5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:29 pm on 29 April 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 5:29, 29 April 2020

Thank you for those questions, Caroline. In terms of fly-tipping, obviously, it remains an offence to do that and the police are very keen to prosecute and local authorities are looking to prosecute anybody who does that. Actually, although we obviously have had some instances of that it's not excessive across Wales. People have been pretty responsible, really. We would very much like to open our household waste recycling centres when it's safe to do so, but there are big staffing issues with that. There are big issues about how many people you could leave in at one time; how far they would travel to do it—all kinds of issues, as I'm sure you can imagine. But we are working hard with the local authorities to get a sensible way to take that forward once it’s safe to do so—safe for the staff as well as for the people arriving at the household waste recycling centres.

In terms of the end to rough sleepers, as you've heard me say, we're very determined that nobody will go back onto the streets. Many of the accommodations that we've found will be okay in the longer term, for various reasons, each authority is different; some of them are indeed temporary, but we are working very hard to make sure that they're able to be continued. The answer to the question, 'Why haven’t we been able to do this before?' is very simple: we haven't had the money to do it before. I cannot emphasise enough that we have always known that it's possible to end homelessness if we had enough money to make it happen. What's happened is that the Government's released the funds in order to allow us to do that, and I'm very determined that we can build on that now that it's happened and make sure that we don't go back.

In terms of shielded people, local authorities have moved incredibly quickly, and I'm really grateful to all of the staff that have really tried hard on this, so we have got the food parcels going out. But you're quite right: it's not just about food. So, we have got volunteers contacting shielded people to make sure that they can get their prescriptions filled. And as I said in my statement, we have people doing telephone support for conversation, loneliness, all other needs, including repairs. So, where Care and Repair are called, that’s often because somebody in the shielded group has contacted through their local authority. So, those things are all still happening; I quoted Care and Repair figures during my statement to show that that's still happening. And we're very pleased with the local authorities' ability and their staff's resilience and flexibility in making those things happen. People from right across local authority professions have been retrained onto their contact centres and onto organising volunteers to do this, and I'm very grateful indeed that they have shown the resilience and the courage to do so.