4. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Affordability, Second Homes and the Welsh Language

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:23 pm on 6 July 2021.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:23, 6 July 2021

Yes. Thank you, Mark. I understand the point that you're making about homes built as holiday homes. However, there is a real issue with houses that are vacant in communities across Wales that have a direct impact on the viability of other local services. And, as you've heard me say numerous times in this statement today, the issue here is about having sustainable communities across Wales, with a level of all kinds of home ownership in them that is sustainable. When you have skewed out-of-proportion levels of any type of home ownership or home occupation, then you get problems. Mixed-tenure sustainable communities are the ones we know, across the world, that really work, and so I don't think we're at odds there; the issue is how do we get to a sustainable community when we already have communities that are no longer sustainable for a variety of reasons, as we've rehearsed around the Chamber today. And there are a variety of reasons that cause single-tenure unsustainability: some of them are around holiday-type arrangements; some of them are around student-type arrangements; some of them are around commuter-type arrangements; some of them are—there's a variety of affordability issues.

And, I have to say, I'm not going to take any lectures off any Tories about the reason that we didn't build any houses right up until only a few years ago, because you know as well as I do that the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 prohibited us from doing that, and that we only had that cap removed a very short number of years ago, because the Tories took 40 years to come to their senses on why we should build social housing. [Interruption.]—Well, you put it to me and I'm giving you the answer. So, the point about that is we can now build social housing at scale across Wales, and we will do so. We ought to have done it a long time ago, but we were prevented from doing so by policies of the Conservative Government. I'm very pleased to say that those policies—well, you've seen sense—no longer pertain in Wales, and so we're able to now build at scale and pace, because that is the actual solution: to build the right houses in the right place for the right access to people. So, if you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question.