Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 29 June 2022.
Thank you for raising this issue. I absolutely recognise the importance of moving quickly to support people with MND. In terms of local government, in considering their general housing responsibilities, they must be mindful of their responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010, and we do encourage local authorities to hold those accessible housing registers so that disabled people can be allocated housing that is suitable for their needs. Work is also under way through a housing association to develop a standard accessible housing register for all local authorities to be able to use. And also, they have legal responsibilities under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 to provide mandatory disabled facilities grants for qualifying disabled people to make adaptations to a property. We've been working over a number of years to make that process as quick and as streamlined as possible, and to remove, where appropriate, that level of means testing to, again, try and speed things through the system. We also provide funding to enable local authorities to provide lower cost adaptations quickly. Again, this is without means testing. We increased that grant in April 2021 to £6 million a year. But I will take an opportunity, when I have it, with local government, and particularly their housing spokespeople, to explore this issue further, and if I'm not able to do it myself soon, I'll do it through my colleague the housing Minister.