Housing Developments

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 12:35 pm on 16 June 2021.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 12:35, 16 June 2021

Thank you for your congratulations, and welcome, also, to you to the Senedd and to your new role. So, we're encouraging—. As I just said in answer to the first question, we're encouraging local authorities across Wales to do a review of their LDP, depending on the age and extent of it. Many of them have already started that process. We also now have a process in place that allows them to come together in corporate joint committees to put together a strategic development plan for the region. We've already put in place 'Future Wales', so we will have a plan-led system in its entirety, which gels together once those elements are in place. 

Local authorities are required to understand housing availability in the area through what's called a local market housing assessment, and forgive me if you already know this, but that's what they're supposed to do. They form a key part of the local development plan itself. We're currently working with a series of local authority experts to develop and improve the local housing management assessments, including publication of a new tool to support local authorities to produce the assessments. We're going to give guidance, training and ongoing support to the local authorities in order to do that. Local authorities, of course, are in the best position to have a good understanding of their local housing market, and to have a robust LHMA in place to inform the decisions. So, I suppose I'm sort of agreeing with you. We encourage local authorities to ensure their LDP is up to date. We are currently working with them on a new local management housing assessment tool. We expect the local authorities to redo their land-based housing assessments in the light of that new tool, and then, when the strategic development plans are put in place regionally, we expect those plans to reflect that on the ground. So, we will be working very closely with local authorities in order to do that.

There is a slight misunderstanding about the targets in the previous predictions: they were never targets; they were always predictions. That's why we're working on the tool, and I look forward to a good relationship with local authorities across Wales in coming together on an agenda we all agree on, which is to make sure we have the right housing in the right place for the right communities.