2. How many people are on waiting lists for social housing throughout Wales? OAQ55160

Thank you for the question. Statistics regarding households on social housing waiting lists are not collected by the Welsh Government. However, recognising the very real need, we continue to prioritise investment in increasing the supply of affordable housing. This will contribute towards easing pressure on waiting lists.

It's astonishing that you don't have, as a Government, detailed national data on the number of people who are waiting for social housing in Wales. Given that this is one of your priorities, namely, providing more social housing, how are you monitoring that your policies are effective if you don't know exactly what is the position? In Arfon, I know that there are too many people waiting for social housing. They are in inappropriate homes. They're too small for the requirements of their families. They're damp and costly in terms of bills, or people are relying on the goodwill of their families and friends. Or, of course, they have to live on the street because there isn't enough social housing.

Gwynedd Council, I know, has innovative plans to build more social housing to meet the need locally, but I ask you again: how can you provide enough homes if you don't know what 'enough' means because the data isn't available?

Yes, well, I understand the connection that Siân Gwenllian is trying to make, and I share the desire behind it. But, in fact, the housing waiting list is not an indication of housing need, as such, because people go on waiting lists for all kinds of reasons. For example, they might want to move for a particular reason, but not actually be in housing need. We don't encourage only people in dire housing need to go on to a council house waiting list; there will be people who want to move within the area who are not 'in need', as such, they have reasons other than not currently being in an insecure home.

So, I applaud the point of the question, which is how we assess need, really, across Wales. We do that in a number of ways. We monitor, for example, the units actually let as social housing units. So, at 31 March 2019, Wales had a total of 231,408 units of social housing let. The new lettings increased by 4 per cent during 2018-19 to 21,135  lettings, 61 per cent of those were on the housing waiting list, up 2 per cent on the previous year to 12,863 of those. The proportion of lettings for households rehoused on a priority basis due to being homeless increased again, and the overall number of types of lettings was up by 15 per cent on the previous year.

So, we are doing it the other way around; we are doing it by actual lettings rather than the list, if you see what I mean. Having said that, though, we do encourage combined housing lists in areas, because there are other benefits, other than understanding the need—not least that in areas with a combined housing list, you can make one application and be considered by all of the social landlords. In 19 of the 22 local authorities, we have a combined list. We have three that don't, and they have different partnership arrangements. What we don't want is somebody to apply to lots of different landlords to acquire their social home.

I have got a piece of research out at the moment to look at how we might be able to list housing need, as opposed to people who want to be on the housing waiting list. I don't wish to discourage people who aren't 'in need' from going on those waiting lists. There are large numbers of people who know, perhaps, that they aren't going to get to the top of a points-based system, but nevertheless want to register for a council house because some of them become available in other circumstances. So, I do have that piece of research out, and I am hoping to be able to announce it in the forthcoming weeks.

After social housing waiting list figures for 2018 were published, showing more than 16,500 households on social housing waiting lists in Wales, Shelter Cymru referred to the situation as a housing crisis. But, of course, it was during the second Assembly, when the Homes for All Cymru campaign, including Shelter, warned that there would be a housing crisis if the Welsh Government didn't reverse its new social housing cuts—in fact, cut by over 70 per cent in the first three terms of the Assembly.

Reducing pressure on social housing waiting lists includes—and I agree with you on this—greater supply of broader affordable housing, whether that's intermediate rent or low-cost home ownership. Why, therefore, do you think it is that the NHBC's new homes registered figures published a month ago, for 2019, show that, although new homes registered in England and Scotland went up, they fell in Wales from 5,448 to 4,769?   

That's a wholly different topic—the subject of new build, not social housing. I do find it extraordinary that, on the Conservative benches, you stand up and berate us for not building social housing when you wouldn't take the housing revenue account caps off us until the end of last year, and you stopped us using houses sold from the social sector into the private sector—. You stopped us using that money to build new social housing. I just think that you have got the brass neck of—. Well, I am speechless with your brass neck, to be honest—[Laughter.]—that you've actually put that to me. The reason that we have dire social housing need is because you sold the social housing stock.

Minister, the—[Interruption.]

You stopped us, having the HRA cap—[Interruption.]

No. Thank you. We're not having this across the Chamber. You'll go through the Chair, and I have just called another Member to speak—Huw Irranca-Davies.

I'm pleased to say that the Minister has never been speechless. But, could I say, we're not alone in Ogmore in having people on the social housing list waiting for accommodation, for different types of units, and at the same time we have many empty properties, often above shops, in the Valleys, that with the grants that are now available from Welsh Government for regeneration, with a bit of joined-up thinking, could be turned into social housing units? So, how does a council like Bridgend, a council leader like Huw David, and his officials, engage with Welsh Government to join this up and say, 'Well, we can develop as a local authority, with other housing associations, those derelict properties to turn them into lovely homes for people'?

Yes, you're absolutely right, and we have a number of examples of that. My colleague Hannah Blythyn has been touring Wales, looking at various examples of bringing exactly that kind of property back into use. And we have a number of schemes that allow—. In circumstances where those properties are owned in the private sector, we have a number of schemes that allow those private landlords to come forward and give the property up for social rent for five years, in return for returning the property to a liveable standard and so on. And, in a recent meeting with Newport council, for example, we were shown a set of schemes in the centre of Newport in which the properties above the shops had been brought back into beneficial use. That provides homes for people, but it also provides vibrancy and much needed footfall in the town centre, and my colleague Hannah Blythyn has been pushing our regeneration initiative in town centres for exactly that reason. 

Minister, over the next five to 10 years, the number of one-person households is expected to increase by 15 to 20 per cent. We know we already have a shortage of good quality single-bedroomed accommodation available for social rent. There are around 60,000 single-bed social housing properties in Wales, but half of these are supported or sheltered housing. Minister, given that the majority of one-person households are in the under-65 age category, and expected to rise, what plans does your Government have to increase the number of single-bed properties available for social rent?

So, the system in Wales is that we expect the local authorities to make an assessment of housing need, and then we tailor our social housing grant to match that. We're in the process, as a result of the affordable housing review, of looking again at the way that we do social housing grants, and, Deputy Presiding Officer, I do hope to be able to bring forward an oral statement, certainly before the summer recess, detailing that. So, we've accepted the affordable housing review's recommendations in principle, but I want to bring forward an implementation plan that tells you how we're taking that forward. And part of the recommendations, if you remember from that review, were that we looked again at the way we did social housing grants, and we allowed it to be better targeted at the kinds of households that are coming forward. 

Actually, a very large number of the single households in Wales are women over 70. So, you need very different accommodation for young, single households than you do for older households, and different arrangements, so we do need to have a very good assessment of housing need. But, in principle, I agree with you; we need to look again and see that our systems produce the kind of housing that we most need.