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 4:46 pm on 25 February 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:46, 25 February 2020

Thank you very much for that, Joyce Watson. Just on the wood point, I'll just reiterate it, because I think it is worth reiterating. The strategy aims to create a strong domestic market for Welsh wood, and links to our aspiration to be a forest nation. And they are not in opposition to one another at all. Our ambition is to develop that thriving timber industry, and that requires a thoughtful national approach to commercial tree planting and harvesting. So, as I say, you don't clear crop mountainsides causing devastating soil loss, and all the rest of it; you have careful planting and cropping strategies in a sustainable biodiverse forest. That's perfectly possible and it's done in lots of places in the world, and there's no reason why we can't do that. That will need to harness our natural assets and it will help our economy, and it will help our environmental outcomes for that. 

And then, the whole point of the IHP programme—the innovative housing programme—is to trial that so that we know what will work, we know where to plant it, we know where they're currently sourcing that wood and that we work with NRW and our councils to make sure that we source that responsibly. As I said in response to Caroline Jones, we can't currently do all of that from Wales, but we are working very hard on planting the timber now that will enable us to do that in the future. So, I think that's a really good point, well made; we do need to be really emphasising that. The fact that you're using a timber industry doesn't mean you're deforesting, because we definitely are not wanting to do that.

In terms of the construction industry, we have been working very closely with the construction sector. We certainly welcome their response to wanting to work with us to assist us in skills development, and so on. I mentioned in the statement that we'll be developing an implementation plan for the strategy, and as part of the implementation plan, we will certainly be addressing the skills base necessary in the workforce, and how we plan to integrate that with the qualifications and, indeed the apprenticeship programme that my colleague Ken Skates is looking at alongside the new qualifications, Joyce, that you've already mentioned.   

And then, the last thing to say just in terms of prioritisation, we are very keen on getting vulnerable groups into employment via that route. I did say briefly in the statement that we'll be looking at groups like prisoners, but we're also looking at long-term unemployed. These factories can be really quite small so they can be local to where the house building is, so you don't have one big source—a big, massive factory taking up a load of land somewhere and distributing stuff by lorry; you've got small, local factories building local housing for local people, using local employment. So, creating local employment using local people.

So, there are lots of win-wins in this strategy that I think we will be working on with the construction industry and the SME house builders, in particular, to take that forward.