Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:16 pm on 21 March 2023.
Thank you, Janet. The 'intent to sign' part is merely that the companies in question have to get the permission of holding company boards. We have letters saying they intend to sign. It is actually worth the paper it's written on, and I do expect them to sign formally very shortly. But they have to go through a board process in order to do that. So, that just is what it is. But they are signed up and they will do the work. So, I don't think people should worry about that bit of it.
In terms of the private sector leaseholders, I just don't know how to explain this to you. You've just said the social sector is not where you're concerns are. I'm sure that's not what you meant. There is a real difference in being able to identify the owner and responsible person of a building in the social sector compared to the private sector. There is a real difference. The difference is really straightforward to understand. The registered social landlord is there on the record, they are easy to contact, we fund them, and there is a mechanism in place. It is easy. In the private sector, it is very complicated indeed. I understand entirely that people might be working four jobs to keep their home, and I have every sympathy with that. I don't want them to lose their equity. But it is the equity that we're discussing, because we could just land charge it all and use that as the funding. I don't want to do that. I am trying to protect the hard-worked-for investment of the private sector leaseholders. But the idea that there's not a complexity, because it suits people to say so, is just nonsense. Each building is different. Each responsible person is different. Each managing agent is different. The leases are different. The repair obligations are different. Each building is different. There's no getting away from that, and that's the difference. [Interruption.] That's the difference.
You asked me specifically again about sections 116 to 125. Sections 116 to 125 are specifically written for the building safety regime in England, which is not the same as here. So, you can't just lift them up and put them down here, even if you wanted to. But just to be clear, I don't want to. Those sections limit the amount of money that the leaseholders are liable to pay. That means they are liable to pay some money. I have never ever wanted the leaseholders to be liable to pay anything at all. We have always taken the position here that residents in medium and high-rise buildings should not have to pay for these works. We are doing it differently here. I don't need to give those residents a right to sue somebody and get stuck in the courts. Your own evidence showed that they were spending millions on litigation. I don't want people to be in that position. We are substituting the Welsh Government into that position, so if the developer doesn't do what they're supposed to do, we will be the people who take the legal risk. I think that's better. I make absolutely no excuse for that. I have no intention of bringing in sections here that would give leaseholders fewer rights than we are intending to give them. The Welsh Government will take the risk, not the leaseholders. I just don't know how to make that any clearer to you.
On the orphan buildings, all the buildings that we have identified as orphan buildings that have put in an expression of interest will now be remediated, because we have a mechanism to do so. They'll all be written out to very shortly and will begin those works as soon as possible, certainly before this summer. So, they will all start to go into remediation, and I really hope that several of the other buildings will. I'm aware that several buildings are now in remediation. There are buildings in my own patch that are now in remediation that I'm in contact with the leaseholders of. So, very soon, people will be out of this situation. But, where they find themselves in difficulty, then there is a scheme where we will buy them out, and we are now buying people out. You need to publicise that. We will certainly put it on social media again. Actually, lots of people aren't on social media. It's on the websites and we write out through Rent Smart Wales to draw it to people's attention an so on. If you can help me get that out to people, then please do. Please tell them to apply if they're in those circumstances because we're very happy to help them.
I'm very happy with what we've been able to do here in Wales. It has taken far too long, I completely agree, but that's because, whether people like it or not, this has been an absolute nightmare of complexity. I think we've finally got somewhere. The only people who will now not be in the system are people who have not put in an expression of interest. So, please make sure that anyone you're talking to has checked that their building has put in an expression of interest. That's absolutely imperative; there's no route to payment without putting in an expression of interest. Then they will go through the system. If they're an orphan building, they'll get included, and if they're not then we'll contact the responsible people and get the surveys done and so on. We're reimbursing people for the cost of surveys that were undertaken before we came in, provided they meet our requirements, which are that we can rely on the survey, that it was properly tendered and so on, all the things you'd expect. I'm looking again to see if we can reimburse people for other costs that they've incurred. I'm not yet able to say so because it depends on how those costs were incurred and so on.
So, actually, Janet, I think we've done an all right job. I absolutely have sympathy for the people who have lived through this for years and years and years, but we have now got a system where they should be able to sell their house, because people can get a mortgage on it, or they can sell it to us if they're in financial hardship, or indeed they can sit tight and we will remediate the buildings very shortly. That's where we are, and I'm very pleased to say it.