5. Will the First Minister provide an update on the remedial works for properties adversely affected by the Arbed scheme in the Bridgend County Borough area? OQ61578

Welsh Government awarded £2.65 million of grant funding to Bridgend County Borough Council for remedial works on affected homes. My officials are due to meet with them early next month to review progress made on the mobilisation works on the affected properties.

Thank you for that response, Prif Weinidog.

This, of course, is an issue that has been ongoing for over a decade and has been across the desks of, now, four First Ministers. It's an unacceptable situation to be in. Not a day has passed this summer without a constituent contacting me over the lack of progress, the lack of clarity and the lack of transparency of this project, and the fight continues for many residents for a fair deal. When I raised this with your predecessor, he said that the Welsh Government would need to see if there is a future remedy for the individual home owners. Now, I'm glad that your officials are meeting with Bridgend county borough officials, but I want to also seek a commitment from you today to take this work forward and to see that residents are given the compensation and support they deserve. More importantly, in the here and now, residents deserve to see the issues caused by the scheme resolved as soon as possible and an end to false promises. The bottom line: my constituents are tired, they're fed up, and they deserve better.

Thanks very much, and I absolutely understand the frustration of your constituents. This was not a model of how we wanted this particular project to work. It's a mechanism of insulating external walls; 104 homes were affected. It was because of poor workmanship, and that is not acceptable. I think it's probably worth underlining that, as a Government, there's no formal or legal responsibility for us to correct the situation, but the fact is that we have come forward with £2.6 million to help Bridgend council in order to make sure that people can get that work corrected. So, I know that the work has already started and there are opportunities for people to work with the council to make sure that they get the corrections that they need to their homes.

First Minister, I hear you saying that you understand people in Caerau's frustration at what you call the poor workmanship that got us to this state, but do you understand people in Caerau's frustration about how we got to this state? So, the contract for this work was awarded by Bridgend County Borough Council, using Welsh Government money, to a company called Green Renewable Wales, a company that had a local Labour Caerau councillor and a BCBC cabinet member as its director. It's unclear the level of due diligence that had been carried out regarding the appropriateness of the appointment of this company, but the fact that it was dissolved back in 2017 has made recouping the money that you mentioned lost from Green Renewable Wales almost impossible. So, will the Welsh Government commit to a formal review of both what happened with the Arbed scheme in Caerau and how it was allowed to happen, so that something like this can never happen again?

I think there's recognition that this wasn't a model that we expected to see, and I think there has been real frustration. But I think we are in a situation now where, following negotiations, Bridgend council have agreed to contribute £0.8 million to repair 25 homes, and the Welsh Government, as I say, has suggested that we'll make a contribution of £2.6 million for the remaining 79 homes. We didn't have to do that, but we recognise the frustration of many people. I think what's important—you're quite right—is that we need to learn lessons from this proposal, and I know that my colleague the Deputy First Minister has been making sure that the lessons are being learnt.