Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 19 October 2022.
Thank you. Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, last Friday I joined an urgent meeting with a group of registered social landlords to discuss the future of social housing in Wales. Amongst their fears and their worries and concerns, there was this feeling that Welsh Government, in their opinion, has failed to create a strong foundation to drive social housing new builds. Only around 9,000 housing association and local authority homes were built between 2010 and 2019, an average of 1,000 annually. This is way below even your estimate that between 3,000 and 6,000 new homes are required over the next five years. In fact, your own manifesto commitment that says you'd build
'20,000 new low carbon social homes for rent' is hanging by a thread. RSLs have warned me that if they are unable to increase rents in line with inflation this year, serious cuts will have to be made to the services they provide. They provide debt advice. There are a lot of things that registered social landlords bring in providing quality accommodation. I would certainly like to put on record my thanks for the role they play in providing homes for people in Wales. But also, serious cuts would have an impact on their ability to continue with building projects. What steps will you take to ensure that the RSLs themselves do not have to in any way stall the building of new social housing?