Because there wasn’t a Housing Supply Crisis when the Conservative UK Government ended in 1997, Labour’s Focus Groups told them that housing was a low priority and they cynically slashed funding for social housing from 1997, setting in train the housing supply crisis that was to follow.
Labour Welsh Government went even further from 1999.
Having previously worked in the sector for over two decades, I know that the housing supply crisis in Wales goes back to this period and is the direct responsibility of policy-led decisions taken by Labour and Labour-led Welsh Governments from 1999.
Wales is still reaping what they sowed.
It’s easy to cynically scapegoat the Right To Buy Scheme, so let’s look at the facts.
40 years ago, Conservatives delivered 7,932 new dwellings in Wales, including 2,213 new Social Homes.
30 years ago, Conservatives delivered 9,871 new dwellings in Wales, including 3,217 new Social Homes.
In the last year that Conservatives were responsible for housing in Wales, 1996-97 we delivered 10,088 new dwellings were delivered, including 2,571 new Social Homes.
In the first year of Labour Welsh Government, just 846 new Social Homes were completed.
20 years ago this fell to 433 and 10 years ago was just 683.
In the last year that full figures are available, they delivered just 5,785 new dwellings, including just 1,203 new Social Homes, only 47% of the figure inherited from Conservatives - and the total number of new homes approved in Wales in the year to last September was down a further 29% on the previous year.
In 2019 the Welsh Government estimated that over 7,000 new homes were needed annually to meet both social and market housing needs, but by last year they were already almost 8,000 down on this figure.
Further, 7,000 new homes is an insulting joke, when the Holman report, and reports from the house building industry, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Bevan Foundation, and the Federation of Master Builders, all said that we needed between 12,000 and 15,000 houses a year, including 5,000 social homes, which this supposedly caring, supposedly socially just Welsh Government ignored.
It was the second Assembly when the housing sector came together to start warning the Welsh Government there would be a housing crisis if they didn’t listen.
All the Welsh Government did when I brought forward motions supporting the sector’s warnings was put down amendments to remove the words ‘housing crisis’, insultingly dismissing the warnings from the sector.
Labour’s housing betrayal is the greatest social injustice they have inflicted on the people of Wales.
I commend our motion
