Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 3:20 pm on 16 December 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:20, 16 December 2020

No. Very much no, Delyth. You'll be aware, from the many conversations that we've had that we'd very much—. Although the private rented sector has its place to play in terms of accommodation, and we're very grateful to the very many good landlords we have across Wales for providing good homes for people, nevertheless, we'd very much like to see an increase, in particular in houses for social rent. As a result of the cap being removed from the housing revenue accounts only a few short years ago, we've worked really, really hard with councils and RSLs across Wales to ramp up the building of homes for social rent in particular. I'm really pleased that we've made the target—the 20,000 affordable homes target—but it's the social rent part of that that's most needed. And you'll know from the long conversations we have, and I know that we share the ambition, that the way to do—you know, we need to ramp that up as fast as possible. So, we've been working very hard, through our innovative housing programme, as well as just through our normal building routes, to ramp up builds by both our registered social landlords and our stock-holding councils to get as many social homes built and into the market as possible. And, of course, we have a number of schemes aimed at taking in private rented accommodation into the social housing market, either on a five-year rolling basis, or indeed, we've allowed councils to buy them where that's appropriate.