Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 3:12 pm on 16 December 2020.
I thank Mark Isherwood for the question and the acknowledgement of the incredibly hard work that's been done across homelessness services by statutory services, by voluntary and third sector services. I'm always happy to have another opportunity to pay tribute to the extremely hard work, the fortitude and sheer resilience of the service. My tribute to the people at the front end of that service is absolutely heartfelt, because what we've managed to achieve in Wales in that period of time is just extraordinary. As he said, we now have over 4,000 people who've been housed through phase 1 of the homelessness service.
And absolutely, of course, it's not just about housing people in terms of four walls and a roof; it's about the support services that go with that, all the support services necessary to sustain somebody in that tenancy. So, I absolutely am incredibly grateful to all of the services and the umbrella organisations. Cymorth, in particular, has been extremely supportive all the way through in helping sustain that. Mark Isherwood will not be surprised to find that, however, I am not going to pre-empt the Welsh Government budget, which he knows will be published in draft on 21 December, and he wouldn't expect me to do so.