8. What progress has been made since 2016 to improve the quality of the Welsh housing stock? OQ55867

Thank you, David. Between March 2016 and March 2019, compliance with the Welsh housing quality standard in social housing increased from 79 per cent to 93 per cent. This has improved the provision of good quality, safe, secure and suitable homes for some of the poorest and most vulnerable tenants living in social homes in Wales.

I'm very pleased that we have seen great improvements in the quality of social housing, but there's been poor regulation, both in terms of the regulations themselves—the building regs—and their inspection in much of the private housing stock, particularly denser housing. And I just wonder how confident you are that we do not see in the 2020s, when we will face major demand to build more housing units, the sort of problems we've had since the turn of the century in the quality of what many people thought was the highest quality housing available to them.

Absolutely. I was saying earlier, wasn't I, in response to Siân Gwenllian, that we've lost a lot of the legislation that we were hoping to bring forward as a result of the pandemic. One of the ones that I'm most sorry about is the building regs and the revision to Part L and what will now be a White Paper going forward in terms of building standards and building safety.

I think that is consensual across the Chamber. Again, I'd urge us all to have a look at that in manifestos going forward, because I think that the more rapidly we can do that the other side of the election, the absolute better. I outlined—I think it was only a year and a half ago—what we were doing by way of working on that with the various groups, for exactly the reason that you just set out, that we want to make sure that we learn the lessons of the past, the horrible lessons of the past as well, and that, going forward, we have the best housing stock in Europe. So, I'm confident that that will be able to be put in place and I'm pretty sure that every big party in this place is in favour of it. So, the other side of the election, I'm sure that will be a high priority.

I thank the Minister for that item.