Carbon Emission Reduction Targets

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 16 September 2020.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 2:18, 16 September 2020

I fully support that statement, and thank you for that, but obviously the landscape is changing incredibly quickly. The pandemic has exposed many fissures in the town and city centres that we have designed, which no longer look fit for purpose. It isn't just that office jobs can be done from home as easily as in the town centre—and people like the Principality Building Society have already said they need less office space for their headquarters operations—but it's also that we need to create more space for walking and cycling to enable people to leave the car at home as well as to improve public transport lanes.

Equally, more people are buying online, which was happening anyway, but now, with the pandemic, people are less likely to actually want to go and buy whatever it is they need in a shop, and the speculative investment in purpose-built student accommodation now looks like a very risky speculative investment. But all these things have already generated carbon emissions in their creation, so I wondered what your view is about the 15-minute concept of planning decisions, which is being applied not just in Paris and Milan, but also in cities like Doncaster and Cambridge, to ensure that all the everyday services that people need are within 15 minutes of where they live. So—