Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Cabinet Office – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 19 June 2024.
Apologies if I wasn't clear in my original answer. I think there might have been something lost in translation there in the sense that the Welsh Government borrows and we always look to borrow the maximum amount, but we look to borrow towards our overall capital projects. So, we don't borrow for specific projects; we borrow to enable us to have a larger capital budget from which to draw on for the whole range of projects and initiatives that we support on the capital side of things. For that reason, for the last financial year, we borrowed the full £150 million. In the end, we only ended up borrowing £125 million due to year-end changes. And it's been the late changes to our capital budget that have enabled us to think differently about our approach to capital in recent years in any case. So, for the most recent years, I've been over-programming the Welsh Government's budget by £100 million because of those late year-end changes. And that did enable us in 2022-23 to borrow the full £150 million and, in 2023-24, £125 million. And that, as I say, was in response to the fact that we get, quite often, large amounts of capital at the end of the financial year, which makes borrowing something that we don't need to do in the end. So, we always plan to borrow the maximum; we don't borrow for specific projects.
But, that said, I absolutely recognise the importance of ensuring that the registered social landlords sector does have access to low-cost loans for development. And that's one of the reasons why we've used borrowing routes to support registered social landlords to deliver more homes. Last year, for example, we issued £62 million of low-cost loans to registered social landlords across Wales. So far, another £16 million is approved to issue in this financial year. And this loan funding across 2023-24 and 2024-25 will deliver 220 additional low-carbon homes for rent in the social sector and bring 22 voids back into use in this term of Government, as well as accelerating the delivery of seven new-build sites, delivering a minimum of 86 social rent homes in the next term of government. So, we always seek to borrow the absolute maximum and spend our capital to the best effect, but then, also, we look to innovative ways to support the sector as well.