Beyond bricks and mortar
After a busy first year as housing minister with a packed legislative agenda, Carl Sargeant tells Jules Birch about progress so far and his priorities for the future
Q So how have you found your first year?
A I feel I’ve grown into housing – change is challenging for everybody and it’s the same for me. The whole gambit of housing – or the home – was interesting. It wasn’t just about what I thought it was early on, the bricks and mortar side, and I’ve been encouraged by the diversity in the sector about what more than they can deliver other than just the house. So the 12 months has been a massive learning curve in the sector but I hope that they’ve grown to like me as much as I’ve grown to like them.
Q And some of your priorities are about going beyond the house too. Domestic abuse has been a big one.
A There are some things that are right and wrong in life. Personal safety is really important to me, the ability to feel safe whoever you are whatever you are. That’s what triggered me to the housing issue. The most important part of being a human being is having the ability to go home and feel safe. And actually when you look at the stats around domestic violence the home is the most dangerous place for you to be. While domestic violence policies rest with another minister, fundamentally, the home, the house, the industry is a huge influence on making people feel safe. So what is it that I can do in policy terms and with the sector to make that environment right for people? Two women lose their life every week in England and Wales because of domestic violence often perpetrated in the home. Morally there’s something we should do about this and I’m in a position to influence the change and I will.
Q There’s much more that can be done obviously.
A There’s loads more that we can do and loads more that we will do. The whole aspect of community and the home is a strong theme through the department, whether that’s through planning, regeneration or housing it goes right the way across there about how do we build safe communities. And all of this influence comes from me growing up. I’m really proud of where I grew up and my upbringing but I’ve got memories of community change that influenced my politics. I worked in a really heavy industry, Shotton steel works, and that closed overnight, with 13,000 redundancies in one day, and that changed my life. It was heartbreaking for the community and I saw lots of disruption across my friends, family and the way that the community operated and that changed my view of how communities should be. So it’s my time to make changes and I’m in a great position to do that.
Q Another of your big issues has been gender representation in housing, particularly on boards. Have people responded enough to that do you think?
A It won’t be complete until we have a 50:50 share. We’re back to that moral argument about the rights and wrongs of life. Everybody’s got something to offer and I just don’t get that we can’t even get the gender issue right let alone the whole diversity issue around boards. So I’m pushing really hard internally on my team. I don’t think it’s public knowledge but I’ve told all of my departments that I don’t expect to see any board being developed while I am leading this department that isn’t 50:50 based on gender balance. And I expect the sector to adopt that agenda too. If government is doing business with any part of the sector I would expect if we’ve got a financial relationship particularly that we adopt some of those policies. It’s about fairness.
Q And the third big priority: supply?
A It’s a massive challenge isn’t it? We’re 12 months in. I followed in the footsteps of Huw Lewis and other ministers who did a great job but I looked at our commitments and where we are with delivery. The ambition was good but when you look at the scale of demand they don’t meet up. They probably still don’t actually but we’ve increased the target.
Do we need to deliver more? Absolutely because there is a demand there but again I’m starting to think differently. It’s a challenge for me. If we were having this interview five, six, seven years ago the response might have been remarkably different. But at this place in time in terms of working with the private sector I think it’s fundamental that we start to have that discussion about the supply of homes, for the market and for me the priority affordable homes. It’s about delivering a suite of opportunity for people to get into the housing market whether that’s through ownership or through private rental or through affordable homes or through RSLs and local authorities.
They complement each other. We shouldn’t put people in boxes. It’s about choice. And doing things differently is something that over the last 12 months we’ve been working really hard on, building relationships up. I think a lot of policy works if you’ve got a good relationship. Of course there will always be disagreements but overall I think we’re in a pretty good place in Wales. One of our biggest critics has written to me today saying we’re doing a good job. I’m quite cheery about that.
Q The other thing that’s happened is increasing the affordable target to 10,000. Obviously one way to deliver more homes is to make the affordable homes less affordable. Can you square that circle do you think?
A I don’t think we have to do that. In terms of what our targets are we will achieve 10,000. We’ve got a pact with the CHC and we can deliver 10,000. To bring politics into this there is a fundamental difference between what’s happening in Wales and what’s happening in England on affordable homes. I believe affordable means affordable and not driven by markets like in England. I continue to work with my team to make sure that what we deliver with the sector is affordable units. We won’t stray away from that while I’m minister. But going back to what I said earlier on there is a case for asking what is the mix out there in terms of need and the ability for people to make choices. There are people out there without a home at all and it’s my responsibility what we’re going to do about that. So the Planning Bill, the Housing Bill, the Renting Homes Bill are all jigsaw-style pieces that fit around the home for us.
Q So I’m guessing five, six years ago, you would have said council housing
A Well that’s still really high on my agenda but would I have been talking to the private sector five or six years ago? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I’ve grown up in terms of my politics and opportunity. I’m not shy to say that.
Q But of course the Housing Bill and self-financing is one route back for council housing.
A It’s a huge opportunity. It’s no secret that I expect there to be a council house build programme in the future. I’ve always had the ambition and the politics to but the ability to deliver is something very different. We can now and I’m very confident that we will have a council house building programme in Wales and I’m very proud of that.
Q Which brings me on to the rest of the housing Bill. This issue is published in June when it will presumably be in its final stages but there are still some things up in the air in terms of amendments and outstanding issues. Is there anything you’ve changed your mind about?
A No. We’ve got some tweaks around technical amendments and there’s some drafting. This piece of legislation is a composite bill with lots of elements but actually there is lots of cross- party support so I’m relatively comfortable that we will have passage of the Bill without having to make any major changes. Of course there are always little tweaks.
Q There are some things that the committee recommended that are still on the table such as phasing in registration and taking letting agents first, homelessness and the period of the discharge.
A To be honest with you, none of them are die in the ditch stuff are they? They’re small elements of detail and the phasing approach is already in place actually. If there is evidence that we need to change that then I’m sympathetic. The discharge timing is all relative to what we think works and operates well and I’ll listen to the committee in terms of the evidence that they present but the reality is they’re very small elements. Are we going to ditch any of those proposals? Absolutely not. But we might change some of the timing issues. I would hope people recognise that’s good legislation, actually listening to what makes sense.
Q The Renting homes Bill is the big one to come. given what’s just been proposed by Labour in England on minimum three-year tenancies does it give you pause for thought about not having a minimum in Wales?
A It’s early stages for the Bill. We did lots of consultation and we’ve got the broad principle of what the Bill is. Again I’m really flexible in terms of the way that we start to interpret that in terms of legislation. I’m welcoming of Ed Miliband’s contribution in terms of the politics around tenancies and we need to give that some further thought in terms of how that may or may not operate in Wales. Remember we’ve got a devolved institution here in terms of making choices that are right for Wales and I think what we have to articulate what we think will fit and what is the need. Are there different pressures that apply to London and the South East to what applies to Caerphilly? We have got to think about what’s appropriate. This is about how we make laws that are right for Wales. The UK party has a view on what is right for England and we will have a view about what we do in Wales. But I’m not opposed to the principle of it.
Q Finally, turning to welfare reform, again there’s a UK issue with what’s happened in Scotland with the bedroom tax. should you be doing the same thing in terms of mitigating the bedroom tax in full? is that feasible?
A Is it feasible? No, the reality is that the consequentials settlement from the UK Government is much more favourable for Scotland than it is for Wales and that has consequences. We have £2 billion less in our budgets as a consequence of the UK government’s reduction in financing and therefore we have to make choices about what we do and what we don’t do. We have to try and protect our communities as best we possibly can.
In regards specifically to the bedroom tax, it’s something that pains me personally that we see people being moved from their properties on the basis of an ideological view of what is space and we see that it’s a false economy. We’ve received submissions from housing associations that moving people out of adapted properties has massive consequences and for what? Moving somebody from a three bed to a two bed or whatever. It’s a shallow attack. Let’s not forget, some people have lived in their homes for all of their lives and now they’re saying actually you’ve got to move because you’ve got a small bedroom in the back there that your grandchildren come and stay in. I think it’s fundamentally wrong.
If we had the money to do this would we mitigate it? Well I’d like to think we’d do that but the choices aren’t being made by politicians in Wales, the choices are being made by the UK government and I’m saying that whatever they decide has a direct consequence in Wales and in Scotland. It seems bizarre that they make a choice that has an impact that we have to try and mitigate when they’ve already taken the money off us. This isn’t about mitigation actually, the whole issue about the bedroom tax is just fundamentally wrong.
The UK government makes choices: you either agree within them or you don’t and I don’t agree with the bedroom tax. They clearly do but what they seem to fail to realise is the impact they’re having on a devolved nation that has a financial consequence but also a personal consequence. People are being displaced from their home and it’s not just about losing your home or moving home, this has huge impacts on the health and wellbeing of an individual and their family. I don’t think they realise the consequences and they’ve just got their eye on the pounds as opposed to their eye on the people.
Q Is there worse to come do you think?
A Absolutely. Some of the reports that have been commissioned by the UK government and others say that we are only 15-20 per cent into the welfare changes. The UK government can chase money all day long but that has huge consequences but I don’t believe the health and wellbeing of an individual is paramount in terms of their decisions about welfare reform. It’s about cash and that’s really sad.