The next item of business is the statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government on housing, poverty and communities and I call on the Minister to make the statement. Julie James.

Diolch, Llywydd. The coronavirus pandemic is continuing to have a significant impact on daily life. As we have seen recently, it is still posing major challenges for us all and in particular for our local authorities.

I would like to express my thanks to them and to the Welsh Local Government Association who have worked so hard and been so responsive in mobilising to address the situation. We have seen unprecedented levels of engagement and co-production; national and local government working hand in hand to support our citizens and communities, especially those who were most vulnerable—a uniquely Welsh approach where local government leaders had access to Ministers on the issues that really mattered, when they mattered. We have committed significant funding to local government. The local government hardship fund provides for almost £0.5 billion to support authorities to respond to the impacts of the pandemic. I would like to thank the WLGA, the partnership council and the Society of Welsh Treasurers for their continued work with us to enable services to keep running, adapting and meeting the needs of local populations.

For the future, we plan to place our established social partnership system and structures on a statutory footing, further strengthening arrangements and supporting constructive dialogue with our social partners for the future that Wales wants post COVID-19. A priority for that future is preventing and ending homelessness in all its forms. At the beginning of the pandemic, we took immediate action to protect those who were homeless, providing £10 million of extra funding, to ensure that no-one was left without access to accommodation. More than 2,200 people have been helped into temporary or emergency accommodation—a huge achievement. But there are challenges ahead. I have made it absolutely clear that I do not want to see anyone forced back onto the streets.

To this end, in May, I announced the next phase of our homelessness response. All 22 local authorities in Wales submitted applications, setting out how they will ensure that no-one need return to the streets, focusing on innovation, building and remodelling, to transform the accommodation offer across Wales. A significant oversubscription to the original capital funding pot reflected the scale of ambition to deliver a long-term, sustainable and fundamental change to homelessness services in Wales. It also quite obviously demonstrated that the initial fund of £10.5 million capital did not match our collective ambition. Therefore, I substantially increased the overall capital funding available to £50 million, demonstrating our commitment to making a truly significant and transformational step change towards achieving our goal of ending homelessness in Wales. We have provisionally allocated funding to 70 capital projects, supporting people into settled accommodation or transforming services for the long term.

Still on housing, I welcome the suspension of evictions being extended until 20 September, and I am very happy that the court has put in place measures to ensure that the impacts of the pandemic are taken into account. Using the powers available to me under the Coronavirus Act 2020, I have acted to give additional protection to renters by increasing notice periods for eviction to six months, other than in relation to anti-social behaviour. I was pleased to note that the UK Government has since made similar changes. I am committed to ensuring that we continue to protect renters whilst at the same time mitigating impacts on landlords. Therefore, I intend making regulations extending the current protections until the end of March next year.

At the same time, and in recognition of the need to address the impact on communities of anti-social and other negative behaviour in a timely manner, I intend reducing the notice periods for possession grounds relating to anti-social behaviour and domestic abuse to the pre-COVID position. Where rent arrears have accumulated due to COVID-19, private rented sector tenants will soon be able to apply for a loan through the tenancy saver loan scheme when it opens for applications later this month. We've also provided an additional £1.4 million to boost services that support people in Wales to manage problem debt and improve their household income.

Looking beyond the pandemic, we are continuing with our Bill to amend the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 to increase security of tenure. The Bill extends the no-fault notice period from two to six months, and landlords will be prevented from issuing a no-fault notice until at least six months from the date of occupancy. This means those renting their homes will have a minimum of 12 months' security of tenure from the outset of their contract, meaning security of tenure in Wales will be greater than elsewhere in the UK.

The consequences of the pandemic are far reaching, and, sadly, the economic impact of COVID-19 will mean a significant rise in poverty levels. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, I commissioned a child poverty review, which sought to explore what more could be done to improve outcomes for children and young people. The pandemic has had such far-reaching consequences for the lives of people in Wales and our economy, we believe the findings of that review do not now fully reflect the current landscape. Practical actions to help mitigate the impact of the crisis for families living in poverty is urgent and necessary right now. Our focus is on action to maximise income and provide support to families to build financial resilience. We are working in collaboration with our stakeholders to progress this work over the coming months.

We are working with local authorities to ensure that local authority benefits such as free school meals and council tax reduction are more accessible, as well as helping to make the administration more streamlined and less resource intensive for local authorities. We're also developing a 'no wrong door' approach through a more integrated system of support, limiting the number of contacts families and individuals have to make and the number of times they have to tell their story in order to access support. And we will ensure that third sector and other front-line workers have the training, tools and information they need to support individuals and families to maximise their incomes.

I want to finish, Llywydd, by mentioning some other areas that underpinned our response to the pandemic and will continue to be priorities as we move forward. Thanks to local authorities maintaining essential services during lockdown, we've been able to continue to deliver on recycling aims and actions on decarbonisation. We are continuing to support communities and want to rejuvenate town centres and expand on the growth in repair cafes and zero-waste shops. To that end, we have awarded funding to Repair Cafe Wales and made additional funding available for FareShare Cymru to expand their food surplus redistribution provision. And finally, we have expanded the circular economy fund so that it could support the post-COVID response and contribute to a green recovery. These are very difficult times, but we have worked well together. These collaborations will provide clear lessons and a great deal of good practice that we can and should adopt going forward. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you for your statement. You referred to people helped into temporary or emergency accommodation. How do you therefore respond to the report released by Audit Wales on 23 July on avoiding a return to rough-sleeping after the pandemic, which found that up to £209 million is wasted annually by the Welsh public sector reacting to, but not solving, rough-sleeping, and cited examples of a revolving door for service users assisted off the streets into temporary accommodation but without the necessary support to address the root causes of their homelessness and who often ended back where they started?

You refer to the increasing notice period for eviction to six months, other than in relation to anti-social behaviour. Do you therefore—and you partially addressed this—recognise the need to protect both tenants and landlords, particularly in light of the increasing dependency of people on the private rented sector for housing and the damaging effect the pandemic has had on the sector? The majority of landlords let out one or two properties. Many rely on that income for their day-to-day living expenses, for example a landlord who told me, 'The house I own is my only property. I rely on the rent as my sole income for living expenses as I approach state pension age. I rented it out on a six-month tenancy. The tenancy has now run its course and the tenants are currently four months in arrears, have ceased communicating with me or my agents, and leave me with the dire situation of having no income but still my bills to pay. This will now continue for a long time. I'm 63, have no pension, no work, currently living in a narrow boat, and my financial situation is becoming intolerable, as I fear for my mental health.'

How do you respond to suggestions, therefore, by the National Residential Landlords Association not only for the adoption of a low-cost or interest-free tenant loan scheme for COVID-19-related arrears, which you did refer to, but for payment to be made to the landlord—or can it be—and a mechanism for landlords to access grants where renters are unwilling to engage or make an application themselves? This is particularly relevant for landlords where possession cases started before the stay and for those where arrears have accrued unrelated to COVID.

How do you respond to the call by the British Psychological Society for the Welsh Government to commit to developing a comprehensive cross-departmental anti-poverty strategy that places psychology at the heart of its approach and families and communities at the heart of its coronavirus recovery plans?

How do you respond to the statement by the Building Communities Trust, the Welsh charity that runs the lottery-funded Invest Local programme, Wales's largest asset-based community development initiative, that a public sector culture of doing to, not with, has eroded community capacity and trust, and reduced social infrastructure, and that improving support for local people to do the things that matter to them can help tackle the impact of poverty, develop local skills and promote health and well-being?

How do you respond to the statement by Hafod, the not-for-profit housing, care and support provider that we need to tackle causes, not symptoms, and, therefore, to focus on community and citizen strengths to help people take ownership to achieve their personal and collective ambitions?

How do you respond to the call by the Nationwide Foundation for a commitment to support community-led housing in Wales as an integral part of affordable housing delivery?

How do you respond to the calls by Tai Pawb for a human right to adequate housing in Wales, accessible housing, ensuring that disabled people are able to live independently with confidence, and refugee accommodation? Refugees in Wales face significant barriers in sourcing appropriate accommodation and support once granted leave to remain, hampering their ability to integrate and avoid a spiral of poverty. 

How do you respond to the call by the Bevan Foundation for the Welsh Government to encourage local authorities to establish a single point of access for free school meals, for pupil development grant and the council tax reduction scheme, making it easier for families in poverty to access them?

And how, finally, do you respond to the call by NEA Cymru for the anticipated new Welsh Government fuel poverty strategy to help those most in need, starting with the worst first, improving home energy efficiency, helping reduce energy bills and boosting household incomes? I know that crosses portfolios, but it's key to us all. Thank you.

Thank you, Mark, for that series of questions and comments.

Starting with the Audit Wales report, that report came out just before the pandemic, and as I said when I was talking about the anti-poverty strategy in my statement, life shifted. It's like a Sliding Doors moment, isn't it? Life shifted out of all perspective, and what we've managed to do during the pandemic has been incredible. I take the opportunity, once again, to pay tribute to the enormous number of people in the local authority sector, the third sector, the registered social landlord sector, the private landlords and everybody else who have pulled together to make us able to get 2,200 people into temporary or emergency accommodation and ensure that they were able to access provision that would allow them to self-isolate and have the right hygiene facilities and so on.

What that's also enabled us to do is it's enabled us to take what I've always said should be a full public service approach to housing, where we wrap the right level of support around people, because it's not and never has been just about four walls and a roof. It's always been about making sure that somebody can sustain their housing, that they have the right levels of support, that they're in supportive communities, that they have good mental health support or substance abuse support or relationship breakdown support, or whatever it is—domestic abuse support—that they need in order to be able to sustain that tenancy.

Also, I personally was very, very, very firm on local authority housing option providers, saying, 'Just do the right thing. Sort the person out in front of you. Don't worry about where they're from and we'll sort the plumbing out afterwards.' People really stepped up to that plate. I am really proud of them, and I'm really proud of us. Wales is a shining light in terms of its housing provision over this pandemic, and we should all be rightly proud of that. I'm really grateful to our partners for having done that. 

Unfortunately, the Audit Wales report was a report that's very retrospective. I've had good meetings with the auditor general about what we can do to look at the provision going forward and how we can learn from the lessons in collaboration and the different approach that we had during the pandemic. So, I'm very happy that they are going to work well with us in terms of taking those lessons learned forward.

In terms of landlords and tenants, the vast majority of people who are struggling in the private rented sector are tenants who, through no fault of their own, have had their income reduced as a result of COVID, and now can no longer pay their rent, when they've always been able to do so whenever in any difficulty. So we announced a series of things to do that—myself and Jane Hutt combined have announced a set of provisions around debt advice and debt counselling and support and advice services across Wales to help people who are dealing with that. We've also announced the tenancy saver loan scheme. Those tenancy saver loans, Mark, are paid to the landlord, so the tenant requests the loan, we've been able to do them at a 1 per cent interest through our credit unions—again, something Wales should be rightly proud of. So there's virtually no cost to the tenant, allowing them to spread the cost of paying back the arrears over five years in an affordable way alongside help and support. But they're paid to the landlord so that the landlord gets the income on the rent and the tenant maintains their secure home. 

The thing about private sector landlords is of course it's an income for them, but the house is somebody's home. It's where they say, 'I'm going home', and they mean that person's business proposition, but for them it's a home, and that's the most important thing—that we make sure that they can maintain that home, and that we don't have a flood of people who are put into awful circumstances in which they find themselves unable to pay their rent, and they can't recover. So, on that basis, I call on the Conservative Government once more to make sure that the local housing allowance stays at at least the 30 per cent mark where it is now, that they really consider putting it back up to the 50 per cent mark, which is where is should be—and when it was first conceived by a Labour Government, that's where it was—and that they certainly don't reduce it back down to the levels that we saw before the pandemic when it was—and I said this in a Plenary debate with you, Mark, before—lower than in the poor laws in the Elizabethan era. Because that is something we should all be ashamed of. So, I really do call on the Government to do that, and I hope the Conservatives in the Welsh Parliament will assist us with that call, because if people have their local housing allowance reduced, then we really will have a big problem with the private rented sector.

The landlord who is in the position you mentioned, with difficulties with their income and so on, will also, of course, be able to access the debt advice that I've just discussed, because that's open to all citizens of Wales, and I would recommend that. If you want to give me details, I can pass that on for you. 

The Conservative Government in England has announced a stay on possession proceedings because they too can see that there's a big problem with people who, through no fault of their own, can no longer pay their rent, and I'm very happy to welcome that, and the approach of the courts in making sure that, before anyone can take eviction proceedings for rent arrears, they must go through a protocol with their tenant to make sure that they understand the nature, and that it isn't possible to make a long-term arrangement for the repayment of those arrears. I really welcome that. It's very much in line with where we're going. 

Then in terms of the poverty issues that you raised, Mark, just to say that that's exactly what I was saying in my statement—that what we need to do is build on community strength, maximise people's income and make sure that we put them in the best possible position. So I couldn't agree more with you that we need to work with our communities to make sure that people have a streamlined approach to being able to access the right advice. I recently had a very good meeting with the Bevan Foundation in which we agreed to work together on an action plan for being able to bring that forward, and I look forward to being able to do that very shortly.

Then on the fuel poverty strategy, I'm delighted to say that, unlike the approach in England, where we're just having a one-size-fits-all approach, we've recently announced the optimised retrofit programme, where we're asking a series of landlords across Wales to come forward with a range of different types of housing so that we can see what best retrofit can happen to make those houses better insulated. There is no one-size-fits-all. What works for a Victorian terraced house in the Rhondda does not work for a cavity wall house built in the 1970s in Rebecca's constituency, for example. They're very, very different propositions, and the idea that one fit would work for all of them just does not work. So, our programme will bring forward a series—in the way that our innovative housing programme did, it will bring forward a series of potential solutions to that, and then we'll be able to roll that out as part of our fuel poverty and our Warm Homes initiative, and we'll get the right fit for that. And, in doing so, not only will we reduce fuel poverty, but we will of course decarbonise the housing stock in Wales and produce a home-grown industry of skilled people who can do that right across our housing sector. Diolch.

Thank you, Minister, for the statement, and I do recognise the great work that you have been doing on this over the past few months. I do think the pandemic has made a number of people realise that we do need to upgrade the right to a home to be a human right and that it's something that can have an impact on everyone in society. I do welcome your commitment to seek to ensure that nobody returns to the streets, but your statement refers to placing people in temporary accommodation in certain areas in order to achieve this, when it's clear that we need a long-term solution. I know that you are looking for a long-term solution to this, but I do have some concern that there has been haste in moving some people from the streets, which has led to using inappropriate facilities in some cases. For example, I've heard anecdotal evidence of people, following a damaging relationship, being placed in emergency accommodation with people who had drug abuse problems. Clearly, that wasn't a healthy situation for anyone. So, I'd ask you to look again at the options that councils have in order to ensure that appropriate accommodation is available. And I do see that a number of councils have been working very hard on this over the past few months. In addition to that, I would like to see a pathway to ensure that emergency accommodation is only used temporarily and that we do have long-term solutions for people who find themselves homeless.

Now, in turning to the detail in terms of the 'no evictions' measures, which you mentioned in your statement, we welcome the expansion of this, but I do have concerns about the proposal to reduce the notice period for anti-social behaviour and domestic abuse. Can you give us an assurance that the priority in this case will be ensuring that people who are evicted are given alternative accommodation and that they are given assistance with the problems that they have? Now, obviously this is a complex issue, I understand that, and there are a number of agencies that will be involved, but these are the most complex cases that need the greatest amount of support. 

I also want an assurance on the tenancy saver loan scheme. I'm not sure that increasing the debts of people who are likely to find themselves in difficult financial situations, perhaps, for many years will truly resolve the problem. Isn't it unfair that landlords are having bail-outs, in a way, from Government when many sectors aren't? So, I would like to know what safeguards are in place to ensure that some landlords don't take advantage of this initiative, just to throw tenants out once the restrictions are removed. 

To conclude, I would like to note an issue that isn't dealt with here that I would have liked to have seen it included in the statement, namely the shortage of social and affordable housing. Yes, the core numbers are increasing, but they are falling far short of what is required. The elephant in the room, if I can say that, is that we have a planning system that has profit assurance built into it, namely developers can use the Planning Inspectorate to prevent local authorities from having the deserved share of affordable housing in developments, and your Government hasn't truly addressed this. So, can you tell us when you can actually do away with the ability of the Planning Inspectorate to allow developments that don't have a proper proportion of affordable housing? When will you deal with that? Thank you. 

Diolch, Delyth. Thank you very much for that suite of comments and questions. Just on the human right to housing, we are very much working alongside a number of organisations looking at how that might work. I just want to remind Members once more, as I constantly remind myself, that the Assembly, as it then was, passed the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, and what a groundbreaking piece of legislation that is. And that actually goes quite a long way to doing some of the things that you mentioned there. But we have got some other things that we need to do. For example, the renting homes Act means that anybody renting a home, including social landlords, has to have a house that's fit for human habitation. And I'd just like to remind the Chamber that, of course, the Tories at Westminster level refused to put 'fit for human habitation' into their legislation, so that just shows you how low the benchmark is. So, we have done that—we've already moved that forward. 

The next phase is to make sure that we have the adequate housing necessary to enable people to enforce the right to adequate housing. There's no point in giving people the right to adequate housing if, actually, in the end there isn't enough adequate housing to go around. So, jumping to your bit about the social housing, very much part of our part 2 homelessness plan is to move people from the temporary and emergency accommodation into good-quality, permanent social housing, and a very large part of the capital bids that came forward that we've been able to approve from local authorities and partners is to build social housing, especially modern methods of construction social housing, which is carbon neutral or carbon passive—a number of things. 

So, I'm very, very pleased with that. We're able to up our social stock immediately as a result of that. We're also looking at plans to enable councils and RSLs to buy off land from the private sector—we're still looking at that—because by doing that, we can encourage our private sector builders, especially our small and medium-sized enterprises, to build to social housing standards, so that if there is a recession, then we can continue to build that social housing stock. And, of course, we've got the private sector scheme in place where a private sector landlord who is worried about being able to continue their income in uncertain times, and all the rest of it, can actually hand their house over to a social landlord for five years and have the guaranteed local housing allowance, and also a guarantee that their house will be returned to them at social housing standard. So, a very good deal and I'd encourage all private sector landlords to look into, because that's a way to ensure that you do get that income and you don't have the worry of having to deal with it yourself. It means that we can give secure tenancies to people, which is obviously much better. And then we of course have very ambitious plans. We're cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to significantly increase the amount of social housing, even in what's left of this Welsh Parliament and then certainly in the parliamentary term following. And I'm sure whichever Government is in place will want to do that; there seems to be a broad consensus across the Chamber that that should be done. So, I'm very pleased with that, and there's cautious optimism that we'll be able to really ramp it up. You've heard me speaking about building it at pace and scale. We're in a good place to say that we're doing that. 

On the tenancy saver loans, so just to say I absolutely agree with you this isn't the time to increase people's debt. So, that's why we've managed to negotiate this 1 per cent annual percentage rate. It wasn't possible to do it at nothing, for a variety of reasons I don't have time to go into here, or the Llywydd will be losing patience with me, but 1 per cent is a very, very small margin for people to look at. And just to say that, of course, we're not increasing their debt other than by that tiny margin. This is a debt that's incurred because they haven't been able to pay their rent through no fault of their own et cetera, through difficult circumstances. I'm going to take this opportunity to say that we encourage people to pay their rent where they can, because the arrears can be very, very difficult. But the loan is then paid to the landlord because then the rent is paid, so that person can't be evicted for not paying their rent because they will have paid their rent. So, that's the whole point about it. It short-circuits that. And so, from our point of view as a Government, it's a very good thing as well, because what we want is we want people to stay in their homes—these are their homes. We don't want them to be insecure and eventually have to leave, and then present themselves at the local authority housing options saying, 'Please find me somewhere else to go.' This is a very important investment by the Government to ensure that people can do that and, obviously, we've had to look carefully at what we think the rate of repayment will be and so on. But the Government has decided that that's a good investment to make in those people. Most people want to pay their rent, they want to stay in their house, so I'm really pleased we've done that, but I just wanted to clear up that that's what we're doing, because I agree with you about not increasing people's rents. It's certainly not a bail-out to the landlord because, of course, the landlord is entitled to their rent. So, it's that way round. 

Further down the line, I will want to look as well at mortgage rescue. I'm not in a position to talk about that yet, but if the recession deepens as we expect, then there will be a number of people who'll get themselves into difficulties in mortgage repayments. And we will be looking to see what we can do to help them out by way of allowing them to convert their mortgage into rent payments, and take those homes into social ownership. That was done in the last recession as well. I'm not there yet, but I'm certainly looking to investigate things like that. And the reason I mention that, Llywydd, is because if any Members have any other brilliant ideas of that sort, I'd be really glad to hear them, because we are not the fount of all knowledge, and people across the Chamber have had good ideas in this space, so I'd really like people to come forward and share them with us, if at all possible.

And then the last thing is on the planning system. You'll know we've changed the policy on Welsh Government-owned land so that we have 50 per cent affordable housing on all schemes on Welsh Government land. We're encouraging that for other public sector land across Wales. We're in conversation with local authorities about maximising that. And then, of course, local authorities—it's up to local authorities, not the planning inspectors. It's up to local authorities to make sure that their local development plan specifies a very large amount of social housing for their land. So, that's the way forward, and I'm really proud of Wales's plan-led system. Shortly, Llywydd, we'll be introducing the national development framework alongside Planning Policy Wales. It's certainly one of the most progressive frameworks anywhere in the United Kingdom and, actually, pretty good even for western Europe. So, we're very proud of it. But the planning inspector can only do what's in front of them. So, if the LDP doesn't specify that, they can't do anything about it. So, we need to make sure that the plan is in and that local people have a big say in what that plan looks like in building that housing. Thank you, Llywydd.

Can I first of all welcome the statement by the Minister? It amazes me how little money was needed to protect those who were homeless at the beginning of the pandemic, and I think one good thing that's come out of the pandemic is the idea of trying to deal with homelessness. I'm very pleased that the Minister believes that preventing and ending homelessness in all its forms is a priority for the future, and I hope whoever takes over from the Minister throughout the rest of the time this Senedd is in existence will see that as a priority.

I'm also pleased that the Minister does not want to see anyone returning to sleeping on the street or walking the streets at night and sleeping in parks during the day, which I understand is something that is more likely to be done by younger people and women who don't want to be sleeping in doorways during the night. But what is the Welsh Government's assessment of the numbers who are sofa surfing and are just one step away from sleeping on the street, and what support can be given to this group of people to stop them getting into that position?

Can I say, I welcome the provision of free school meals across the summer holidays this year? I've asked for it for a long time; I'm very pleased it's happened. And I'm asking on behalf of the families of children who get free school meals: why can't it continue for every holiday? And also, can financial support be provided for the children when they're absent from school, possible because they're having the 14 days when they have to self-isolate? Then they go 14 days without having the free school meals which they're entitled to. So, can some support be given to them? 

I hold a view that is, I think, unique here—I see no role for a planning inspector. When planning inspectors get abolished, which is inevitable, it will be like when we came off gold standard, when everybody would say, 'Well, why didn't we do that before?' There's no reason, in my opinion, for a planning inspector—if you don't like the decision, you can go to judicial review. Having these people, who know nothing about the area, coming in, making decisions that often simply cause severe problems in an area, I think is something that is going to come to an end, and, Minister, I hope you're the person to do it.

Well, right up until that last bit, Mike, we were just agreeing with each other, so I suppose it's always good not to have complete agreement all the way down the line.

So, in terms of the small amount of money, it does seem like a small amount of money, but, of course, it was additional money. All of the normal money for homelessness was still in the system. We didn't just take £10 million and solve homelessness—there are hundreds of millions of pounds in the homelessness system. What we did was we reconfigured it really quickly, and that's why I'm so grateful to partners, because they stepped up to reconfiguring it really quickly, and it is amazing how quickly we did that.

Of course, we did have a unique opportunity—I'll just remind Members of that—because, all of a sudden, we had a large number of hotels and bed and breakfasts and university accommodation and so on that didn't have anybody in them. That was very unique—we'd never had that situation before. So, in a really dark situation, we had a ray of light we had an opportunity to take advantage of, and we were able to take advantage of that. So, I'm very proud of that. But it is tempting to think it was done for £10 million—that's just not the case.

So, we housed 2,200 people who were otherwise in unsuitable accommodation or no accommodation over the course of the pandemic, Mike, and that shows you that we were—. That was the number of people who were sofa surfing and could no longer do so as people who were prepared to put them up on their sofa wouldn't do that because they were wanting to be COVID secure and so on. And what it shows us is something we always knew: we always knew that the rough count of sleepers was inadequate. We always knew that it was a snapshot. We always knew that it wasn't capturing everybody—people who, as you say, were walking all night and sleeping in the day, women in particular and so on. So, it's given us a much better idea of the number of people that we knew were in that situation. So, the answer to that is there were 2,200 people in that situation and we've been able to house all of them in emergency or temporary accommodation, and now this phase 2 approach is to get those people and the people who were already in temporary or emergency accommodation into permanent accommodation, and, as I said in answer to Delyth, we're working very hard with local authorities to make sure that people move on.

And the other important thing is that, when you are moved from your emergency or temporary accommodation, you're not moved multiple times. So, what we've said is the optimum is that you're moved immediately to permanent accommodation, but otherwise it shouldn't be more than one time. So, if you're in emergency accommodation, you move to somewhere more suitable before you get to your forever home, but ideally people go straight into their forever home, and that's much better, because then we can wrap the services around them that mean that that's a sustainable placement and that's just as important. I always say, if you put me into an empty flat in the middle of Manchester, my chances of sustaining that tenancy would be none. And that's the case for absolutely every human being: if you put them into an empty flat in the middle of somewhere they don't know, they will not be able to sustain that as a home, so we need to make sure that they've got all the things necessary to make that home, including the support services they need.

And then, on the last two points, on free school meals, that's obviously Kirsty's portfolio overall, but we are working very hard on a programme to sustain free school meals across the holidays and actually there's a group looking at what to do about children who are missing out because they're self-isolating or otherwise away from school who would otherwise have an entitlement to free school meals. So, there is a group looking at that, Mike, but it is Kirsty's lead on that, not mine. But it is certainly something that's under consideration.

And then the last point on the planning inspectorate—you and I have had many a conversation on this. We disagree, let's put it like that. But we have had to pause our separation of Planning Inspectorate Wales from Planning Inspectorate England, and I would very much like to see that advance, because I think then we would have a better chance of making sure that our policy aims were followed.

Thank you, Minister, for the statement. I noted what you had to say about the work to tackle homelessness and to increase the number of social houses available. I had hoped to hear more from you in the statement on how the Government is going to use the planning system to tackle the inequality and the increasing unsustainability in housing markets in many communities across Wales, driven mainly, as I referred earlier this afternoon, by the increase in the number of second homes that we're seeing in many communities across Wales. It's a trend that's also driven by the fact that we are now seeing more people moving from cities and highly-populated areas to rural areas in Wales as a result of COVID-19.

We are facing an increasingly unsustainable scenario. Many people in counties such as Gwynedd can't afford to buy homes in the counties in which they live, work and were brought up. I saw a statistic that 40 per cent of all the homes sold in Gwynedd last year were bought as second homes. So, I want to hear from you as a Minister what your intentions are in terms of using the planning system to tackle this inequality and unsustainability as other areas within the UK have done and as other nations in Europe and beyond have also done. 

Thank you, Llyr. I absolutely hear what you say. There are number of issues there, aren't there? It's not just second homes; it's about having affordable homes across all the communities of Wales so that our young people can stay in the communities that they grew up in and they can contribute to Wales from those communities. We certainly don't want to drain rural Wales into our cities as a result of people being priced out of the housing market.

So, we are actively investigating a number of things. One of them is certainly to just up the number of social homes we build across the communities of Wales and to make sure that those homes are accessible to local people in the right way. So, we will be working with local authorities to do that. The other thing is to put the disincentives in for second homes and to learn the lessons of that. So, we have been looking closely at some of the things that have happened elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Some schemes have been less successful than they had hoped for. The one in Cornwall has been unsuccessful in some ways, so we will be learning the lessons of that. What I'd like to do, though, Llyr, is invite a number of Members who I know have an interest in this to come to a discussion with me to discuss a number of ideas. As I said earlier in response to another—I think it was Delyth—I don't have all the good ideas in Wales, so I'd be really grateful if a number of people who are interested in that would be kind enough to come and have a discussion with us about all of the ideas that we'd like to take forward.

And then the last thing is that I am in discussion—it's not my portfolio, but I am in discussion with Rebecca Evans about the threshold at which you can switch to business rents. You'll know that we changed the grant-level conditions through the pandemic and I would like to look in more detail at what would happen if we upped the levels completely for that, and I know that's something that yourself and Siân Gwenllian and a number of others have raised on a number of occasions, and no doubt there's several of you now saying, 'I've raised it as well,' but a number of people have raised it with me in the Chamber, so I'd be very happy to do that. So, Llyr, if you want to drop me an e-mail, perhaps we could set that meeting up.

Like others, can I welcome the statement from the Minister and the update that you've given us today? And thank you also for the actions that the Welsh Government and local partners have taken in recent months to look after the homeless and some of the most vulnerable in our society in the face of this pandemic. It was absolutely the right policy at the right time. However, what you'll also be aware of, Minister, is that, on occasion, even the best policies can create some unintended consequences, and, for example, in Merthyr Tydfil and in parts of the Upper Rhymney Valley as well, the emergency COVID-19 arrangements have created concentrations of very vulnerable people in small areas of the town centre—so, the hotels, which are all concentrated in the town centre—and what that has done has meant that that has spilled out into the town centre and has had quite a significant impact on local residents and businesses in the town centre, leading to some quite significant issues around anti-social behaviour.

Now, while there is clearly a police response to anti-social behaviour to ensure that residents and businesses do feel safe, there is also a need for a parallel strategy to deliver support in a more appropriate and dispersed manner, so that people receive the help that they need, but not all in that one, concentrated area. And that's the concern that I've got. In small towns, it's actually very difficult to find accommodation that is not concentrated in one area, and all of these people with such complex needs being accommodated in small accommodation in a very tight-knit community is causing lots of problems.

Now, what I'm asking, Minister, is whether that particular aspect is something that you will consider in the second phase of the strategy. I know you've talked a lot about the need for that wraparound support for people in that second phase of the strategy, and you're putting a significant amount of money into that, but the issue that I'm asking you to take on board is the issue of the concentration of lots of people in small areas and accommodation where they spill out into the town, and whether we can have a strategy that includes dispersal of accommodation, so that that support is more effective, rather than having people in that tight area.

Diolch, Dawn. I'm very aware of the issue that you raise. It's an issue in a number of places and because, of course—you know, we were able to house a large number of people, but we did it with some speed and, as I said in response to Mike Hedges, it was possible because a number of places that were bed and breakfast and hotels and so on were available and they wouldn't have otherwise been available. So, obviously, in the phase 2 approach, what we're looking to do is get people out of those accommodations and into secure, permanent homes. So, each authority will have come forward with a scheme, and we'll have agreed with—I know we've agreed schemes in every authority in Wales—that authority what the best approach to the best stage is and what the best approach of moving those people who are housed in those kinds of accommodations on into their permanent home, or, in some cases, into another temporary home, but where they can get a better range of support services, so perhaps to a hub, where there's a range of support services around them.

I'm afraid I can't think of one off the top of my head in Merthyr, but I visited a brilliant scheme in Newport only a few weeks ago, where we had put a range of support services on the ground floor in conjunction with a third sector partner, a suite on the second floor for individual support services and then seven supported flats on the top. Now, people are not intended to stay in those flats for the rest of their lives, but they are intended to stay in those flats for two or three years while their issues are addressed and they're put back on their feet and then helped to find their final, forever home. So, that's the one step that I was talking to Delyth about, isn't it: from the emergency accommodation into the supported accommodation and then on to your forever home.

So, once I'm—. Dawn, if you want to write to me, I'm sure I'll be able to tell you what the scheme in Merthyr is; I'm sure officials would be happy to remind me what it is. But we have specifically asked local authorities to address the kinds of issues you're talking about, because people need to have their complex needs met, and those needs need to be met in a place that's sustainable and secure, and that's not likely to be in a town centre surrounded by people with similar complex needs. So, it's very much part of our phase 2.

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

Thank you very much, Minister. Thank you.