and pay their bills and get some furniture together and live in that house and feed themselves and have a social life and all those sorts of things. And many vulnerable people will need a great deal of support to be able to do that, and hopefully that support will taper off as they get more used to it, but that support might need to go on for many years. So, it's very important to make sure that we have the right grant structures in place and the right providers in place that can provide that long-term support for somebody to maintain that secure home, and not have them drop out into homelessness in a repeated fashion. So, I completely concur.

In terms of the funding, I've said a lot about the funding already, but I'll just say one last thing about it. There are other things around housing and homelessness that we're looking at, and I do remind Members that we have got the housing action group's report coming forward soon, and I'm sure Members will want to look very carefully at what the action group's proposals are, and we'll be urging the Government to consider those as well. So, in negotiations with my colleague, the Minister for finance, and anything that comes out of the budget, we will want to keep that in mind at the same time.

Thank you very much, Minister.