4. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Housing-with-Care Fund

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:25 pm on 17 May 2022.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 3:25, 17 May 2022

I very much welcome the Minister's statement on housing with care. Members probably remember my continual and regular call that decent, affordable housing is fundamental to the health and well-being of everyone in Wales. It's been really nice to have that echoed by the Minister today.

The Attlee Government in 1945 realised the relationship between health and housing. That seems to have got lost since then, and I hope this is us moving in that direction to actually work along those two and the link between the two. I welcome the development of reablement and extra-care flats, especially reablement flats. Too often, people get discharged from hospital into a home and then that's it, the end, and they stay there until they die, which is probably going to be premature, because they lose the will to live. So, reablement is really important. We don't do enough about reablement, and I wish the health Minister was here, because I could be saying that to her as well—that we don't do enough about reablement.

I have two questions: does the Minister agree that we need to build council housing at the scale of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s to deal with housing need? And how many units of housing will the £182 million achieve?