Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:25 pm on 21 March 2023.
Thanks very much for that series of questions. In terms of other buildings, do you mean buildings under 11m? Is that what you meant? Yes. We aren't doing anything about that at the moment, because we need to make sure that those in the higher risk buildings, who are the ones who would have most difficulty in escaping, for example, are remediated first. Once we've done that, we will turn our attention to the other buildings. But I will say that, as we go through this process with the developers, we have encouraged the developers and received good feedback from the developers that they will remediate all of their buildings, not just the ones that are over height. I can't say that it applies to houses, I must say, but buildings in multiple occupation, so blocks of sorts—we have had that discussion. But we will turn our attention to that next. Bite-size chunks is where we've gone. And it has been based on a risk analysis; we have to start somewhere.
All the developers that we are aware of who have developments in Wales have now signed up, or have indicated their intent to sign and are going through their internal processes in order to do it. We have, occasionally—there's one at the moment; I won't name them—come across ones that thought they didn't have any buildings in Wales, and, actually, we think we've now found one that should. But I'm pretty sure they will sign up, if we can establish that they're responsible for the building and it isn't an orphan building. It'll be one or the other. Either way, the people in the building will get the remediation they want. I haven't got anyone refusing to sign, so that's good. That's very good.
The big issue for us now will be the amount of supply chain and workforce that is necessary to get this to happen, and that's why we're very keen to work with them in terms of cash flow. That's the developer loans I've just introduced. I don't want them to not be able to do it because there's a cash-flow issue. And also in terms of supply-chain issues and workforce issues, we don't want them all competing with each other and driving the prices up and so on. So, I actually think the Government has a pretty pivotal role in making sure that there's a good supply of buildings coming forward. We know which ones need what doing to them now. The legal documentation does underpin that. I'm not going to go through all of the various bits of the legal documentation, but it's robust, there's a dispute mechanism, as you'd expect, and ultimately they will end up in the courts if they don't do as we ask. We've made that extremely clear and plain.
It's in these people's interests now, isn't it, to get this work done, because let's face it, their reputation is trashed. Actually, they're quite anxious to get their reputations back and for people not to say, 'My goodness, I'm not buying that' because it was built by whoever. That isn't a good place for them to be. They've all signed up to various codes of practice, they've signed up to the new homes ombudsman. They're anxious to get themselves back into a good business footing, and rightly so—they should be ashamed of how they got themselves into this situation. I'm not anticipating any real difficulty other than the supply chain and suitably skilled craftsperson issues. We will work with the developers to make sure we have that supply chain under way and that we have a pipeline of activity that allows people to take advantage of that in the right way, and that those are firms who have the skilled workforce necessary to put right the wrongs of the past, so that we can be sure that they now have done the remediation in the right way.
I'm quite pleased with where we've ended up. I'm very, very sorry that it's taken so long. We have actually been continuously working on it for years now—well, since the appalling events of Grenfell. The next piece, which you didn't ask me about, but which I'll say anyway, Dirprwy Lywydd, testing your patience, is that, obviously, we need to get the new Act in place that puts the obligations onto the right responsible people, so that we don't have this in the future.