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Next Welsh Labour government will deliver ‘at least’ 20,000 social homes, says housing minister
Welsh Labour will commit to delivering 20,000 social homes for rent if it is re-elected at the Senedd election next year, the Welsh housing minister has said.
Speaking at Community Housing Cymru’s (CHC) virtual annual conference, Julie James said: “What we’re going to see in the next Welsh Labour manifesto is a commitment to building at least 20,000 social homes for rent and an additional element for other housing.”
Ms James said she preferred to set “floors” over “targets”, adding that the government would build more than 20,000 social homes “if we can make it”.
The current Welsh Labour government has set a target of delivering 20,000 affordable homes by 2021.
In February this year, it pumped an extra £24m into affordable housing and insisted it was on track to meet its target.
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CHC recently called on all parties in Wales to commit £1.5bn to delivering 20,000 social homes over the length of the next Welsh parliament.
Speaking at the same panel, Adam Price, leader of Plaid Cymru, said his party would commit to delivering 10,000 “public housing homes” per year, which would equate to 50,000 over the parliamentary term.
Paul Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, said his party would commit to delivering 100,000 homes over the next ten years, of which 40,000 would be social housing.
On the topic of homelessness, Ms James said Welsh Labour would commit to “abolishing priority need and intentionality”.
Councils in Wales only have a duty to find housing for someone in priority need – for example, if they have children – who is not intentionally homeless because, for example, they have refused an offer of accommodation.
Mr Davies said the Welsh Conservatives would commit to ending rough sleeping by 2026, while Mr Price said Plaid Cymru would commit to ending rough sleeping within two years.
When asked about building regulations and the cladding crisis, Ms James said “One of the really sad things about the pandemic for me is that we’ve lost a lot of the legislation that we wanted to get through in this senate term.
“We just haven’t had the bandwidth to be able to do it by the deadline with COVID and Brexit as well.
“We will be putting a white paper out early in the new year and I’m pretty sure the other two will agree with the vast majority of the contents of that because I want to tee it up as something we can do whoever the government is after the next election. I’m pretty sure we’ll be taking this forward.”
In October, Ms James said the Welsh government was “actively exploring options” to protect leaseholders from the cost of fire remediation work, adding that the government was also considering what defects other than cladding that funding could cover.
The next Senedd election is due to take place in May.
