Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:24 pm on 10 March 2021.
Yes, thank you, Angela Burns. I wasn't aware of that particular instance, but I'm more than happy to have a look at the procedures, particular for houses that are listed; there's obviously an added complexity there. In terms of the bigger adaptations and planning in general, we do have a pathway for that, and care and repair agencies are very familiar with working with planning departments. But I'm very happy to look at any individual instances you've got where that isn't working. It may be that there's a particular planning department, or there are particular instances. I'm happy to look at that if you want to let me know specifics.
But in general, we do work with planning departments to make sure that the average times are around nine months. And 40 weeks is a very long time, you're absolutely right, but obviously, sometimes they're building a whole extension and so on, so they're very, very big adaptations. The smaller adaptations—as I say, stairlifts and so on—are around four months and the rapid response ones are around nine days. I'm happy to say at this point that, just today, I've issued a written statement because we've been able to agree the removal of the means test, which I did mention during my response to Nick Ramsay on motor neurone disease. So, I'm happy to say that we've done that as well, and that will speed up some of the adaptation response times as well.