Decarbonising the Housing Stock

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:57 pm on 14 October 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:57, 14 October 2020

Thanks, Jenny. I know it does seem like a small amount of work, but it's a part of a very important journey to decarbonise all homes in Wales, and I am delighted to say that, actually, we've just put an additional £10 million into the optimised refit programme this financial year, so that does bring the total amount available to £19.5 million. The whole point of the optimised retrofit programme is to establish the pathway for how we decarbonise the whole of the housing stock. So, I'm sure you've heard me say before, but it's quite clear that a one-size-fits-all approach simply does not work, and so if you're decarbonising stone-built terraced housing in a steep valley, you would want to have one set of techs and systems in place, and if you're decarbonising 1970s cavity wall ranch style housing in my constituency for example, you would clearly want something completely different.

So, the whole point of the optimised retrofit programme builds on the recommendations in the Jofeh report to trial and test the way forward to decarbonise homes in Wales, to establish the new processes based on a common-sense approach, and create opportunities to ensure that we have the right tech, the right measures and materials, we have the right supply chains, we have the right foundational economy for this, we have the right skills, we work with our FE colleges to make sure that we skill up the workforce as we learn from our innovative housing programme, which this is very much a part of, so that we can roll it out across the piece outside of the social sector and into the private sector. But, we're in a good place to start that piece of work, and I very much hope that we'll be able to do that with some speed and dispatch so that we can trial that and then roll it out accordingly.