5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Re-imagining social house building in Wales — A modern methods of construction strategy for Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:23 pm on 25 February 2020.

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Photo of Delyth Jewell Delyth Jewell Plaid Cymru 4:23, 25 February 2020

There has been a consensus in this Chamber that we need to substantially increase the amount of affordable housing, although there has been less of a consensus on whether it's fair to class homes sold for over £150,000 through Help to Buy as affordable. For that reason, Plaid Cymru has preferred to specifically use the term 'social housing' when talking about our own targets for house building, and that is, of course, where the main problem regarding supply is. So, we welcome this strategy as a step in the right direction, and we agree that prefab housing of the sort that's been highlighted in the media today can be a useful part of providing that, with the usual caveats about quality control and so on. 

So, I just have a couple of questions for you, Minister. Firstly, are you in a position to give us some figures in terms of the numbers you want to see delivered? Now, the media reports, of course, use the 20,000 affordable homes figure, but we know that target includes homes that, in reality, are unaffordable, as we've discussed before, and that doesn't have a specific target for social housing. So, if you could give us an indication about how much social housing you'd want to see delivered through this, that would be helpful. And, secondly, currently the planning system already struggles to get the level of affordable housing it should through developments. Sometimes, this is because developers rely on the planning inspector to water down affordable housing commitments to guarantee that a development remains profitable, and that's something that no other industry has, and something that we really should reflect on. But at other times, it's simply because planning departments don't negotiate well, or they accept cash payments that are inadequate. I'm aware of one development where the cash payments amounted to around £50,000 per home they alleged to be able to build, which is clearly inadequate.

Now, of course, one advantage of prefab housing is that the cost per unit is substantially reduced, but, clearly, what we don't want is developers taking advantage of that and reducing their cash payments accordingly. So, instead, Minister, will you strengthen the planning system to actually require more affordable homes within developments to reflect the fact that it will cost less?