6. Will the Minister provide an update on the number of rough sleepers in North Wales? OQ55857

Thank you, Mandy. The latest published data is not broken down by region, I'm afraid, but shows that, at the end of August, approximately 101 people were sleeping rough across Wales. While this is unacceptably high, it remains the case that, over the past eight months, thousands have been provided with temporary and with and permanent accommodation.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. Once again, I would like to place on record my congratulations for your approach to keeping people off the streets during the pandemic, with the support of all agencies and the third sector, et cetera. I listened earlier to what you said to other speakers, but I'm really concerned to hear that hostels may be forced to reduce the number of rough sleepers they can accommodate due to social distancing measures. Are you able to comment on this, and are you able to reaffirm your commitment to ensuring rough sleepers are supported in some kind of accommodation?

Yes, I'm extremely happy to reaffirm that commitment as I've been doing a number of times already this afternoon—very happy to have another opportunity to do so. Just to be clear, local authorities have been told right across Wales that they are to house everyone who requires to be housed that presents in front of them, so there is no gate keeping. There is no system in place that would allow you to say that that person shouldn't be housed.

Having said that, of course, it is proving more and more and more difficult to find the right kind of accommodation for people. We were very lucky to be able to secure a number of hotels, bed and breakfast arrangements and so on, and university accommodation, but as people go back to normal business that becomes harder and harder. As part of our phase 2 approach, we are building close to 1,000 new houses, which we hope will be up very shortly. They're modern methods of construction, so they're very rapid-build houses. These are beautiful houses; these are not some sort of temporary solution. They are lovely, but 1,000 isn't enough by any means to cover off some of this.

We still have relationship managers from the Welsh Government working in every local authority in Wales, to assist officers on the ground to find the right kinds of accommodation and to put the support packages in place alongside third sector and other partners. We're still very grateful for that. Just to give you an idea of the scale of it, on average it's £1.6 million a month to meet the costs of our inclusive 'everyone in' approach—so about £20 million of additional funding for the emergency response for the full year, just in this year alone. So, we've really committed to this. This isn't an easy thing to do, but we are absolutely funding it and working in partnership with our local authorities and other partners to make sure that we can make it happen.

Minister, over the last year you know I have been working with a number of organisations on a pet-friendly policy—or 'pawlicy', as I like to call it. You know this is aimed at making sure that nobody has to choose between, often, their best friend—their pet—and accessing accommodation. Now, I understand from your response to my policy document that local authorities across Wales are currently formulating homelessness plans. Minister, can you assure me that these plans will include being able to keep your pet and access accommodation?

Absolutely, Jack, and we're really grateful for the policy document being shared with us. We're continuing to work closely with local authorities to support people off the streets, and that includes their pets. Very often, actually, somebody will refuse to come in if it means that their pet is left out, and I completely understand that, and who doesn't? So, we absolutely are making sure that there is accommodation available for people with pets and that they can keep that pet with them, going forward. I'm really grateful to you for sharing the policy with us, and we will be sharing that across the local authorities as we work through this.