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Friday, December 10, 2010

Last Plenary of term - life expectancy and housing

The last Plenary of term on Wednesday gave the Welsh Liberal Democrats the opportunity to raise the fact that Wales is falling behind the rest of the UK in terms of life expectancey. As I pointed out in my summing up there are a whole range of factors behind this, including poorer health outcomes, child poverty, poor economic performance and the failure of the One Wales Government to deliver good educational outcomes. Here is the video of my summing up, complete with Christmas tie:



Earlier I challenged the Deputy Housing Minister on her claim to have met her targets on affordable housing. The One Wales Agreement talks about a net increase of 6,500, that is an actual increase in the supply. However, the Minister is relying on gross figures to make her case, which in my view is a misrepresentation of the outcome on her pledge.

She has also argued that houses sold under the Right to Buy should not be substracted from the figures, however this is directly contradicted by a report commissioned by her Government on Housing Need and Demand in Wales 2006 to 2026 which says on page four (and elsewhere):

In the non-market sector there is a need for additional dwellings to offset the reduction in the number of dwellings available for re-letting that results from past Right to Buy sales. This is because when a Right to Buy owner occupier household dies, the dwelling it occupied comes onto the market, but if it had remained in the social sector it would have been available for reletting. To allow for this, the number of ‘lost’ relets is added back into the estimate of housing need. When a Right to Buy owner occupier dies or moves and the dwelling is sold, it is part of the supply of dwellings to meet market sector demand and so works to reduce the demand for new private sector dwellings.

However, the Deputy Minister seemed unaware of this report:


# posted by Peter Black : 1:37 PM
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