2. How is the Welsh Government supporting local authorities in South Wales Central to secure a home for everyone who needs one in light of the cost-of-living crisis? OQ58722

Llywydd, the cost-of-living crisis, and crises elsewhere in the world, generate pressures on the housing system. On average, over 1,400 people present to homelessness services every month in need of temporary accommodation. Over 6,000 people who have fled the war in Ukraine alone have been accommodated in Wales since March this year.

Diolch, Prif Weinidog. I was contacted last week by a single parent with primary-school-aged children who have diabetes, autism and ADHD. Mam works as a school assistant, and has an expired eviction notice as the landlord is selling the house. The local council told her to seek private rental accommodation, but the cheapest she can find is £995 per calendar month. Estate agents said she needs to show evidence of a wage of £30,000, which is more than she earns. She will not be placed at the top of the housing list for a house until she has first moved into temporary accommodation. Mam is now on a waiting list for temporary accommodation, and a housing worker in a local authority told me that people stay in temporary accommodation for months at the moment, and we know that demand is only likely to increase as the cost-of-living crisis impacts more and more people. Temporary accommodation is not a suitable or healthy housing solution for a family with children. When children cannot access their basic human rights to a safe home, is it not time to accelerate and expand the agreed Unnos programme, to undertake house adaptation and house building on an unprecedented scale, to ensure children and adults have safe and suitable homes?

Llywydd, I certainly agree with Heledd Fychan that the Unnos project has a part to play, an important part to play, in allowing us to accelerate the building of long-term affordable homes for people in every part of Wales. That ambition will not help the person who has contacted the Member in their immediate difficulties, which is why it is right that we go on together investing in those measures that provide some immediate relief for people who find themselves with nowhere to live, and that includes the transitional accommodation capital programme. That will create over 1,000 new homes for people here in Wales. They will be places that people can call their own, they will be places that people will be able to plan the future of their lives. Beyond the transitional accommodation, there will be permanent accommodation to be found as well. And that's why, Llywydd, we invest in bringing empty homes back into use here in Wales—a £43 million recyclable fund that has already brought in 1,600 homes that otherwise would not be available for occupation, or where the physical conditions would be so difficult that people might be forced not to go on living in them. Over 1,600 homes have been brought into use in that way, and a further 1,300 occupied homes made safe for people to stay in as well.

There is an imbalance between the demand for housing in Wales and the supply of it. That's apparent to anybody who represents people who come to surgeries and tell us of the difficulties that they are facing. But, by increasing supply and supporting people so that when they do take up tenancies, they're able to maintain them in the best possible way, we have the plan in place in Wales that will get us to a better place for those people who, in many parts of Wales, face the same difficulties as the individual Heledd Fychan has talked to us about this afternoon.

First Minister, I recently met with Trivallis, the largest provider of social housing in RCT, and it was really good to receive an update from them on how they've been able to make use of the Welsh Government's transitional accommodation capital programme to bring empty homes back into use with the specific purpose of moving people and families out of temporary bed-and-breakfast accommodation. What sort of measures will you put in place to monitor this scheme and make sure that it delivers on the Welsh Government's objective for everyone in Wales to have a safe, suitable, permanent home?

Well, Llywydd, I thank Vikki Howells for drawing attention particularly to the transitional accommodation capital programme. It is an innovation here in Wales, it has £65 million now provided to it, and I am very impressed and encouraged by the way in which progressive local authorities and progressive housing associations have grasped the opportunity that the programme provides. That is why, within an 18-month period, we will bring more than 1,000 additional homes into use. We'll monitor it, Llywydd, through the normal grant awarding process, but I believe that where there are partners who demonstrate that they have the commitment and the capacity to use the funding we are able to provide to bring homes into use, to offer people somewhere that they can move on in their lives, we ought to trust them to get on with the job. And while it's right, because it's public money, that we monitor it and they account for it, I think it should be a trusted relationship with organisations such as the ones mentioned by Vikki Howells and the local authority in the area she represents. Where we have people on the ground who demonstrate their capacity to deliver, we ought to enable them to get on with that job.