Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:44 pm on 10 March 2021.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:44, 10 March 2021

[Inaudible.]—others wouldn't necessarily give you the amount of money that you require to fix the entire building. Often there are complex ownership patterns in the building. There are complex freeholder versus leaseholder issues and so on.

I've been meeting with a series of developers. I met with another one of the big developers only this morning to understand from them what they saw as their responsibility. Many of the builders are now coming forward and saying that they will fix the inherited defects of the building. There is an issue about building owners taking some responsibility rather than the leaseholders themselves. We cannot put a windfall tax on, here in Wales. I have called on the UK Government to do so. I'm happy to do so again on the floor of the Senedd. We are looking ourselves to see whether we could make any kind of levy work in Wales. The difficulty is that not very many people build high-rise buildings in Wales already, and the difficulty is that if you did put a levy on, you'd probably just accomplish stopping them building them rather than actually generating any money from them. So, we need to find a way that actually practically works for people.

I have a set of legal advisers beavering away on a range of options that we've put forward—some that have been suggested to me by you and other Members of the Senedd. Others have been suggested to me by the groups of residents who I've met with. I'm in constant dialogue with the residents as well as with the builders. So, we are trying really hard to find a way through this, and I'll say once again: we are not the repository of all good ideas here. If anybody can find a way through it, then we'd be delighted to hear from them. And I'm very pleased with the conversations that I've been having with the builders, the building industry, the Home Builders Federation and others, about the way forward and what could be done to be able to do this. And we have put some money in the budget to look at the preliminary work for this, and then I'm sure that whatever Government's in power after the election will want to do something to help the leaseholders who are in the most dreadful of plights as we stand.