Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:33 pm on 4 March 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:33, 4 March 2020

So, yes, we do expect the 20,000 target to be met. In fact, we've already exceeded the bit of it that was Help to Buy and so on. However, I've answered on a number of occasions across this Chamber issues around what we mean by 'affordable.' And the 20,000 homes was very much set in the definition of affordable that we had at that time, and in the light of the exchange we just had across the floor, in the light of the cap still being very firmly in place on the housing revenue accounts in local authorities, preventing them from borrowing and reinvesting in social housing. Since then, since that target was set, that's changed, and so we've moved our focus very firmly on to building at pace and scale for social housing because that's the biggest gap. We still need private sector housing to come forward, but we have a bigger catch-up on social housing than we do on private sector housing, and, just this morning, my colleague Lee Waters and I had a feisty, but very constructive meeting with the Home Builders Federation to discuss how the two sectors could come together and make the best of the land supply here in Wales.