4. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Welsh Housing Quality Standard 2

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:31 pm on 10 May 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:31, 10 May 2022

Well, thank you very much, Janet. You raise a few very interesting points and some points of principle. So, just in terms of the points of principle, we clearly are facing a climate challenge. You will have seen the most recent report saying that we're looking at some of the hottest years ever on record. And, so, this is about making sure that people's homes are fit for that. So, this isn't only about heating them in the winter; it's also about cooling them in the summer, it's making them fit for purpose. We know that the Welsh housing quality standard that we've just brought the housing up to is EPC D, and that's a very considerable improvement on what it was before, but it's clearly nowhere near the standard that we expect to be climate change resilient.

So, one of the first things we're doing is looking at the standard over a pragmatic period of time. Obviously, not everyone's going to be done in the first year, so it's going to take another 10 years to get us there. And it will be for housing associations and councils to plan out how they will get there, what their worst housing is in terms of the most difficult to convert, or the easiest to convert, even, for some of them, and then to plan that out over that time period. Also, we're very aware that we've got programmes like the optimised retrofit programme and the innovative housing programme running, and they're testing technologies for us. So, over the course of that 10 years, there will be technologies available that are not available now, or that technology will get considerably cheaper than it is now, and so on. So, it's very important that the standard has an output rather than a—. I'm not going to say you have to have an air-source heat pump, or you have to have whatever; it's the output. The home has to have this much decarbonisation, it has to have this much energy efficiency and so on. And then how we get there will depend on what kind of house it is. And you'll know that we've been testing out the various kinds of things that work on different kinds of housing using the ORP programme, so we're expecting to learn from all of those things going forward.

It's also why we're consulting with the tenants of course, because you're absolutely right: some people don't like change, some people can't manage without the room being available and so on. We're also looking at, for some people, it will be necessary to decant them out for a while while the home is retrofitted, and that was actually the case for the old Welsh housing quality standard too. So, we had people who had to move elsewhere for three or four months while their home was retrofitted. What we do know is that once people move back in, they're very happy with what they find.

And in terms of things like how often do you change your kitchen, how often do you change your bathroom, again that depends on what you're specifying. So, nobody wants to be throwing things away that are still perfectly serviceable—that's got a carbon footprint as well. But, at the same time, we also want people to have the most efficient and the most effective use of both space and equipment. So, this is all about consultation, isn't it? This is all about each individual housing association, each individual council, consulting properly with its tenants, putting a programme of work to them, and then getting that agreed. We're not going to get 100 per cent buy-in for any of these things; some people just hate the change in their house no matter what benefits it brings them, and we have had examples of that in housing associations over the time. But I think all of those things are doable if people understand what the outcome for them is, and if that outcome is a better home that's both safer and more energy efficient, and more up to date and more modern inside the period that they have, then most people will come along that journey. You're never going to make 100 per cent of the people happy 100 per cent of the time. 

But I'm really proud of how we've got to here. So, learning from those lessons from IHP and ORP, learning from really good housing associations like ClwydAlyn and so on, who've done a lot of work here, we'll be able to roll this out in a way that I think suits the vast majority of our tenants.