6. What are the Welsh Government's housing priorities for Preseli Pembrokeshire? OQ56025

Thank you, Paul. We have been consistent in our message that social housing is our top priority. Our aim is to build better social homes, more of them, and more quickly. I am really proud of our record £2 billion investment in housing to support our delivery of over 20,000 affordable additional homes in this Assembly term—sorry, Senedd term; I beg your pardon.  

Thank you for that response, Minister. Now, recent figures tell us that poor housing costs the Welsh NHS around £95 million per year in the first five years of treatment charges and costs Welsh society over £1 billion a year. Now, we can't afford to lose sight of that as, clearly, investing in good quality housing demonstrates there is a proven return on investment in health benefits. Therefore, can you tell us what the Welsh Government is doing to improve energy efficiency in its housing projects going forward, and what other measures is the Welsh Government taking to address the health costs of poor housing in Wales, and especially in Pembrokeshire? 

Absolutely, Paul. I completely agree that good housing is the bedrock of good health and a good life. We absolutely agree with that. In Pembrokeshire, the local authority has received £6.397 million-worth of social housing grant, and £1.142 million of housing finance grant for affordable housing schemes. That includes £2.4 million for two schemes in the Preseli constituency, which provide 20 more homes. The social housing grant allocation for 2020-21 is £3.928 million for affordable housing schemes. So, it's a significant investment. And the reason for that investment is exactly as you set out, because we know that getting people into good, affordable, warm housing makes a huge impact on both their health and their well-being. 

We also have a number of schemes that are in the portfolio of my colleague Lesley Griffths—Nest and Arbed and so on. And I'm particularly proud of the optimised retrofit scheme, which I've recently announced, where we are working with a number of social landlords and councils across Wales to look at optimising how we can retrofit existing homes in Wales, learning the lessons of the Welsh housing quality standard. Whilst very successful indeed, it did have one or two lessons that we needed to learn from it, and that is that one size doesn't fit all.

So, that scheme will bring forward a range of different housing from across Wales. The examples I've been given are Victorian terracing, for example, in the Welsh Valleys, as against the between-the-wars or 1970s-style housing you see in my own constituency, for example. And it's obvious that a retrofit scheme for that housing won't be the same. So, the programme will allow us to optimise the retrofit, to build up the skills and the industry necessary to roll that out across all tenures of housing stock in Wales in order to give everyone, no matter what their tenure, the warm and affordable home that they require.