Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:24 pm on 3 June 2020.
Yes. All the councils have worked really hard and Conwy is a good example but all the local authorities have worked in collaboration with us. There are innovative methods right across Wales for getting people into decent accommodation. Some of that is temporary, but it's good temporary accommodation. But, obviously, what we need to do now is work to get people into secure, long-term accommodation that they can afford and that they can sustain. And that involves us working with all partners, including support partners. So, that means working with mental health services and substance abuse services and tenancy support services, welfare and support services, and so on, maximising people's income, making sure they have the skills necessary to sustain a tenancy. Four walls and a ceiling is not enough; we all have furniture in our houses and curtains and carpets and stuff like that. People need to have all of the things they need to support themselves in accommodation. And so what's been shown is that that can be done. We can do that, we can wrap the services around them, we can make sure that people come together to support them. And the phase 2 plans that we're asking local authorities to look at look at all of those things, including the support necessary to make people able to sustain those tenancies, and that includes an assessment of their ability to pay for particular types of accommodation, and what needs to be done to maximise that.
You heard me saying earlier that I very much hope the UK Government will keep the local housing allowance level at where it is. The Minister for social services, Thérèse Coffey, did say in one of the meetings I attended that that would be done, but I'd really like to see that confirmed more widely, because that would give people a lot of hope that they would continue to be able to afford it. And then, as you heard me say, Janet, in terms of being able to move to something if you really do find you can't afford where you are, we've been working very hard with people to turn around voids, to make sure that those properties are available, and to make sure that that can happen. In the next phase of the review of the lockdown measures, we are looking to make sure that people can move to empty properties. There's obviously a big problem with viewing properties that are tenanted or occupied, but if they're empty then we're looking to make sure that we free that up as rapidly as possible. I'll just take this point to emphasise the point I made earlier, which is that it is, of course, and always has been, possible to move if circumstances are such that it's an essential move and can't be delayed.