A Sustainable Supply of Housing

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 19 October 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:15, 19 October 2022

Well, you know, Mark, what I would say is, again, the Conservatives' ability to quote statistics outside of the macroeconomic situation just beggars belief. So, this Government has set record levels of social housing grant funding through the budget, so that's £300 million, and indicative draft budget allocations of £330 million for next year and £325 million for the year after that, subject, of course, to the absolute chaos that we see at Westminster. In north Wales, the social housing grant has increased from £48,533,745 spent in 2021-22 to £65,750,153 allocated in 2022-23. So, very significant increases—very nearly doubling, actually.

We have become the first nation to mandate that all new-build social housing grant funded homes are designed to EPC A rating, through the Welsh development quality requirements that were launched in July 2021. This is about more than just building any old house, chucking it up and making sure that you can call that a new build. Your own Government has had to put a new homes ombudsman in place because of the absolutely appalling state of many of the new homes you were so happily reading out the statistics on, Mark. They are absolutely appalling. They are badly built, they are draughty, they are hard to live in, and they've literally had to put an ombudsman in place to control the market. It is far, far better to have the proper local market housing assessment, the right level of mixed tenure, and the right level of insulation and carbon neutrality than to chuck up any old thing any old place and give yourself a tick.