Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:45 pm on 14 October 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:45, 14 October 2020

Yes, of course, we're prepared to look at all possibilities for that. I will say, again, that some of those things sound attractive, but they're actually much more difficult to do in practice. So, I'm going to use my own name as an example: so, I could be Julie James Building Inc. and I could sell Julie James Building Inc. and I could go away and start up Julie Jones Building Inc. and Julie James Building Inc. would be banned from planning because of the poor things I'd done, but actually the person who was behind that could have gone off and started up something else. So, there are a lot of complex issues. This is not just about a headline name. So, again, some of these things sound as if they're easy to implement, but actually in practice are very difficult to pin down so that you're actually making sure that the individuals responsible—because in the end, it is individual policies that are responsible—are there. A lot of these buildings are built by specialist joint-venture vehicles between a variety of different companies, finances and so on. So, it's attractive, and I understand the attraction of saying that we would do it, but it's much more complicated in terms of actual—. In terms of actually writing the regulations, it's much more complicated than that. But we are looking to see what can be done.

And, again, Delyth, I just want to emphasise that, of course, we're very keen to put it right going forward, but that doesn't solve the problem of the people who've got the problem now—I can't retrospectively do that. And so, what we're also looking to do is just to see what can be done to assist the people who find themselves in that terrible position at the moment. So, I have an enormous amount of sympathy for them, but it is very difficult, because in the end, buying a house, buying a home, is where you live, but it's also an investment and it's the dichotomy between those two things that's so very difficult to get right in these circumstances.

But I would like to assure the Senedd that, where it was a life and death risk, there are powers in place for a local authority to do that, but it would mean losing the equity for the people inside the building and that is not generally something that they are prepared to contemplate.