Building Social Housing

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Cabinet Office – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 19 June 2024.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Gareth Davies Gareth Davies Conservative 1:34, 19 June 2024

The housing crisis is one of the biggest challenges we face as a nation, and every year that passes without drastic action is another year of homes becoming more unaffordable and more unavailable, unfortunately. And whilst I agree that urgent action is needed to rapidly accelerate the construction of social housing and private housing too for those on middle and low incomes, I do not think that leaving more debt to our children is the way we deal with the shortage of housing we have right now. The Welsh Conservatives put our housing plan before the Senedd in February, which covered many bases, such as measures to speed up planning approval and to make the use of more than 100,000 vacant, unoccupied dwellings in Wales, including numerous unused public-owned properties and public-owned land. The Welsh Government should consider a support scheme to enable small and medium-sized enterprises to build social housing, whilst providing public-owned land for this purpose. This is something that has been championed by my esteemed colleague Janet Finch-Saunders, the Member of the Senedd for Aberconwy. In the late 1980s, SMEs were responsible for 40 per cent of all homes built in Britain, but recent figures from 2020 are closer to 10 per cent. So, could the Cabinet Secretary outline what financial support the Welsh Government is offering to small and medium-sized house builders for the purpose of building more social housing? Thank you.