Carl Sargeant moved from the local government portfolio to become housing and regeneration
minister in the Cabinet reshuffle in March. A month into his new job, he took time out to tell Jules
Birch about his background and his priorities.
Q – Can you tell WHQ readers a bit
about yourself and why you
got involved in politics?
A – I worked for a chemical company,
then trained as an industrial
firefighter. Before coming to the
Assembly I was elected to Connah’s Quay
town and community council locally and
learnt an awful lot about communities. I
was brought up in Flintshire in North Wales.
I still live just round the corner from where I
grew up on a council estate.
I suppose the fire in my belly element
– very topical at the moment – came from
the 80s when the steelworks and the other
heavy industries closed in my community.
Everybody I knew, family, friends,
neighbours either worked in the steelworks
or Courtaulds, the textile manufacturers. The
three textile mills and the steelworks were
either closed or significantly reduced and we
had the largest redundancy announcement
in Europe. Over 10,000 people received
their redundancy notice on one day.
That had a massive effect on my
community and I remember a huge change.
I suppose that was the silent politics in
me really. I had a great upbringing with
my family and became a responsible adult
and got a wife and had my daughter
back in 1990 and at that point I realised
that I personally had a part to play in the
community as well. That’s why I joined my
local council because when my daughter
was born the swings in the park that I used
to play on were not in good order. I went to
see the local councillor and said ‘it’s terrible,
there’s glass and paint everywhere’ and he
said ‘it’s hard this Carl, every time we brush
it up or paint it the next day it comes back’.
And I said ‘we’ve just got to keep going at
this, we’ve just got to get more paint and
bigger brushes’. He laughed and he said if
you fancy a go it at why don’t you give it a
go and I joined the local council.
Then the opportunity came to stand
for the Welsh Assembly and I put my
name forward. I just did town and
community council, so it was a massive
leap, life-changing in terms of going from
four on four off, 12-hour shifts, firefighter
by day and night, and DJ when I was
off, and into the world of politics full
time, moving from my council house in
Flintshire to Cardiff Bay.
Q – Are there lessons from
your previous job as local
government minister that
you’re taking into housing and
regeneration?
A – Yes, relationships are critical. When
you’ve got difficult decisions to
make or challenges that you face,
you’ve got to have friends as well. You
can tell people till you’re blue in the face
you must do this, you must do that, but actually local government was starting to
understand that I wasn’t just a minister that
moaned, I had a purpose, we were under
increased financial pressure and so would
they be and so we had to adapt the way
we did business. We did some really brave
things in local government: we removed
the Boundary Commission, which was a
huge risk to us, we removed all function
from Anglesey council, the first time ever in
the UK, and they’ve all come good.
Q – Is there anything that’s
surprised you about your new
portfolio in your first few
weeks?
A – Not surprised. When I got my head
round the fact that I wasn’t the local
government minister and I’d moved
into another portfolio I was really excited
about it. Local government was very broad
brush in terms of what you could achieve.
With this now we’re getting really into the
operational element of local government
that has a massive impact on communities,
which is what I’m really passionate about.
That’s the bit I like, it’s about how we
in government can affect for the better
the way communities operate. Whether
it be health and wellbeing or economics,
I think housing plays a fundamental part
because if we get that wrong we break
communities. And that’s why with the
opportunity for me with housing – and
planning because we can make housing
opportunities better through a sleaker
planning system – I think we can make a
real difference.
Q – You had a phrase in your
first speech: ‘Decent homes
for decent people in decent
communities’. What did you mean by
that?
A – I think real people don’t aspire to
want much providing you can give
them somewhere that they feel
warm and safe in, a nice home that they feel
they can go back to of an evening. You need
something around you that makes you feel
ok. We’re now seeing changes to the welfare
reform system that potentially have a risk
to destabilise their whole situation. There
can’t be many things in life that are more
threatening than the risk you’re going to lose
your home. What abut the children? What
about grandad? I think that must be horrific
for people to have that real angst that this
actually could become reality.
It’s not big and beautiful is it, but a
decent home in a decent community for
decent people. That sums it up really,
people respecting their community, having
somewhere they can feel safe about and
being part of that broader community.
Q – Are there particular issues that
you think you’re going to bring
more into the foreground?
A – There are lots of things that are
pressures within the new portfolio.
We can’t hide from the fact that this
year alone we’re having significant in-year
revenue cuts. That has to have an impact
across public services. Taking into account
that we are under significant financial
pressures, we have to look at opportunities
about how we stimulate housebuilding and
creation of decent homes. I have challenged
the team across planning, regeneration
and housing to come up with a common
theme and how we can develop that across
housing. So we’re looking at what we do
with Vibrant and Viable Places, what we’re
doing about the Planning Bill, the Housing
Bill, the Renting Homes Bill and how we can
make sure that what we put into legislation
takes into account the other areas of the
portfolio. But predominantly how do we
protect and enhance housing provision and
housing supply bearing in mind where we
are financially?
Q – There’s a problem throughout
the UK with how you can fund
social housing as opposed to
intermediate or affordable housing,
Is there anything more you can do on
that?
A – I think there is. We have to realise
that this is derived from decisions
by the UK government. On that
basis it’s either a do nothing approach or
do something else. I’m not one for sitting
back and doing nothing and just accepting
that with less money we can invest less.
If we think about what money is available
from RSLs or the private sector invested
into public sector housing, then there are
some huge challenges but there are huge
opportunities too and I’m really keen
that we move on this. The problem with
housing is that when we start talking about
it it’s usually three or four years before
delivery. We don’t have the time for that,
we need a bit of brevity in the system and
that’s why the legislative processes we’re
bringing in within the Welsh Government
will align planning and housing to see
what they both can do to accelerate new
opportunities for the sector.
When we look at the scale of the problem
around welfare reform, we’ve got 400
single properties I think in Wales available for
people, we know there’s going to be many
more displaced because of the issue around
the bedroom tax. The UK government may
want to do these things but they should give
a transition time. That hasn’t happened and
we will see more people who are homeless,
we will see more people who are suffering
from domestic abuse and violence around
the home and substance and alcohol misuse,
all as a consequence of changes to their
financial situation that the UK have brought
on us. And what can we do? One element
is looking at what resources are available to
make sure that we can start investing longer
term in accommodation suitable to the policy
agenda of the day from the UK government.
Q – The Welsh Government has
done things like delaying the
council tax cut and providing
more funding for advice and more
consequentials. Is there more you
could be doing?
A – We will continue to do that. It’s
debateable about whether it’s £1.7
or £2.1 billion reduction in the block
grant to Wales over the three years and
that has a consequence in terms of public
service delivery, That money hasn’t come
to Wales and then on top of that we’re
seeing changes to the benefit system.
It is 1) unreasonable and 2) impossible
to ask for a devolved administration to
then backfill a gap that actually was a
non-devolved function in the first place.
We’ve done it on council tax because we
were able to find some end year flexibility
and we knew that to mitigate this issue
we’d have to do something pretty bold.
But there’s not £20 million in every
cupboard drawer and we are still trying to
understand what effect the bedroom tax
and the universal credit will have on our
communities.
I saw this back in the 80s and that’s
why I have a burning passion. I remember
when I was an 11-year-old lad looking out
of the window watching my neighbour,
a father of a son that I used to play with,
beating his wife up in the street. He was
heavily influenced by alcohol, he’d lost
his job in the steelworks eight months
before but that’s just what happened and
that’s why I’m really passionate because communities changed then. Nobody was
working and either everybody was very
rich and had bought their home under the
right to buy scheme or they had gone to
the pub and spent 22 hours a day drunk
and fighting and that community was
broken. So I don’t say it lightly that when
you start to change communities – and we
are doing this with welfare reform – we
will see an increase in alcohol abuse, we
will see an increase in domestic violence
and we as a devolved government have to
deal with the consequences of that.
Q – On legislation, you have two
Housing Bills and a Planning
Bill to handle. How are you
going to cope with that?
A – Easy!
Q – It’s a good job that you were
in the whips office before I’m
guessing?
A – I’m really confident that we’ll be
fine on these Bills. There’s some
really important things in there that
we can gain support for from some of the
opposition members. What we’re trying
to do is do sensible things for the right
reasons and protect the most vulnerable
in our communities and give opportunity
where it didn’t lie before.
I have a little bit of experience about taking
legislation through. I took the first Bill through
the Welsh Assembly and that was challenged
by the UK government but we won that.
That’s not being complacent but I like a
challenge and I think we can deliver on it.
Q – Longer term, if we’re ever out
from under welfare reform and
austerity, what’s your vision?
A – I think we’ve got to deal with what
we’ve got at the moment and get
through this process of welfare
reform. A wishlist more I suppose? I’d really
like to be in the position supported by
Treasury to have a national public sectorled
housing scheme across Wales that aids
the economy in terms of building skills
but also tackles the issue of ensuring that
we’ve got a good supply of decent homes
for decent people in our communities. I
suppose it goes back to my starting point,
decent homes for decent people, in decent
communities and how do we get to there.
I think there are things we can do in the
middle, things that we’re exploring around
financial models, but if finance wasn’t
the problem, if Treasury rules weren’t the
problem, what I would aspire to do is to
have an opportunity to have more quality
built homes for the people in Wales.
Q – Finally something more
personal, you’re a DJ, when
you get the time?
A – I was. For me as a person I’m
actually pretty normal despite
people seeing politicians as
someone different. I enjoy a pint, I love
karaoke, I love enjoying myself and
this all goes back to community and if
you feel part of your local community.
I’d like to think I haven’t changed that
much, although people wlll probably
disagree, but it’s actually not about
being somebody you’re not but being
somebody you’re comfortable with.
When I used to do my four on, four off
shifts on my days off I used to do DJing
because I needed to pay for the pebble
dashes on the front of my new home
that I’d bought, which had just been
repossessed. And that’s really normal,
that’s just what people do. So I’m really
comfortable with that.