The Housing Crisis

Speech by Peter Black delivered to Plenary on Thu 3rd Jul 2008

Peter Black: I propose the following amendments in the name of Kirsty Williams. Amendment 3: add as a new point at the end of the motion:

welcomes the affordable housing task and finish group's report and calls on the Welsh Assembly Government to put in place a measurable action plan on how it will deliver on the recommendations of the report.

Amendment 4: add as a new point at the end of the motion:

calls on the Welsh Assembly Government to report at the earliest possible opportunity on how they will monitor the number of new affordable properties built in Wales.

I will take up a point that Mark Isherwood referred to with regard to amendment 1, because, like him, I am slightly disappointed at the way in which this amendment has been phrased. Just because the housing crisis is caused by the credit crunch does not make it any less of a crisis. There is a crisis facing us, and we must recognise that. There has been a crisis for some time in Wales and no doubt that crisis will continue as long as the credit crunch continues, but it is not just the credit crunch that has caused that crisis. There have been issues with affordable housing for many years, in rural and urban Wales, and there is clearly a need for the Assembly Government to take action to deal with that.

I want this speech to be constructive and positive, therefore, to be fair, I will note that the Assembly Government has taken some action and that some things have been done, but much more needs to be done. We are coming to the end of the first year of the present Assembly Government, and it is a year during which it has put in place strategies, promises and working groups, but it now needs to start delivering on what it has promised. We need to start moving forward in terms of meeting the targets that the One Wales Government has set, and, in particular, that relating to the 6,500 new affordable homes, which have been promised as part of that 'One Wales' agreement.

The Deputy Minister will know of my scepticism about how we can measure whether or not those 6,500 homes have been built. According to figures from the Wales Audit Office, either 500 or 1,200 new social houses were built in the last year for which figures are available. It is impossible to determine exactly how many houses have been built under section 106, on which the Assembly Government is increasingly relying to meet the gap between what it can afford to provide and what needs to be provided.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have carried out our own survey of local authorities. We asked them how many houses they have built in the last five years under section 106, and the answer that came back to us was they had built around 1,800, but it may be slightly more than that because not every local authority has been able to supply figures. Therefore, we think that around 2,000 affordable homes under planning gain have been built in the last five years. That pace needs to be picked up if we are to get anywhere near the 6,500 homes mark.

The pace of social housing new build, built through the social housing grant or by local councils also needs to be picked up, because the number of houses being built are still being balanced out and, in many cases, overshadowed by the number of houses being sold through the right to buy and the number of houses that are being demolished because they are not fit for purpose or can no longer be used for the purposes that they were built for, because of the vagaries of demand.

There is no general gain in terms of the number of affordable housing in Wales at the moment. We are clearly way off the target in the first year of the four years that the Assembly Government has to meet the target. Therefore, we have a lot to do, and I hope that the Assembly Government is able to do it. I hope that the target can be achieved, but what we need, above everything else-and this is referred to in our first amendment-now that we have the Essex report, or the affordable housing task and finish group's report, as the Table Office made us call it, and the strategies are being into place, is the Assembly Government to put in place a measurable action plan. We need to have a means of holding the Assembly Government to account for exactly how many homes are being built-we are still waiting for the figures on that-and we can then start to determine exactly how it is doing in relation to the targets that it has set for itself. That is yet to come.

I accept, in terms of a measurable action plan, that that does not mean that every recommendation that Sue Essex has made has to be put in place, but we need to have some action quickly and we need to move forward on this quickly. If we do not do so, I fear that the crisis that we have now will continue, and that, even when the credit crunch comes to an end, we will not be in the position that we should be in and that we would be in if we had taken swift and decisive action to deal with it.

We need a can-do attitude from the Assembly Government but I also need some confidence that the Assembly Government' can do it.