3. What legal advice has the Counsel General provided to ministerial colleagues on assisting leaseholders who face financial liabilities in addressing defects in high-rise buildings in Wales? OQ56446

Welsh Government are exploring options to protect leaseholders from bearing the full brunt of costs to remediate building safety issues. It's imperative, of course, that we ensure that all options are properly scoped, risk assessed and that their consequences are fully understood before funding models are announced.

Diolch yn fawr, Weinidog. Now, in these post-Grenfell times, Counsel General, you may be aware of the issues facing leaseholders at Meridian Quay in Swansea, where the construction company and the insurers have both gone into liquidation. This has left leaseholders in a position where they feel trapped, their apartments are seen as worthless and they are unable to sell. Now, hopefully, attempts to gain compensation through the Financial Services Compensation Scheme will bear fruit, and I have written to the Minister for Housing and Local Government on this matter.

I would be grateful, however, if you could outline what discussions you are having within Government on the £3.5 billion funding announced by the UK Government recently, and whether you feel that it would be possible for the Welsh Government to offer an indemnity to leaseholders in situations such as Meridian Quay, particularly for consequential costs, such as rising insurance and rising legal costs. 

Well, we certainly expect for Wales to receive its fair share of funding, as a result of the spending commitments recently announced in England, and that will, of course enable us to prepare a response to leaseholders who are in this position. The White Paper that the Minister has published is open for consultation until 12 April, and I'll take this opportunity to encourage people to respond to that consultation. But our position as a Government is very, very clear: we do not believe leaseholders should have to pay to rectify issues that constitute failure to build to appropriate quality standards. We've announced already £10.5 million in this year and a further £32 million-worth of capital funding for the next financial year, and our intention, I can reassure the Member, is to establish a funding offer for Wales that goes even further than that which is being considered in other parts of the UK, which looks at the holistic remediation of buildings, beyond cladding, to include some of the other sorts of aspects that he mentioned in his question and others have been calling for as well. I know that the Minister for Housing and Local Government will be making an announcement in due course about how that kind of funding can be accessed.