We move now to today's short debate, and I call on Peredur Owen Griffiths to speak to the topic that he has chosen.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and Mabon has asked to contribute to the debate, and I'm happy to allow that.

Only Mabon?

Yes, just Mabon. 

A key feature of the Welsh housing market over the past two decades has been a gradual ballooning of the private rented sector. The alterations in the profile of the Welsh housing stock and its consequences are well known, and have been debated many times in this Chamber. However, a not insignificant subsector within both the private and social rented sectors in Wales is houses in multiple occupation, or HMOs as they are commonly known. There seems to have been very little understanding of the lived experience of both residents living in and communities impacted by HMOs. The Government's focus has been on professionalising the sector, and, whilst this has brought welcome legislative developments surrounding minimum quality standards, any substantive action around community impact has yet to be taken seriously.

With shared living on the rise, housing policy in relation to HMOs needs urgently to be reviewed for the sake of communities and tenants. HMOs in south Wales are often placed in already established communities, with very little consideration allocated to the needs of the community and the people occupying the HMO.

People within my region frequently express feelings of living in a divided community, of not being listened to, and of receiving no consultation, other than a letter through the door, before a HMO is unthinkingly permitted on their street. There are serious concerns around strains on infrastructure, the erosion of community cohesion and the opportunistic rogue landlords who feel that the business risks for poorly managing their accommodation are outweighed by the financial returns.

The increasing concentrations of HMOs in south Wales are also in ageing communities, where feelings of disenfranchisement are particularly acute. Older people should feel that their community is a safe place where they can exercise their freedom, not somewhere riven by anti-social behaviour and the sense of trepidation that can stem from HMOs. Objections from residents and councillors are frequently met with the usual response of, 'These aren't material planning concerns.' Our communities need a sufficient mechanism for making sure that they can determine, together, how their community grows and develops.

It also needs to be recognised that the continually growing body of research indicates that HMOs house some of the most vulnerable tenants in our country. In 2020, studies conducted by Professor Steve Iafrati showed that these individuals often have multiple and complex needs, as they have experience of institutional care, the criminal justice system, mental and physical health concerns and homelessness. They typically have limited recourse to other housing options and are constrained to HMOs as housing of last resort.

Those who fall between the gaps in welfare provision can be openly targeted by unscrupulous landlords, whilst local authorities have limited options to house them elsewhere. Because of this, local authorities are becoming increasingly reliant upon HMOs as a quick fix for housing need. Ultimately, this doesn't address root causes so much as it attempts to treat the symptoms.

There are significant accountability deficits and risk gaps blighting the current system. There is a lack of robust oversight and monitoring beyond minimal housing regulation, very little regulation of care, support or supervision for people with complex needs, and no meaningful community voice. It simply won't do to pit community against tenant. Both suffer under the current arrangements, while landlords and local authorities stand to gain.

On this matter, concerns have been raised by a Plaid Cymru colleague following an incident over a HMO in my region. Issues around support to vulnerable people, lengths of stays in what is supposed to be temporary accommodation, planning applications and the concerns of the community have all been reported to him. Unfortunately, there has been a death of a young vulnerable man in a HMO in my region. This matter is still under investigation, but the case has raised a number of questions.

We have to find a balance in supporting communities and homelessness and vulnerable people. HMOs are only a part of the way forward. Much more needs to be done. Just before the Easter recess, my colleague Mabon ap Gwynfor spoke passionately about the need not only to build more homes, but also the need to identify people's needs. I completely agree, and would add that part of the challenge is to ensure that the right homes are built in the right places.

The same logic must be applied to HMOs. There is a vital need to introduce policies that extend to increased democratic community input, against which planning applications can be assessed. A bottom-up, community-led approach to a system of planning would take into account how HMOs can deliver social value, not merely financial value, to their owners.

A framework for taking into account social cohesion would involve communities from the point of pre-application, ensuring that developments respond to local needs and well-being, with community groups and individuals involved at all stages. It would also ensure the creation of more supported HMOs, and private HMOs adopting models of working closely with organisations, local authorities and communities. HMOs in suitable locations, with specific support remits, would improve community-HMO relations drastically.

Alongside community input, policy interventions must consider the internal conditions of HMOs. HMOs tend to be run by individual landlords and small businesses who house people with multiple and complex needs with little to no support. The essential non-profitable nature of care giving and support should not be left to private landlords and businesses. There is an opportunity in Wales to pilot sharing schemes for vulnerable people in housing need. The Sharing Solutions programme, piloted in England by Crisis in 2015, tested several new models for establishing successful and sustainable sharing arrangements. These schemes identified that mitigating risky tenant mixes by finding appropriate matches were a critical component to ensuring that tenants' experiences were positive. The schemes offered tenancy support with pre-tenancy training, peer mentoring and regular visits from allocated support workers. This has implications for replicating such schemes in Wales.

Combining support for tenants and communities in an approach to HMOs outside of existing licensing schemes would be a step towards organising our communities around values of co-operation, membership, care and support. It would facilitate individuals' capacities to create, to direct their own lives within their communities, building democratic ownership over not just where we live, but how we live. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you to Peredur for bringing forward this debate, because it is an exceptionally important one, particularly bearing in mind that in a number of the HMOs that we have, if you think about places such as Bangor, Aberystwyth, Swansea, Wrexham and Cardiff—those areas where there are universities—it's students who make up many of the residents of these HMOs. I want to refer you to an excellent report that the National Union of Students Wales and Shelter released around Christmas that looked at the standard of housing for students and which said that over half the students of Wales live in properties that are damp, that have mould growing in them, and so on; 65 per cent of students reported that they live in homes that had an impact on their mental health; and that a third of students had difficulties paying rent, with 60 per cent of them stating that the property that they lived in didn't meet standards and should not have attracted that level of rent. So, this draws attention to that specifically, and I would like to hear what the Deputy Minister has to say when it comes to student properties in particular.

Also, I think it's important—what Peredur said in his contribution—to mention the need to build homes to meet local demand and needs, to ensure that homes are fit for purpose, rather than what we see at the moment, which is a number of landlords trying to squeeze as many people as possible into homes for their own profit, without thinking about the needs of those individuals who then go on to suffer from things like mental ill health. So, I look forward to hearing what the Deputy Minister has to say about Government plans to ensure that homes are built to meet the community demands and needs. Thank you very much.

I call on the Deputy Minister for Climate Change to reply to the debate.

Well, thank you very much to Peredur Griffiths for his contribution, which I thought was very thoughtful and raised a number of important issues that need reflecting upon, and I'm very pleased that Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government have a radical joint approach to a number of areas of housing and, indeed, a mechanism by which we can discuss this and find shared solutions to complex and challenging problems.

Now, of course, our ambition for Wales is to value the rented sector, and also to value communities where there are mixed housing and tenures that meet the needs of all those people living within their communities. There are a number of points raised in the contribution and I'll try and address as many of them as I'm able to.

On the point of the rights and roles of tenants, I fully appreciate the points that have been made, and indeed it is why we continue to fund the Tenant Participation Advisory Service, TPAS Cymru, to encourage participation and represent the voice of tenants in Wales. It is vital that tenants are protected, especially those who can be considered vulnerable, and I think the points that both Mabon ap Gwynfor and Peredur Griffiths made are sound ones.

Of course, we do also have Rent Smart Wales. I noticed Peredur Griffiths used a phrase about our sort of statutory framework, and I don't think we should dismiss that or underestimate that; I think that is an important and hard-fought gain that does give us an advantage. Any landlord of a privately rented property must register themselves and their properties, and Rent Smart Wales make sure that landlords are aware of their responsibilities, and tenants benefit from having a landlord or an agent who is aware of their legal responsibilities and act in accordance with them. That's not something that happens in England and it's something that happens in Wales because of the action the Senedd has taken on it. I don't think we should set that aside too lightly.

We are working with people who have experienced discrimination to develop proposals to address the inequalities that exist in the private rented sector, and tackling racism and promoting race equality have always been important priorities for this Government, and our programme for government commitment recognises the need for sustained action to eradicate racial discrimination and hate crime by ensuring that landlords respond quickly to complaints of racism and hate crime, and offer appropriate support. We're working with Rent Smart Wales, Tai Pawb and Victim Support Cymru to develop training for all landlords and managing agents to raise awareness of racism and hate crime, and there is a need for everyone to stand together to support victims and to ensure that instances are reported to the police or to Victim Support Cymru.

Poverty, of course, disproportionately impacts particular people and particular communities, and so we have provided extra funding to Citizens Advice Cymru to establish the private rented sector debt helpline, so that tenants can speak to independent trained advisers who can help them to maximise their income, support them to claim the benefits that they're entitled to and undertake an assessment of affordability to help with rent arrears or other household debt.

The implementation of the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 will transform the landscape for tenants and considerably strengthen their rights. It will improve the quality of rented homes, crucially—that's what it is for—and providing tenants do not breach their contract, they will have a right to six months' notice if their landlord seeks to end the contract. And further, as that notice cannot be served in the first six months, they will have security of at least a year after moving into their home.

And finally, we have a commitment to publish a White Paper on fair rents, and new approaches to making homes affordable for those on local incomes in line with the co-operation agreement, and that will include proposals on rent control. So, to ensure everyone in Wales has access to a decent, affordable and safe home and help combat the cost-of-living crisis facing so many people in Wales, we've already put in place a raft of measures, as we discussed in the previous debate, including the commitment to 20,000 low-carbon homes for rent.

The contribution that houses in multiple occupation make is complex. The points that Peredur Griffiths makes are fair and valid ones, and this is a sector not without its challenges, for sure, but also they do provide a value, which I don't think we should look past, particularly for providing homes for many vulnerable people, including young people, and for those in receipt of housing-related benefits, they are only entitled to receive benefits for living in shared accommodation if under 35 and in the rented private sector. Also, HMOs do provide essential accommodation for students in our university towns and cities. But while they play an important part in meeting some of our housing needs, it's of course important, vital, that there are appropriate planning and licensing conditions in place.

As Peredur Griffiths rightly said, disproportionately high concentrations of HMOs can lead to problems for local communities. Historically, HMO issues have related to poor management and absent landlords, but measures introduced through the Housing Act 2004 and our own Housing Act (Wales) 2014 have helped to tackle these: the 2004 Act introduced mandatory and additional licensing of HMOs as well as dealing with the management and condition of HMOs. It does not control the number of HMOs in any given area, and only larger HMOs are subject to mandatory licensing, but local authorities have the discretion to extend HMO licensing by introducing additional licensing schemes. This additional licensing is often used in areas with a high concentration of student HMOs to license HMOs that are not already subject to mandatory licensing. And selective licensing focuses on areas of lower housing demand, and areas suffering from anti-social behaviour.

Finally, in Wales, we also brought in changes in 2016 that increased the number of new HMOs that may require planning permission, thereby giving further power to local planning authorities when considering the use of HMOs. At the time, we also made it easier for a small-scale HMO to revert to use as a family home without requiring planning permission.

Where there are problems with how HMOs are managed by landlords, Rent Smart Wales has introduced a further management and regulatory mechanism to address these issues. And under the 2004 Act, before designating an area for additional licensing, the local authority must engage with the local community. They must take reasonable steps to consult everyone who's likely to be affected by this change and consider any representations. Where that is not happening, I'd be grateful for the Member to bring it to our attention.

A disproportionately large number of HMOs can bring changes and challenges to a community, and we have sought to mitigate them. They do provide useful accommodation and we have ensured that there are tools in place to manage some of the problems that are thrown up by the complex conditions that we've all discussed.

So, I think it's fair to recognise that it is complex, that there are things in train and there is a value for HMOs as part of a mixed-tenure picture. But that is to acknowledge many of the points made as valid ones, and I would hope that we can work together to work through some of those problems and identify practical solutions. And I think the partnership agreement provides our two parties at the very least a formal mechanism for discussing a number of issues, and this is open to all Members, of course, to work through this together. I'd certainly welcome the chance to talk further with the Member to reflect on some of the important points he has raised this afternoon. Diolch.

Thank you, Deputy Minister, and thank you to everyone for their contributions. That brings today's proceedings to a close.

The meeting ended at 17:27.