12 June 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you, Cefin. Sorry for not having that sorted out fast enough and making you repeat yourself. I am aware of it, yes. It very much follows the pattern of 'Future Wales: The National Plan 2040', the spatial plan for Wales, where we've been very keen to…
12 June 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Sorry, I was on the wrong channel.
12 June 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
So, these are very much partnerships between the local authority and the Welsh Government, and it's the local authority that brings forward the ideas. So, we provide the placemaking grants. We provide them both regionally and to individual councils. For the…
12 June 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Depot—thank you; very good. And it's really clever the way they've done it and the whole development is absolutely buzzing. I don't know if you've been, but I had an extremely pleasant coffee in the coffee shop there while we talked it through with some of…
12 June 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Yes, thank you, Joyce, I very much agree with that. I've recently had the benefit of visiting both of those projects and they were absolutely great. The Llandeilo one is open. It's transformed what was the historic fire and rescue service, fire engine place—I…
12 June 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you for the question, Joyce. The focus of our Transforming Towns programme is the regeneration of our town centres, making them better places in which to live and work. Since 2020, we have awarded more than £49 million of grant and loan funding to…
5 June 2024 , Plenary
Debate on the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee Report, 'Annual scrutiny of the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales: 2023'
Yes. Thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd. I was simply saying that the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs and I are looking forward to receiving the report from NICW on flooding towards the end of this year, and we expect that their…
5 June 2024 , Plenary
Debate on the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee Report, 'Annual scrutiny of the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales: 2023'
Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd, and thank you very much for the opportunity to reply on behalf of the Welsh Government to this debate today to highlight the really important work of the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales. I really would like to thank the…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Coal tip and opencast mine remediation
So, one of the things we'll have to do is to make sure that the various regimes dovetail together, and it will be a matter for the committees in scrutiny to make sure that we've done that as well. So, an opencast mine that's operational is not a disused tip…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Coal tip and opencast mine remediation
I absolutely support the sentiments behind the motion that's in front of us today. The amendment we've tabled is a nuance, I think, about the forthcoming legislative programme because it's already scheduled and coming in the autumn. Otherwise, we'd have just…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Coal tip and opencast mine remediation
Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Can I thank Plaid Cymru for bringing forward this very important debate, and Members for their contributions today? Wales does have a proud mining heritage, but its legacy has undoubtedly left us with over 2,500 disused coal spoil tips…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Coal tip and opencast mine remediation
Formally.
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you for that, Janet. Landlords, agents and tenants, as well as their representative bodies, will soon be invited to engage with the evaluation. It is an evaluation of the current working of Rent Smart Wales. It isn’t a consultation about widening the…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you, Janet. I recently commissioned a full external evaluation of Rent Smart Wales's performance. That evaluation is under way and it's due to report later this year.
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Absolutely. Part of the designation process is to go through all of the pros and all of the cons, understand what those pros and cons are and take full account of the pros and cons, to see what can be done to overcome any cons, to see what can be done to…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Diolch, Llyr. The designation of a national park in north-east Wales is a programme for government commitment. We have asked NRW to undertake a programme, including detailed assessment, engagement and consultation. This will inform a final decision, expected…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
We're aware of the pet insurance clauses, for example, in the UK Government's Renters (Reform) Bill for England, so we will be considering whether there's something we can do there. I will just reiterate to you that a landlord cannot unreasonably withhold a…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you, Carolyn. Under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, landlords and contract holders can agree additional terms covering the keeping of pets. Any pet clause should allow a contract holder to ask for permission to keep a pet, and the landlord is not…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you very much, Vikki, for that. This is, clearly, a very difficult and distressing time for all of the residents affected on the Gower estate, and we can only imagine what they must be going through as a result of that. You do want to feel that your…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you for that question. The survey work undertaken to date indicates that the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC, in social housing stock in Wales is limited. It is important that all of the necessary survey work is completed so…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Yes, thank you very much, Joyce. There have been 660 valid applications for the scheme to date, with 246 approvals so far, and that was at the beginning of May. So, it's going very well indeed. Forty five properties have been completed with all category 1…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you, Joyce. The Welsh Government has a number of interventions and funding streams to reduce the number of empty homes in Wales. These include our empty homes grant scheme, which aims to bring up to 2,000 long-term empty properties back into use, and…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you, Hefin. That's a set of complicated things to look at there. In relation to third party certification, the building regulations are functional requirements and there may be a number of ways of proving compliance with them. Third party certification…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Thank you for the question. The Domestic Fire Safety (Wales) Measure 2011 has been implemented through the Building Regulations 2010. Data on the effectiveness of the legislation is not collected for building regulations purposes, but the fire and rescue…
8 May 2024 , Plenary
Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning
Service charges are very much part of the discussion that we have about affordability. 'What is included in your rent, what is additional to your rent?' is one of the conversations we have. As part of the agreement on rent with our social landlords in Wales…
