5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Housing, Poverty and Communities

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:43 pm on 15 September 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 5:43, 15 September 2020

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.