I’m going to start with an analogy. A pretty piss poor one. If I offered you a job painting my fence, and promised to increase your supply of sandwiches by ten sandwiches, you’d probably expect me to give you ten sandwiches at the end of the painting. If I then gave you six sandwiches, and explained that ‘supply of’ meant that I’d create ten sandwiches and then sell four of them and only give you six, you’d be pretty annoyed.
Then, I’ll just attack you and steal the six sandwiches. That isn’t part of the analogy, that’s just because I like sandwiches.
So, as you can clearly see I’m talking about housing policy in Wales.
The One Wales agreement is very clear on housing. It says, in no uncertain terms that the Government will “ensure that the supply of affordable housing increases by at least 6,500 over the next four years”. I don’t think there is any room for manoeuvre within this. It has to mean that when the Government leaves office, there will be 6,500 more affordable homes than when it came in.
But pinning the Plaid Deputy Housing Minister, Jocelyn Davies AM, down on this has been difficult. She hasn’t confirmed or denied that this target means ‘6,500 more’ or ‘just build 6,500’.
But in a written answer to Peter Black, our Shadow Housing Minister, she has now confirmed that the very clear One Wales Government commitment doesn’t actually mean what we’d all thought it meant. What it instead means is that they will simply ‘build 6,500’ affordable homes, rather than increase supply.
In reality, this has one clear effect. The problem with affordable homes is that they are not just created, but also sometimes sold. While we have 92,000 households on housing waiting lists for social homes, properties are still being sold under the Right to Buy. The Minister has now confirmed that she will not be counting properties sold in this way, or demolished, in her figures.
The most recent figures from the Government suggest that they are well on course with their target, having achieved 4,235 of the properties required for their 6,500 target and that there are many more on the way in the next year. This would be great if this figure was actually in line with their promise.
But when you bear in mind that 1,900 affordable homes have either been sold under right to buy/acquire or demolished since the Government came to power, you realise that the ‘supply’ of affordable housing has only increased by 2,335. This means the Government has only achieved 1/3 of the target, with only a year to go.
There is frankly no hope of this target being met now. The Welsh Liberal Democrats have spent the last two years warning of this and suggesting ways in which the target may be met. But with only a year to go, and with such a mountain to climb, there isn’t much hope.
Had the original Housing LCO been passed, it may have been possible. But even with the new version due to pass today, it will be too late for these additional powers to have much impact by the 2011 election.
But what will be interesting is watching Plaid deal with this. We know what was meant by their commitment, they know what was meant by their commitment. Is that going to stop them claiming success and shouting it as a massive achievement?
No.
We will not have 6,500 new affordable homes when they leave office, nor will we have ten sandwiches. But Plaid will claim success, as the Minister is already doing, despite the fact they are already well aware of their failure.
Plaid will simply lie their way out of this hole. And that is pretty disgraceful.
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Well, I don’t know whether Peter is making much needed improvements on our English/E&W/Federal Housing policy whichever level it is, but you anology is fine – I wouldn’t give a pack of BR sandwiches for our housing policy…:-)
What did Peter do when he was in government..? Care to tell us?
Several things, such as creating a homebuy scheme to help people in rural areas gain access to affordable housing, as well as ensuring more money was provided for housing in Wales.
It was a slightly different situation then anyway. The Assembly had less powers, and no method of gaining any additional powers to create legislation. Those in government at that time had to work with the powers they had, which were clearly not the tools needed to do the job, hence the need for the Government of Wales Act.
The problem then was not quite as acute as it is now. Some areas even had a surplus of social housing and waiting lists were significantly lower.
Several things? That’s two things. And providing “more money” is a bit of a cop out. This “scheme” he started never exactly set the world alight did it? In fact iv’e barely even heard of it. Also, the Assembly may indeed have more powers than it did then. But it’s disingenous not to mention how incredibly difficult and time consuming and awkward it is to actually get hold of them.
I was not actually the Housing Minister of course but as it was a coalition I stand by my record. The homebuy scheme actually made a big difference and was very popular in areas like Gwynedd, Ceredigion and Clwyd (to use the old County names). The reason why you may not have heard of it is that it was scrapped in March 2007 and has only just been ressurected in a watered down form by the current Deputy Minister for Housing.
In addition to the extra money that was put into building new social housing the Lib Dem Labour administration also put in place the first National Housing Strategy, oversaw the introduction of supporting people, put in place a National Homelesness strategy and increased resources to it sevenfold and worked with Councils on local plans to deal with housing issues.
Of course 2000-2003 is not now and the situation we are dealing with currently is hardly comparable and it is disingenuous to suggest it was. You are right that the powers are difficult to get hold of but that does not hide the fact that more could be done now, particularly on empty properties or that the Welsh Government has set itself a target that it is going to miss by miles.