1. Will the Minister provide an update on Welsh Government interventions to eliminate homelessness in Wales? OQ55676

Thank you, Vikki. This crisis has highlighted the fundamental importance of a home, and our response has accelerated our work to end homelessness. Over 2,200 people have been brought into temporary accommodation, together with the support they need. We are investing £50 million to transform provision, focused on prevention and rapid rehousing.

Thank you, Minister, and it was good to see the announcement of the additional funding to tackle homelessness that you made in August. I want to flag up one initiative today from Rhondda Cynon Taf, and that's the authority's creation of a social letting agency to manage private rental properties that would be subdivided into single person accommodation for people otherwise at risk of homelessness. I know that the project is funded by Welsh Government, but how more generally do you see social letting schemes fitting into your work to eliminate homelessness in Wales and the vision for the future of housing? 

Thank you, Vikki. I'm very aware of the project in RCT, which we're very pleased to be able to support alongside other new initiatives of that sort. Working with local authorities, we've agreed to extend the private rented sector leasing scheme pathfinder to a further three local authority areas—Rhondda Cynon Taf, Ceredigion and Newport—to ensure more stock in the private sector to house homeless individuals over a period of five years on a lease basis. As a requirement of this and other schemes, local authorities are also able to provide tenancy support services that will help tenants to address any support needs and should help them to maintain their tenancy.

As I've frequently said in the Chamber, we aren't the repository of all good ideas, and many local authorities and partner organisations have helped us with a range of excellent ideas that we've been very pleased to support in order to further our goal of ending homelessness in Wales. 

Laura Anne Jones. You need to be unmuted, Laura Jones. Yes. Carry on.

Yesterday, the UK Government announced an additional £2 million for faith and community groups to help them get rough-sleepers into accommodation. I'm just wondering, with the money that you've already provided, whether you're looking at doing something similar to that, and do you have any announcements coming forth to make sure that we're completely covered over the winter months, obviously, with the nights getting colder? Thank you.

So, we've already invested a large sum of money in our homelessness provision, and it's very differently structured to that in England. So, we've already worked with faith groups, community groups, voluntary sector groups, charities in the—. You know, everyone has worked to pull together in a collaborative fashion in Wales so that we've been able to house a very, very large number of people over the course of the pandemic, and those include people who are presenting every day as homelessness as their circumstances change and so on. So, we've absolutely worked with faith groups, alongside a very large range of others, in that collaboration. I'm very proud of the collaborative way that Wales has worked, and we are absolutely determined that not only will people not be forced back on to the streets if they've already been housed, but that we continue to support people who are becoming homeless as a result of the circumstances that they face in this awful crisis.