North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has criticised the Welsh Government for its “unambitious target” for tackling the affordable housing crisis in Wales.
Mr Isherwood made the comments when responding in the Assembly Chamber to this week’s Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government on the Draft Budget.
He referred to a report from the Chief Economist for Wales about ‘future public finances and our economic prospects’ which says that home building has important longer-run economic effects and Wales has not been building enough new homes.
Speaking in the Chamber, Mr Isherwood said:
“It also says Wales has seen rapid growth in housing costs over recent decades and evidence suggests a low supply responsiveness, i.e. not building enough - is a large part of the problem, applying to both private sector and housing associations.
“During the first three Assembly terms, the number of new social homes provided in Wales fell by 71 per cent as waiting lists multiplied. By 2009-10, Welsh Government had the lowest proportional level of housing expenditure of any of the four UK nations. By 2012, the ‘UK Housing Review’ said it was the Welsh Government itself that gave housing lower priority in its overall budget. In 2013, Wales was the only part of the UK to see house building go backwards and it’s continued to lag behind since.
“The Welsh Government has an unambitious target to build 20,000, affordable houses, averaging just 4,000 homes annually during this Assembly term, which of course doesn’t mean social houses, it just includes a small element of social housing. Successive reports by independent bodies have said we need between 12,000 and 15,000 new homes annually in Wales if we are to break the housing crisis, which didn’t exist in 1999. So, what consideration has the Cabinet Secretary given to how to break that housing crisis with a new housing deal for Wales that engages the whole sector?”
Mr Isherwood also asked the Cabinet Secretary to respond to the statement at the launch of the Co-production Network for Wales last May, May 2016, by Monmouthshire’s Director of Social Services, who said, ‘We used to tell people what they can have. We now ask them what they want to achieve’.
He said: “I don’t believe that the budget allocations reflect the need to tackle a situation in which people and communities can feel passive recipients of services rather than active agents in their own families’ lives.”
ENDS