1. Will the Welsh Government commit to the adoption of the maintenance of new housing estates by local authorities? OQ58078

Good afternoon to the Member.

Llywydd, our programme for government includes a commitment to reform the way in which estate charges are levied for public open spaces and facilities. Current arrangements are over complex and too often unfair. We will bring forward proposals for reform, for both new and existing estates.

Diolch yn fawr, Brif Weinidog. This particular issue is from an area that you know probably very well and you probably spent some time there during the recent elections—the Mill estate in Canton. Now, the residents there have to pay an annual fee of £102 for the maintenance of a park that borders the estate, unadopted highways and green spaces and so on. And, of course, this is on top of the council tax they need to pay. Now, I know my friend Hefin David has done a lot of work with this over the years, because these residents don't even receive a detailed breakdown of what they need to pay, and, of course, they're paying for services that other people living in Canton are receiving, in effect, for free through the local authority. 

Now, the Mill was held up as good practice, quite rightly, by the Welsh Government, of a mixed estate with affordable housing and freehold purchasing. Will the Welsh Government commit to bringing this bad and unfair practice to an end by encouraging and facilitating the adoption of maintenance by local authorities? Diolch yn fawr, Brif Weinidog. 

Thank you to Rhys ab Owen for that supplementary. 

Llywydd, I'm very proud of the Mill site; I've visited it many times. It will create 800 new homes in the centre of Cardiff on a brownfield site. It's a tribute in many ways to our former colleague Edwina Hart, who managed to bring about an innovative financing regime that means that the 400 affordable homes on the site involve no social housing grant at all, and that is overseen by Tirion, a not-for-profit community benefit society responsible for the development of those much-needed social homes. The site is complex because of its mixed tenure. Privately-owned houses will have been sold on the basis of estate charges set out at the time of sale. Tirion is responsible for the communal amenities available to all of the estate. 

I've got some better news for the Member because I see that Tirion have written to residents in recent days, lowering the charge from £102 to £80, providing every resident with an itemised bill. And the charges are not simply for the upkeep of a play area, as has sometimes been alleged. Absolutely crucially, it is also for the maintenance of flood defences for that whole site. It's called 'riverbank', Llywydd; the clue is in the name, as they say. It is an area, inevitably, where flooding is a possibility, and where flood defences therefore are very important. 

In the original question from the Member, and in his follow-up question, he asked if we would give a guarantee that local authorities would pick up the costs of maintenance of new housing estates. We won't do that, Llywydd. That would be to create a moral hazard for developers of a sort that would be entirely unwelcome. If a developer believed that no matter how shoddy the work they carried out, no matter how poor the standard of communal facilities it provided, there was a guarantee that the public purse would pick that up and put it right, there's no incentive at all for them to do the job in the way that we want it to be done. We will reform the system for new and existing housing estates, but the costs are likely to continue to be shared. More undertaken by the local authority, I agree with that—there is more that local authorities should do. But on the idea that they should solely become responsible, when there are companies that have responsibilities and residents who have responsibilities, I think a tripartite system will continue to be the way in which a better system can be designed for the future.

I thank the Member for South Wales Central for raising the issue, and, as the Member has just said, it is important that local authorities do all they can to move forward with the adoption of housing estates. But I take the point that the First Minister made, that there is a responsibility on the developers to complete the work in an appropriate fashion. It's also important that developers play their role too, and there are many examples of responsible companies contributing to new housing estates, as expected—through play parks, community facilities, et cetera. However, Llywydd, there are too many examples of local authorities not receiving the full amount that they are due via section 106 contributions. I'm sure many Members, across the Chamber, can recall examples of this in their own constituencies. There are also instances where developers do not deliver the amount of social housing promised during the planning application stage, instead re-evaluating the number of dwellings to be built on the land during the building process itself, often quoting necessity to do so on the grounds of viability. And this leads to ever-increasing social housing waiting lists. First Minister, will the Welsh Government explore ways to boost the powers available to local authorities to ensure that all housing developers fully play their role in unlocking the potential of our communities? And how is the Government working with developers to encourage the building of important social infrastructure, as well as the new housing? Thank you.

Llywydd, all of those are really important points that Peter Fox makes, and I know that he will speak from experience of having had to negotiate these agreements. He's right—there are many responsible building companies out there, with Tirion I referred to in the context of the Mill site in Cardiff being one of them. But there are too many examples, which he will know, and we could all of us quote from our own constituency responsibilities, where developers do not complete the deal that they themselves have entered into with local authorities. My colleague Julie James is very well aware of the need to make sure that agreements freely entered into, and planning permissions provided on the basis of those agreements, are honoured, in order to make sure that we achieve our ambitious targets for affordable and social housing here in Wales. And the Welsh Government continues to take a very direct and active part in shaping the policy platform for the future, to make sure that those responsibilities are properly discharged.

If I can come back to the premise of the question, which was the regulation of estate management companies, these companies are not well regulated—in fact, they're barely regulated at all. The charges people face can have no cap, and, very often, the work is shoddy, and, where land is not adopted, it's sold to the estate management company, who then charge residents on top of their council tax. The charge in Cwm Calon in Ystrad Mynach is £162, which is higher than in Cardiff, for areas of green land that, really, the council could do. It's unacceptable. I had a meeting with the Minister Julie James and she said that she's waiting for the UK Government to act, and then will introduce a legislative consent motion to address the gaps that may be in that provision. We really need action here. Would the First Minister consider taking action through the Welsh Government's legislative powers if the UK Government fail to address this in good time?

Llywydd, I thank Hefin David for raising those points and for the persistence with which he has followed this issue during the previous Senedd term and into this one. He is right to say that unacceptable and unfair practices can be observed in parts of Wales, which are possible because of the unregulated nature of estate management companies and the charges that they can raise. There are two ways in which the Welsh Government will aim to tackle these issues. We are, indeed, continuing to work with the UK Government. We are told that legislation will be introduced later in the current Parliament in order to implement the Law Commission's recommendations on leasehold reform, and that will provide a parity of rights for freeholders, equivalent to those currently enjoyed by leaseholders, that will allow them the right to apply to a tribunal to challenge the fairness of estate charges or to appoint a new manager to manage the provision of services covered by estate rent charges. But, at the same time, we will also, in our own building safety legislation, which we intend to introduce later in this Senedd term, include estate management companies in the proposed registration and licensing scheme for residential property management companies, and that will help to eliminate some of the abuses of the current system to which Hefin David pointed.