Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

Bore da. My name's Osian Jones, I'm the empty homes officer for the Isle of Anglesey County Council.

Thank you very much. Rhian.

Hello, my name is Rhian Brown, I'm the housing delivery lead at Newport City Council.

Thank you. James.

Good morning. My name's James Bolton. I'm the empty homes development officer for Flintshire County Council.

Thank you. And finally, Jamie.

Hi, good morning. My name's Jamie Wagenaar, I'm the empty property officer for Caerphilly County Borough Council.

Thank you. So, welcome everyone. I'm now going to ask the members of the committee to put some questions to you. So, here we go. Just for the record, I know that some people didn't get to ask a question in the previous frame, so if you'd like to put your hands up. If you've not already indicated that you have a question, put your hands up and we will endeavour to get to you. Is that okay? Thank you. So, it's pretty much going to follow the same format again. So, Marc, is there anything you want to ask around the data area?

Well, yes, but we're asking a different group of people this time, so I will ask about whether you think the 22,500 figure that we're looking at is an accurate figure according to your expertise, because you're the front-line staff, and whether the Welsh Government is doing enough to ensure that the data is correct, which enables you as front-line officers to deal with that.

Yes, the data surrounding empty properties can vary. What we identify sometimes is that definitions of empty properties can distort the figures. We work towards getting long-term empty property back into use. What sometimes can be included are properties that are in receipt of exemptions, which are still empty and vacant, but are not the target priorities for local authorities, such as properties that are going through probate, or where there are people in residential care homes or receiving care elsewhere. Whilst they are still empty, they may not be our priorities.

We also have definitions surrounding empty properties that include what are classed as second homes as well. So, the definitions can be confused in some senses: a long-term empty property is an empty property that is empty and unfurnished, whereas a second home is an empty property but is furnished. So, that can essentially distort figures as well, and our priorities lie with getting long-term empty properties back into use.

What we often come across as well is that not all properties are accounted for. The previous panel touched on it. Properties that are taken off the rating system are the most difficult properties to deal with, and they are not made available to empty property officers. That information is not available to us, which makes it difficult for us to establish which are empty properties and which ones we prioritise.

Okay, thank you.

I think it's just important to note as well how we measure performance in the empty properties, because it does impact on the overall data collection. So, we measure the number of properties that are brought back into use, but that doesn't measure the amount of work that goes into each of those properties that comes back into occupation, and I think that has an impact on the data. I believe our colleague, who's come in on Zoom, Jamie, has done some preparation work around the data collection as well, so you may want to revert to him for some more information.

Okay. Rebeca, did you want to ask any questions around that?

Yes, thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, all, for coming today.

Just regarding the data, many organisations have noted the over-reliance on council tax records for the data. Do you have thoughts on any other data sources that would be useful on residential or commercial empty properties? Diolch.

Does anyone want to answer that one?

Hi. I think I'll answer that one, thank you.

Thank you, Jamie.

I think Osian did touch mainly on the point around properties that have been taken out of valuation. We don't have information on these figures. These properties are not being charged council tax or a council tax premium either, which sort of gives a get-out-of-jail-free card for empty property owners who don't wish to return their property to beneficial use, engage with the council or predominantly pay the penalty for having an empty property. So, I think having that data and having it accessible to empty property officers would certainly be beneficial and welcomed.

Okay. Has anybody else got anything? No. So, the strategic approach. Mike, did you want to take the lead on this?

We had the carrot of grant money, didn't we, for people who wanted to do work on a house to bring it back into use. We had the stick of having higher rates of council tax able to be charged. And then we had the big stick of compulsory purchase orders. Have the first two worked and have any of you ever used a compulsory purchase order?

Yes, I've actually just completed our first compulsory purchase order under our empty homes strategy in Bridgend. That process completed this month, at the beginning of September. I will say that it wasn't a decision that we took lightly. It was an absolute last resort. And whilst we're very pleased to have completed that process, it's not without its challenges. It was certainly a very lengthy process, taking two years to get to completion. And that is just to take possession of the property. We now have to sell that property and allow sufficient time for that property to become renovated so that it can be lived in. So, we're looking at another 18 months to two years to get to that stage. It's been an extremely lengthy process. It's very heavy on procedure. There are lots of notices and lots of methods of service. It's very, very time and resource intensive. So, being a part-time officer, it's very much taken me away from all of the other work because I've needed to dedicate my time to doing that. It's not something that we would relish the thought of doing again, if I'm totally honest, unless the needs are absolutely there.

Like I say, we have done it; we're pleased to have done it. There have been many challenges, and I think anything that can be done to streamline that process, make it easier, quicker and more cost-effective to reduce the risk to local authorities, we would welcome, to enable us to take more. I think the easier it is to get through the process, the more local authorities will use that power. Financially, it's been very costly to the local authority, and it's reducing those risks to the authority to enable us to pursue it.

I did mention the two previous things of the carrot of, 'You can have grant funding for renovation', and the stick of, 'You've got to pay additional council tax, if you don't bring it back into use.' Have those worked at all? Somebody else can answer, if you like.

Yes, with the national empty homes grants scheme, I think it has been successful in Anglesey. We've had a lot of good outcomes from offering this scheme, whether they have proceeded with the grant or, initially, just getting those discussions and dialogue in place. So, I think it has been worthwhile.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

Sorry, could I add to that? Apologies.

Of course.

In terms of the empty homes grant, we've been very, very successful in Caerphilly in the administration of it. One thing I would find as a barrier, which is touched upon in many of our other groups, is surrounding second homes. So, second homes are, obviously, predominantly very problematic, particularly in our borough. What we do find is, because a stipulation of the grant is that the property is unfurnished for 12 months and empty for 12 months—. What we find is that many properties that are either second homes or deceased estates, because these properties are furnished and, in many cases, furniture is removed at the very last minute at the point of sale, these properties are then purchased but are unable to access that funding through the empty homes grant service, which means that, obviously, support isn't available for that person who's actually bought a problematic empty property. And due to the cost-of-living crisis, with materials and labour actually increasing, that £25,000 now, which five years ago may have been sufficient, we're finding is not enough to bring these most problematic empty properties back into beneficial use.

Thank you, Jamie. Yes, Georgina.

Sorry, may I add to that? Just in terms of funding, I think there's uncertainty in terms of how long the funding will last for. With the empty homes grant and, particularly, Leasing Scheme Wales, both of which we've found beneficial in shared regulatory services, in particular in Bridgend, we're at this point now with Leasing Scheme Wales where we're having to turn properties away, because the certainty as to whether there's future funding is unknown. So, I think that anything that can be done to ensure we've got sustainability, I guess, with funding would be really welcomed, because, without the tools like funding, it makes our jobs really difficult to get properties back into use.

Just to touch on the enforcement fund as well, if I may, a lot of our enforcement work that we've done would not have been possible without accessing that enforcement fund. We've made four applications to the sum of £450,000, so it's made a massive impact in enabling us to deal with our worst properties across the borough.

Okay, thank you. David, did you want to ask a question?

Yes. I'm glad to hear the answer there just now. I was going to ask about the £25,000, and whether you think it's sufficient now, because it has gone on, but you've answered that. Out of the 18 of the 22 authorities that opted into the grant, I wonder whether any of you here on the panel didn’t opt into the empty homes grant. There are four authorities, so are there any of you here that didn’t opt into that grant?

I believe Cardiff may have been one of those authorities, but I've been informed recently that that may have changed now. So, I don't know if they are one of the four, but, in terms of the Vale and Bridgend, we are very much using those grants.

I was hoping one of them didn't opt in, because I wanted to know why they didn't opt in. So, that's the question.

Sure, okay. Any other questions in this area? Marc.

Yes, to go on from Mike's point in terms of the stick, it serves two purposes—obviously, to bring a problematic long-term empty property back into use, but is it also a deterrent to others, if people in the borough know, ‘Oh, they will go down that route in extremis’? Have you found that that has, perhaps, helped other people to come to the table?

I definitely think it can act as a deterrent. Just sometimes the threat of taking enforcement action is enough to get the owner to engage, and then you can go down all of the routes of offering support. You will always get those owners who won't do anything, and that's when you end up in your enforced sales and your compulsory purchase orders, so I definitely think it's a deterrent.

What we've also found is, recently, across SRS, we've implemented a better communications strategy, so we're now promoting the work that we do. So, any enforcement action that we take, we're promoting that via social media and we're getting people engaging with us then, because they can see, actually, what the end point is. So, I do think it is a very positive thing, but it's key to promote the work that we're doing to show people that we are actually going to do it.

Yes, thank you.

Can I chip in there? Is that possible?

Of course.

In Flintshire, we've actually undertaken four enforced sales, where we’ve taken four properties, done works in default, registered the charge, taken it to auction and sold the property. Three of them are back in use and one only got sold last week—sorry, last month. So, we've actually been very successful with the enforced sales, with the assistance of Andrew Lavender, and we do share that information with other empty property owners and say, you know, ‘If you do not look at bringing your property back into use, this is what will happen.' And it's becoming quite successful.

Thank you.

Can I pick up on that? Thanks for that example, because that was exactly what I wanted to ask about as well. Do you feel you're getting sufficient support from the Welsh Government to do that work? I know, as a Wrexham councillor in a previous life, Andrew Lavender spoke to councillors and was very inspiring and helpful, but has that followed through for front-line officers?

We have to bring in—. Because we're very reliant on our loan scheme, the empty housing to homes loan scheme, our legal team focus on that, so we can't ask them to prioritise more time doing enforced sales. We have to bring in external legal assistance to oversee the enforced sales. That money obviously gets repaid from the sale of the property, so it doesn't come out of the council budget, but we could do with, maybe, the usual—clerking officer time, and maybe assistance with more and more admin time, legal time. A bit more assistance, and we could probably do more each year.

Thanks.

We've found that the enforcement training was invaluable, both for officers and for our members, and I think it’s keeping that refreshment of training and also that expertise when it comes to the enforcement, enforced sales and CPOs. But the enforcement training and that support in terms of legal were fantastic.

Thank you, Rhian, and I'm sorry that I didn't notice your hand up when you had it up earlier, so apologies for that—that's my fault. Does anyone have any questions around local authority capacity? I know, Marc, you'd asked a question earlier. Anyone else? Francesca.

Thank you. I find this really interesting. Like Marc, in a previous life I was a councillor, and I was chair of a scrutiny working group looking at empty properties, so I do appreciate the challenges that councils do face and I'm sure that's going to impact next year with financial decisions as well. You mentioned, Georgina, that things could be made easier in terms of streamlining. I appreciate there's no silver bullet—if only there were, it would make life a lot easier. However, is there anything that really jumps to the forefront of your mind that would have made, let's say, the compulsory purchase a little bit easier, or is there anything that, day to day, would make life a little bit easier? What I don't want us to do is have a top-down approach. I’m all for regulations. However, before we start thinking of that, I would look at, maybe, sometimes, the red tape and bureaucratic processes that we might have at local government level so that we can make your life a lot easier to execute your work properly.

In terms of the CPO, it was very paperwork heavy, so, lots of stages throughout the process and lots of documents that needed to be served—you're talking bundles at times—so, I think cutting down on the number of steps in the process would be useful.

I think there are also challenges with certain types of enforcement measures, which I think they touched on in the first session. We often rely on planning legislation to deal with particular problems with properties, but then we can't do the work in default because we may not get our money back, because the charge isn't a priority. So, I think ironing out those sorts of issues would really make things easier for us. I don't know if anyone else has got anything to add to that.

If I may add regional training—we often, in north Wales, meet up as local empty homes officers, I think twice a year, where we come together, discuss the issues, discuss certain cases. And we discussed recently arranging a regional meeting for all empty property officers, conducted by Andrew Lavender, or a similar organisation, but we are arranging that ourselves. So, maybe a national approach would be worthwhile.

I think the input of the industry expert as well has been really beneficial, and continuing with that would be useful—somebody that's got the expertise across the board. We've had lots of conversations with the industry expert throughout the processes that we've taken and it's been invaluable, if I'm honest. And I think legal support is where we really do struggle, either because local authorities don't have the knowledge or the expertise internally, but mainly because of resources and staff, and we've had to buy out our legal services.

Thank you.

Anyone else got any questions in this area?

Just to follow on from that, that pooling of expertise sounds very simple, and, I would imagine, very useful, because if you're working on your own in a council as an EPO, you've got no one to bounce off. So, in practice—. Obviously north Wales is doing it, do we assume that the rest of Wales is doing it as well, or is it ad hoc? Couldn't Welsh Government do this on a more strategic level?

Yes, certainly. There are empty homes conferences in England, which invite specialty speakers. So, they've had Ministers from Jersey, from Scotland, coming down to speak at these conferences. A Wales approach would be as beneficial, to get empty property officers together to discuss further.

That should be a recommendation.

Absolutely.

Can I add to that? So, in the south-east Wales area we do have a working group where empty homes officers, environmental health officers, do come together on, I think, a quarterly basis. So, we will discuss best practice, problematic cases and just get a feel for what others' views are on how we should maybe approach certain properties. We discuss things like performance and performance indicators, guidance et cetera. So, we have got that regional group. If we had an industry expert that could maybe tap into that, like Osian has said, then I think that would be beneficial.

Okay, thank you. Funding. Marc, I know you're down to lead on this.

Yes. In terms of funding, there's a big pot of money in terms of the empty homes grant, but only 10 per cent, is it, has been accessed. Would you consider that to be a failure?

Well—.

It's a bit of a leading question. But I'm curious, because it's not often that there are pots of money in local government these days, and the fact that 90 per cent of it is unallocated suggests there's a problem, and whether that's a lack of EPOs, lack of engagement with landlords—. How can we spend that money?

The structure of the scheme—. It is in place on a national level. We appreciate the reasoning behind it, for consistency throughout. But if you look at the statistics in terms of how many enquiries there have been for the scheme, it's a relatively large number in comparison with what's been approved. I believe someone touched on it earlier, whereby the eligibility has been an issue. So, as per the eligibility criteria for the scheme, properties have to remain empty and unfurnished for a period of 12 months or more. So, each local authority will have different statistics on that, but lots of properties have been excluded.

The target audience, I believe, was to approach people who are in ownership of properties to get them to work on their properties and bring them back into use. But what we've found, especially in my area, is that a lot of people purchasing the properties have enquired about the scheme and, of course, they're not in control, or they're unaware of the status of the property. The owners may not have adequately informed the council of what the status of the property is, which has led to a lot of cases being declined. But if you look at the amount of people who have enquired about the scheme and applied initially, it gives you a good indication that there is interest there.

How many apply? What's the percentage of people who apply and actually go through with it?

I don't have the statistics in front of me, but where we could, we could make them available.

Marc, Jennie can get us that.

Yes, there we are. Diolch.

Great, thank you. James, you've got your hand up.

Yes, thank you. Back with funding, for the empty homes grant, unfortunately, in Flintshire, we have had next to no interest. So, I think it is area to area. However, the empty homes loan scheme, which is the Houses into Homes loan, has been very successful. In Flintshire, we had 110 applications, we've given out £3.8 million of the scheme, it's created 140 self-contained units. It's been very successful, while the empty homes grant hasn't. So, I think it is going to be area to area, different loan schemes or different grants, types of funding, need to be available to the authorities.

My concern is that, obviously, the empty homes loan is a fantastic tool in our toolbox, but it is coming to an end in 2030. So, something similar needs to replace it. If, in Flintshire, the grant's not working or it hasn't taken off, then ideally we would like to continue with the loan scheme. Because I'd say that, in the last six months, I've had about £0.5 million-worth of requests, which I've had to decline because they're not getting the five years interest free. So, it's something that we need to consider.

Thank you. Georgina, can I just bring Rhian in quickly and then we'll go to you? Rhian.

Thank you. I was just going to say that, for our authority, we recently joined the empty homes grant. We've only joined as of April and, since April, we've had 15 applications and 14 are currently going through to approval. So, I just wanted to show that level of interest and uptake. I think part of that, it is unique, obviously, it's that owner moving into that property for a five-year period and that can be a barrier in terms of that commitment over such a long time.

Then, touching on James's point about the loan scheme, that has been instrumental to us in terms of both returning empties to use and the creation of new residential units from empties. So, the removal of that scheme will be significant in those incentives that we can offer empty home owners.

Thank you. Georgina.

Just to add, really, our experience has been quite different to that of Flintshire. Our empty homes grants have been really successful in Bridgend. We've approved 81 grants since the scheme was introduced. So, it's been a massive benefit in terms of having that tool available to us within Bridgend. Whereas, our loans, whilst we have that, we don't get the appetite for people to take on the loans, and that's mainly because it takes us so long to get through the process, because we haven't got the resource to be able to push them through quickly in terms of officer resource and legal resource to do the loan agreements, et cetera. So, again, we're struggling because we're lacking on the resource side to push it forward.

Okay. Thank you. Taxation. Elyn, did you want to ask a question?

Yes. I have been forewarned that you're not tax experts. [Laughter.] The first question is: is this working? Does the council tax premium have an effect on people's decisions to do up their properties? On the opposite side of that coin, are you finding any issues with people actively trying to avoid the premium?

I'm happy to answer that. In terms of the council tax premium, I think there is value in having that in place. In Bridgend, since it was introduced, we have noticed a reduction in the number of empty properties because people are actively trying to do something with them to avoid, obviously, paying that premium. However, that has levelled off as of this year, I've been informed. There is the downside, where property owners are looking for measures to try and avoid paying that premium. So, we are coming across properties where the owner is saying that their son is living there or their dad is living there, claiming there's somebody living there, so that they can claim the single person discount rather than pay the premium.

We're not coming across those properties until we're getting complaints about them. You speak to neighbours, you go out on site and you can't even get to the front door, let alone live in the property. So, it is an issue. How vast that issue is, we don't know; I guess that would need further investigation. But, for us on the ground, it is a problem.

Thank you, Georgina. Jamie, I see you've got your hand up.

Thank you. To answer your question as well, there are many cases we've seen where an empty property has changed its classification as an empty, so it's resorted to a second home simply by adding furniture. What that does as well is reduce the amount of premium that the owner's paying. For example, in the case of Caerphilly, if a property has been empty for five years or more, a 400 per cent premium can be charged on the property. If that property classification changed to a second home, purely due to furniture being added to the property, that premium then reduces to 200 per cent. So, although a premium is still being charged, a maximum premium is not being paid, which obviously is avoiding that premium, and it's a simple thing to do to change the classification.

Thank you, Jamie. David, do you want to come in?

Yes. Thanks for that, Jamie. If you catch someone who's wilfully saying that there's someone living in the property and you find out that they're not, what can you do about that? Are they fined or are they—?

I have a good example of that, actually, from my colleagues in Cardiff. They entered what they believed was an empty property under housing legislation. According to council tax, it was being lived in by a single person. They entered the property under warrant, confirmed that it was, in fact, vacant. As a result, evidence in terms of statements and photographs were provided to their council tax department. The owner was subsequently brought in and interviewed under caution. It was also found out that he was connected to another person, and they were claiming single person council tax benefits, so the end result was that they were ordered to repay the costs. It was quite a process to get to that point, but they've recovered the difference, so it does pay off to feed back any information to the council tax department.

Thank you.

I think that brings us nicely on to enforcement powers in legislation, if anybody's got any further questions about that.

How can we streamline that process? Because if it's taking so long to do these things—. It should be fairly straightforward, shouldn't it, if somebody is gaming the system. How would you like to see that streamlined?

Do you mean in terms of the council tax side of things, or do you mean enforcement?

Do we need legislation? Do we need greater enforcement? Do you need greater powers? Is just making somebody repay it sufficient?

I don't know if I can answer that because it's from a council tax perspective, I guess, but I think it's having the manpower to be able to monitor the properties to identify when this is going on, because we're only becoming aware of this when we get a complaint. Generally, we only get that complaint when the property's falling into disrepair. There are certain checks that can be made and are being made in certain local authorities, so owners are asked to provide confirmation that they're living there in terms of utility bills and that sort of thing. So, there are checks that can be made, but, again, it boils down to staffing, I believe. I don't know if further legislation is needed to manage that better. I don't know if anyone else has got any views.

No. I think we've got a question from Mike, and then we'll go to Rebeca.

My question is that we were told earlier there is no difficulty in enforcing against somebody living in prison: do you find that there's no problem enforcing against somebody living in prison? Are there any problems enforcing against somebody who lives abroad and where the property is registered in, let's say, the British Virgin Islands?

There's a hypothetical for you.

Well, there are actually cases of this.

Personally, I've had no experience of either of those. I would imagine that it—. Well, providing that the property is in a condition where it needs enforcement, then there are routes you can take so that you can serve the notice adequately and it would be deemed as acceptable. So, you can carry on with the process, you could see it through to an enforced sale or a compulsory purchase order as far as I'm aware, but I've not personally ever been in that position.

Me neither, but it wouldn't stop the process of enforcement taking place. If a property is in a dangerous condition, of course measures will be taken to secure it.

Thank you. Rebeca.

Yes, great. Thank you for that. So, as discussed earlier, I think there's a kind of broad agreement that legislation is there; it just needs to be streamlined and maybe easier to be used. And also the importance of sharing information between authorities—that needs to be something that's more consistent.

I'm just wondering if you had any thoughts on the proposals in Scotland allowing some measures that might be brought forward in terms of allowing local authorities to take temporary possession and bringing the CPO procedures and compensation together. So, just grateful for your thoughts on those. Diolch.

I am aware of the changes that they are investigating in Scotland in terms of the compulsory purchase, and I think it touches on what I said earlier about trying to streamline the process, making it easier, quicker and more effective. I know they are looking at something called compulsory sales orders and compulsory leasing orders, and I can see the benefits of those systems, because as it stands at the moment, the property that we've compulsorily purchased in Bridgend is now in Bridgend council ownership, so we are liable for that property until it changes hands, and that's not going to be until the sale has gone through and then the sale completes. So, with these two measures that they are proposing in Scotland, it would take away that risk, because they don't ever take possession of it.

So, I can see the benefits of that and I think that is something that could be explored. It may encourage more local authorities to take action in that way because it minimises the risk for the authorities.

Thank you, Georgina. Anything else, Mike? No. Any other questions? No. And then finally, communities and partner agencies. Marc, did you want to—.

Yes, this afternoon we're talking to more community-based agencies, who may be able to access different sources of funding and be able to act in a different way in terms of bringing back especially the long-term eyesore properties, which I think we've all got in our areas and you are probably sick to death of having to deal with. What are your views as front-line officers for councils in terms of allowing community groups to perhaps access funding from councils? Because, at the moment, this empty homes grant is only available for landlords, isn't it? Would there be scope to perhaps allow funding for community-based groups to do the job that we all want to see being done and bring homes back into use, basically?

So, the grant is, of course, for owner-occupiers rather than landlords. We work closely with a few organisations on Anglesey, based in town centres, which are community led. We have schemes in place for them. There's a town centre regeneration scheme if they want to acquire properties and convert them into either part residential or part commercial properties. The term can be extended for such organisations. Rather than repaying the loan over five years, which is the standard, we can increase it to seven years, which we are hopeful makes it a bit more attractive to these types of organisations. But certainly more of them, more organisations like this would definitely be beneficial. We only deal with a limited number of them. It differs from area to area, I would say.

I think it may be, if we were to extend it to community groups, that they were able to access some type of support to help them through the process, if they’re coming from, maybe, a background where it’s not as familiar, possibly, giving them the support to get them through the process would be useful.

Yes. Thanks.

Mike.

I was going to raise that you must all have pubs and you must all have chapels that used to be very popular but have now gone into disuse and are in various stages of dereliction. I think everyone else in the room recognises those. Have you any experience of working with third party organisations, charities or housing associations to try to bring those back into use? Although they're not actually technically an empty house, they're an empty property, which can quite easily be turned into several flats.

Yes, there are schemes in place, such as the town-centre loan scheme. It is, of course, limited to town-centre properties. So, there are limitations when we deal with more rural areas. I think that the Bevan Foundation recently did work on empty properties with churches, which is a very interesting read. And, yes, trying to work more closely with those types of organisations would be very beneficial to everyone, really, but it's getting those schemes in place. What you find with vacant, maybe, religious buildings is that they require substantially more investment to bring them back into residential or beneficial use.

I can only speak on Morriston, where I live, in great detail, and Swansea in much less detail, but there are chapels all over the place. The one thing that south Wales has got, and I'm sure north Wales as well, is lots of chapels. Their congregations have collapsed and these buildings are now left. And there are different people taking them on for different uses, but do you support housing associations and others when they come to do it? It can be expensive to change a chapel around, much less so a pub, which is, effectively, especially the smaller pubs, really just a big house.

I think it's important to note that different local authorities treat commercial properties, when it comes to empty properties, in different ways. So, just within our shared service, my role doesn't extend to commercial premises. I'm very much residential, unless we have a particularly problematic property that needs intervention. So, I'm very much residential. In the Vale, it's very different. It's more commercially driven at the moment, and, again, Cardiff is very residential. And that would be the same across Wales. They sometimes are very separate roles within the organisation. Maybe there's a need to bring that together so that it's more coherent, but it does make it difficult to deal with things like churches and chapels, because, from my experience, that remit sits with regeneration and relies on the grants and loans that they are able to offer, and I wouldn't really be able to input to that.

Thank you, Georgina. Jamie, I noticed you had your hand up earlier but it was withdrawn. Is there anything you'd like to add to that, and then we can go to Rhian and then Elyn?

Yes, thank you. Sorry, I'm going to go back to the question about working with RSLs and local partner agencies. What we have found here in Caerphilly, where we've enforced the sale of a property, it was within our enforced sale strategy to, firstly, offer those properties to RSLs. But, on occasion, unfortunately, there has been no appetite to purchase those properties, which could be for many reasons: (1), being able to bring that property up to standard; (2), being away from their other local housing stock; (3), probably because it's not financially viable to then purchase that property at fair value, spend the money, obviously, to get it up to that standard, to make it a worthwhile project for them. So, maybe something could be done, which would be welcomed, in assisting those RSLs in bringing back those properties that may be problematic or difficult for them to bring back into use otherwise.

Thank you. Rhian.

We did have an instance where we enforced the sale of a property and it was sold to a preferred purchaser. It was ex-local authority stock, so it was sold to that housing association, who then used the social housing grant to renovate it and bring it back into use. That fitted really well. But what we do find is we do actively engage with RSL partners, but they're not interested in those owners who wish to sell their property for social housing. The requirements of the Welsh housing quality standard mean that it's unaffordable for them to renovate or purchase and renovate that property. But we certainly do actively engage with RSL partners, because they've got the skills and the resources to do some of those works.

Elyn, you had a—

Yes. I want to quickly go back to Georgina's point about you working predominantly for residential and some people doing commercial. What avenues does that leave for properties that are mixed use? Because, I imagine a lot of community groups would be looking at places where they can make themselves sustainable by creating their own income from a retail part of that, but you might have a flat above et cetera. How does that work for mixed-use properties?

So, it does work in that we would work closely with regeneration and other departments. We meet regularly. Every department that has an involvement with empty properties, we meet, we discuss properties, so we would always consider those types of properties. We've obviously got the funding, like the loan scheme, which enables us as well to convert commercial to residential. So, there are lots of aspects and opportunities. That would never be ruled out. It's just that my main role is residential. We would always consider any opportunity, really, to work with mixed use. It's just engaging with the right departments and working out what schemes you've got available to support the owner to bring it back into use. So, yes, there's always consideration of that.

Thank you, Georgina. Well, we've pretty much covered everything off. Does anybody have any questions for the witnesses—any further questions? No.

Listen, thank you very, very much for coming here today and coming on the call. It's much appreciated. You will, obviously, be sent a transcript of the hearing so you can check its factual accuracy. Again, I'd just like to thank you all for attending and giving of your time. We'll reconvene at 11:35. Thank you again, everyone. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Ben Mincher, with the Welsh Government legal services elections team.

Welcome. Thank you very much. And it just leaves me now to invite the Members to ask any questions of the Minister. So, we'll start off, and we've got some subject headers. So, regarding the timing for introduction of automatic voter registration, Francesca O'Brien.

Thank you, Chair. Good morning, Minister. I've just got some concerns on the timing of the introduction. I know that has been picked up in some of the reports, but, obviously, we've got the Gould convention, which states that it shouldn't be longer than—. You've got that six-month buffer. I appreciate we're now at 1 October. So, it's just flagging that as a concern on the time for implementation, and the reasons why we might be pushing up against that deadline. I don't know, maybe you want to pick up on that first, and I can come back then on the Gould convention.

Yes. Thank you very much, Chair, first of all, for the invite to come here to the committee today. I'm used to sitting over there. And some of you, some officials here today, will remember the role that I played on this committee for a long period during the last Senedd, but also for periods during the previous Senedd. So, I would like to pay tribute to the former Chair, John Griffiths, for the important work that he undertook as Chair of this committee.

But, this is my first time here as Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning, and I look forward to working with you today, but also over the period to come, and I look forward to the scrutiny sessions that you’ll be undertaking with me with regard to all of the different commitments and all of the different work taking place within my portfolio.

I'm really grateful to this committee and to the Legislation Committee for scrutinising these regulations in particular. Can I just, first of all, in general, say how important I think it is that we have these regulations in place? We are leading the way in the United Kingdom in terms of rolling out automatic voter registration, which is such an important step in expanding our democracy, and it's a very positive step to ensure that as many eligible people as possible can take part in the local government elections in 2027.

To turn specifically to the question you asked with regard to the timetable, it's very important, I think, that we reach a situation where we have as complete a register as possible before 2027, and we're working to take advantage of that opportunity. The timetables, or the deadlines, are ambitious, but we're working closely with key stakeholders and local departments in order to achieve these objectives, drawing on their significant experience of working in challenging conditions to implement electoral reform. This is the first time that we've asked local government officials to do the work of rolling out such significant changes, and our thanks go to them for doing that work. That work is ongoing.

You mentioned the Gould principle. The Gould principle says that we should not change legislation within six months of an election where that change would affect that election. The timetable is tight, but we are within that limit, so all is good.

Thank you. The second part of that question—.

Yes, the second part. Thank you, Minister, for that. I noted in the report as well—. Sorry, I'm getting feedback on the headphones. I think the committee wrote out to various stakeholders. In particular, I'm interested in victims of domestic abuse who've had to flee their home for those reasons. I've noticed that not one representative from that group have responded, for one reason or another. But, again, just a red flag there. Because I don't want these women, who equally have a really strong voice in our society, who are fleeing terrible circumstances—I don't want them to miss out because of this new regulation. I don't want their voices not heard in May's election next year, Minister. So, what reassurance—? Or is there anything that we can do to make sure that we can capture those women's voices for May's elections, which are not long away?

I completely agree with you that vulnerable groups, including women in refuges or women who are worried that they can be recognised from the register by abusive partners—. I absolutely understand that concern. So, there is an ability for people to register anonymously. So, you can register yourself, you can vote, but your name would not be out there in public. That's been a long-standing ability, but people haven't really recognised that that is something that they can do. So, we are really eager now to push information out regarding that ability, because the last thing we want to do is create tension, create fear. So, that is a real opportunity within this now to—. So that people can vote. And it's very important that we don't disenfranchise people in vulnerable positions from having their vote, because this is what it's all about, really, making sure that more people have that ability to vote if they wish to. But we don't want to create any unforeseen circumstances. And for that reason, the anonymity clause is something that we will be writing—. It will be in the letters that go out to people. The initial letter will point out that you can have this anonymity through the new system.

Can I—? And I'll be very brief, Chair.

Can I interject there just slightly and say that we did get a response from Welsh Women's Aid? It's in page 141 of the pack. But they have responded. Please continue.

Okay. Thank you. Only because today, on the news, we've got 700 early-release prisoners coming out, and some of those, I know, in my own constituency as well, have fled domestic abuse. So, they have flagged this with me. I know that we're only checking the register once a year, I believe, so I'm just conscious that, if women are now having to be moved in the next few months, how will that impact? So, for argument's sake, if they are living in one property today or in a month's time, thereafter, if they're having to be moved, how are we capturing that data if we're only checking the register once a year?

Okay. Well, I'll ask officials to just—. Because that's a good question.

Yes. Only because that's just come out this morning. So, not to put you on the spot, but it just—

I suppose it's a bit of a balance, isn't it? Because, originally, I think, in the pilot, there was talk of doing checks four times a year.

That's correct, Minister, yes.

It's a matter of getting that balance, really, in terms—. I understand your position, but I'm sure there is—.

Yes. I think, to bear in mind, that it's once a year in respect to this process in particular. So, there are still other processes out there for the maintenance of the register throughout the course of the year that they can still be picked up by once they've been registered. So, the most important one is the annual canvass process, when they check the accuracy of the register every year. And it's likely that these will take place at different times in the course of the year. So, they could be picked up in both by virtue of that. Also, just throughout the year, they're under a kind of general duty, electoral registration officers, to continue to look at and maintain the accuracy of the register and they do get notifications that come through when things have changed from individual departments.

So, there will be an element of adjustment throughout that—? I'm just looking for that reassurance going forward that if we have—. I know these are extreme circumstances, but they are relevant for today. So, thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other questions for the Cabinet Minister? David.

Thank you. One instance I've got is homes for older people and care homes. What I found in the local election was, I looked in one of the care homes—and my mother was in that care home, and she actually voted. Now, my mother had dementia. My mother didn't even know me, and I asked the question, 'Well, how did my mother vote?' Everybody in that care home had voted, and 50 per cent of that care home were people with dementia. So, I asked the question—and there was a police investigation into it—and the answer I got was, 'Your mother had a moment of lucidity.' Now, my mother didn't know me for two years. Now, I don't know what lucidity she had and who she voted for, because, obviously, that's private. But what safeguards are in place for that not to happen? Because, obviously, if everybody's going to be able to vote, which I don't not agree with, but, if everybody can vote, what safeguards have we got in place that people aren't abusing the system for care homes and for situations like that?

So, today we're talking about the automatic voter registration, which doesn't necessarily mean that people have to vote. It's about giving people that opportunity to vote, should they wish. There are too many examples. During an election, sitting in an election booth, as we all do, you see people turning up saying, 'Oh, can I vote?' and they haven't registered.

Yes. Oh, I agree with that. I agree with it.

So, that's what these regulations are actually about. It's about making sure that people are on the register, and, should they wish to take that up then, they can. The point you make about the specific care home, I've no idea what that would be about. But if there are concerns, obviously, they are matters for the police. But, on the other hand, I would say it is a delicate balance, isn't it? Do you want to disenfranchise a particular cohort of people? It is a balance. But if there are obvious signs that something is not right, well, that's a matter for the police, then.

Thank you. Any other questions on that subject, regarding the timing of the introduction? No. Okay.

We'll move on to the cost of automatic registration, and I, obviously, have a question, Cabinet Minister. Looking at the revised figures for this cost, it's gone up from £2.6 million to approximately £4.4 million. I guess the first question is: who's going to bear that cost? And if that's been projected, if you like, into the budget, for local authorities to deal with, at their upper end, what guarantees or assurances do we have that that won't increase again? And then who bears that cost? It's the same question again. I'm quite sceptical, sometimes—when I look at projections, they always overrun. So, I think the first question is: who's going to get this cost and take it on the chin? And then, after that, what guarantees do we have that it won't rise again?

Just to give you some background on this, the revised regulatory impact assessment that's in the explanatory memorandum that was relaid this week reflects the current situation, and the financial assumptions and the cost estimates have been updated since the previous version. So, this version is the one for you to be scrutinising, and the main changes reflect a clearer operational model and are going to cost more—and thank you for your scrutiny work. So, we've been able to look again at the situation and bring these changes forward. They include local authority delivery costs of about £1.581 million, and upgrading costs for EMS, the software system, of about £2.82 million, providing an estimated total of £4.4 million for the work. The memorandum, or the RIA, explains that the Welsh Government will be funding the operational costs of local authorities in full, with continuing costs in the future to be considered through the usual process of setting a budget through the revenue maintenance grant. In reality, the largest costs are the costs of setting the system up. Over the next few years, there will still be a cost, clearly, because there will be a need to look at different registers, and data and so forth, but the cost will reduce over the next period.

I don't know if Michael would like to explain a little bit more about that.

Okay.

So, as the Cabinet Minister says, there are two types of costs here. One is the software costs, which are one-off costs. That has risen as a result of—. The first RIA that we published was based on expenditure relating to the pilots, and then, on further commercial conversations with the software providers, we had to revise what those costs were going to be because more information was available to us from the software providers on the different work they needed to do following the pilots. So, those are one-off costs in-year, met by the main expenditure group for where we are.

The ongoing costs, the recurring costs, will be those that fall to local authorities. So, in the first year, we've done that as a specific grant because it's a one-off new process that's being met. Then, in subsequent years, which is—. The Cabinet Minister recently re-signed the strategic partnership agreement with the Welsh Local Government Association. That commits to meeting new burdens and putting it into the revenue support grant, where we should. So, we shouldn't be sending lots of small pockets of money to local authorities to do individual bits of work. So, the RSG—. Obviously, local authorities need to meet their statutory duties. The new way of registering people through automatic registration will be a new statutory duty, so they'll need to meet that through funding that we're allocating through the RSG in future years. As the Cabinet Minister says, we expect that to go down as the register is more complete year on year.

Okay. Thank you, Michael. I'm going to go off on a tangent here slightly, because obviously you just mentioned software. Whenever somebody talks software to me, I always get worried. How confident are we that we can land the software itself? I'm 62 years old. I'm old enough to have seen some catastrophes when councils have tried to land software. So, how comfortable and confident are we, given the tight deadlines we're working to, that a third-party provider, or a software provider, can land this right first time?

So, the software providers, they're existing, they've already got contracts with the 22 authorities. There are three software providers in Wales that operate. What we're talking about is adding on a workflow process and then a bit of data-matching functionality. We are talking to them almost every day, just to keep an eye on progress. At the moment, we're confident. We're keeping it under very, very close review.

Thank you very much. Any other questions from anybody? No. Francesca, you've got a question on the notification period to opt out.

Yes. Just flagging that, in the pilot scheme, it was originally 60 days. So, I just wanted to try and dig out why we're reducing that so significantly, really—the reasoning behind that, please.

Thank you. In the pilots—. We have learned many lessons from the pilots. They were held in Newport, Powys and Gwynedd, and in Carmarthenshire also. We're very grateful to the local authorities there that did take part in the pilots in order for us to learn the lessons that we're implementing now. The evidence that came through showed that the majority of people did use this short-term period in order to bring their registrations forward. I think that, when you think about it, if you receive a letter inviting you to register to vote, I would think that you're likely to do that within a matter of days, or at least within the month. If you haven't done it within a month, it's likely that you'll forget about it, and you're therefore not—. It's not something that's very high up on your priority list—put it that way. But there is evidence also. It's not me saying this; anecdotally, that's how I would see this, as someone who often uses common sense in discussing policy, but there is evidence behind it, and perhaps Michael could explain a little about the evidence.

Yes, it was something that the Electoral Commission were quite clear on in their evaluation of the pilots, that the 60-day period was too long and it should be reduced. So, we looked at 28 days because it seemed more in line with other processes for responding too, on the basis that 20 days, four weeks, if people are on holiday when the letter first comes in and they want to opt out, then the likelihood is that they will be able to respond in that period. I think Sandra from Powys spoke about the fact that most people responded in the first two to three weeks of receiving the letter if they were going to opt out. So, I think we're fairly confident that 28 days seems appropriate.

I was just worried on the rural—. Sometimes, in our constituency, we've got some parts where it can be weeks, sometimes, for some unknown reason—with the Royal Mail it can be weeks. So, it was just more that I'm conscious, on the rural side—. And I've got to pick up on the Cabinet Minister as well. I do agree, actually, that if you're not doing it within the first few days, it's not high in your priorities, but I could also flip that and say that, if you were against automatic voting registration, you would be wanting to go out and vote and register yourself as well. But I do pick up on the point, but it was more on the rural side that I was flagging that concern, on the length of time of delivery.

And as somebody who represents an area that is very rural, I understand exactly that point. Of course, you can register online, but you're thinking of receiving the letter late perhaps, yes? I think that this balance between 28 and 60—. I think 28 days is sufficient time, even in a situation like that. I do understand the point, but I think it is a matter of striking a balance in this context. In the context of legislation on electoral registration, 28 days isn't unusual. It is more generous than some other statutory deadlines. For example, people usually have 14 days to appeal against a registration decision, and individuals will have perhaps 14 or 28 days to respond to a civil penalty notice. So, there are examples where the period of time is shorter than 28 days.

Marc.

Just to add to that, this was a concern that was raised in the last scrutiny session with regard to problems with the Royal Mail, and it's not only a rural issue, I'm afraid. It's a general issue these days. Certainly, in Wrexham, we've had specific problems with people missing their hospital appointments because they receive the letters weeks after the date. So, I think we need to be aware of this. I would support Francesca's opinion on this, that we do offer some kind of leeway if a letter does arrive late. Is it possible to be flexible?

I understand your point completely. This is something that we have discussed with the Royal Mail, and we are aware of the problem. This kind of posting around the AVR would be managed through different contractual and operational routes than the normal post, which has the ability to plan for production, sending and distribution periods in advance. A lot of work goes into that contract. It's not going to get rid of the risk completely, but I hope that answers your points. It's not going to be part of the general post; it will be a specific contract for those specific letters.

Diolch.

Okay. I guess I'm going to go back to that notification period. So, I'm actually looking at the pack. The concern, I think, that I have is: does it provide the right balance between the effective administration of this scheme and the safeguarding of vulnerable people? I'm going to cite an example: if you think of a victim of domestic abuse who has to leave the marital home, and then that mail goes to that home, she's no longer there, so how do we capture that? How do we deal with that sort of issue?

The evidence in the pilot schemes suggests that, where electors chose to opt out, if that's what your concern is, or part of what you're saying at least, that the majority of them had done so within the first two, three weeks. So, it wasn't just that they'd received the letter in that time, but they'd also decided to opt out in that time also. That supports the suggestion that 28 days is sufficient for those who want to do that.

Your point with regard to people moving and perhaps being missed during that period is something that we're very aware of. There are different data sources that are used and that are updated. The register, the data, is being updated regularly as an open register anyway. But, perhaps, Michael, you could expand a little on the specific point about someone moving home and perhaps falling between the cracks.

So, I think the data will be—. The registration process will follow the data that the council holds on somebody. So, if somebody moves within the 28-day period, as you say, it would be registering them at their old address. But one overarching point, I suppose, is that this doesn't replace the ability for somebody to register on an individual basis. So, if you are moving and you're registered at the address you've just moved from, you would still be able to go online and register to where you are now.

And I think the other point, in relation to people in that kind of situation, is around the—. We've spoken already about anonymous registration, that that can happen once—. If somebody raises that, it just stops the clock for the 28 days, so it doesn't mean that they have to produce the evidence and so on within that 28-day period. And also, they can do it after they've registered. You can then go on and apply for anonymous registration.

Thank you. I guess I'm thinking more along the lines of: is going online and changing your details or remembering to do any of those things the first thing on the mind of somebody who's suffered maybe horrific domestic abuse? It certainly—. I don't think it would be on mine, and I think that's why the first question was: have we struck the right balance between landing this and safeguarding people? That's the bit for me, because if there's even 1 per cent that we haven't, then I have concerns. I'm sure all of us in this room wouldn't wish that to be the case.

And I think that's a broader point than these regulations. I think what these regulations may do is raise more awareness, because of the letter that the Cabinet Minister said that people will receive, which draws their attention to the right. I think there may not be enough visibility. When I looked at the official statistics about the number of people that were registered anonymously in Wales, it was fewer than 100 people. So, there are a lot of people who probably would be eligible who aren't aware of it or aren't confident enough in the value of being registered. So, I think there is a broader bit of work that we'd like to do with civil society to raise awareness and to encourage people to register anonymously if they're eligible to.

Okay.

Yes, that's the point, really. It's a wider point than just around the regulations, isn't it? It's about raising the awareness about anonymity and the ability for you to remain anonymous but still not be disenfranchised, because at the moment that isn't used enough, as you say. So, moving in that direction is really helpful for vulnerable groups.

Thank you, Cabinet Minister. I can see that we've, obviously, consulted with stakeholders, but will this be an ongoing thing? Obviously, because domestic violence is an ongoing thing, and I just don't want people to slip between the cracks.

No, absolutely. Absolutely. It is a priority for this Government to be taking care of vulnerable groups, and, in this case, domestic abuse, obviously. So, we will continue to engage with them. There will be a process of learning within this. As things are rolling out, there will be opportunities to tighten up some parts of it as well.

Thank you. David.

One question I've got is—. We've just had empty homes organisations in earlier on, and there is a disparity in numbers from the council records and the actual empty homes. I'm led to believe that most of our information will come from the electoral roll and the council tax roll. So, what about those who are not on that roll? How are we going to collect their data?

Again, that's a wider point, isn't it, about who is actually on the council tax roll and who should be on there. But we are using other data sources, and comparing other data sources, obviously with all the GDPR rules in place as well, so that we have a fuller picture of who actually is entitled to vote but is not captured at the moment on the electoral register. There are other data provisions that we are actively working on. That's the work that the local authorities are doing now in preparation for the election in 2027.

If I could expand on that, the Cabinet Minister recently wrote to registered social landlords, to universities and to local authorities just to make sure that they are aware of this, and that data sharing will be really helpful in terms of the accuracy and completeness of the register. We're also sharing with local authority colleagues a sample data sharing template, data sharing agreement templates or data protection impact assessments, so that it's really helping local authorities get to the data that would help them have a broad a picture of potential electors as possible.

One other question I've got to ask is on the duplication of registration of these students living in one place and also registered at home: how can we be sure they're not voting in both places?

So, you can be registered in two places, but you can't vote in two places.

How do we know? How can we know if they have?

That's a wider point again, isn't it, that you're making, which is in the current system anyway. You know, there are checks and balances that the electoral officers do in the local authorities to try and mitigate against that. But they can't check every single person, can they, and every single vote. But students should be allowed to vote.

Oh, I agree, yes.

So, the information that we, hopefully, will get now from the universities on their data, which is really up to date since September now, of all the students that they have, will make sure that we're capturing and giving them that opportunity to vote. Because sometimes they're not on their home electoral register, so they find themselves disenfranchised—they turn up to a polling booth, they want to vote, but they can't, because they're not registered. So, this would capture that particular cohort, as well as lots of other people. I think there are—. What's the figure?

Four hundred thousand.

Four hundred thousand people in Wales don't vote because they're not on the register. So, you know, they're missing out on a huge opportunity, aren't they? And many of those are young people. I think it's 48 per cent—?

I'm not sure.

There are—. Lots of those would be young people as well. And you know, we're ahead of the curve here in Wales in terms of bringing in automatic voter registration. I'm really proud that we're doing this, because it is enhancing our democracy, and countries like Canada and Australia, they do it. And I think, as well, if I can say, the UK Government is actually actively looking at what we are doing here, talking to my officials, thinking of bringing a similar process forward in the UK as well.

Thank you. Mike.

I want to ask you about data. I'll be briefer than I really want to be. Are there any legislative barriers that prevent access to national data like national insurance numbers? Actually finding people can be incredibly difficult. The ability to have data out there that exists within Westminster-covered areas, is there access to that?

That's a very good question in terms of the data that we don't have in Wales. Certainly, our ambition would be to have access to full data sets that belong to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, for example. We're not quite there yet, are we, Michael?

Ben may want to correct me or speak further, but the Elections and Elected Bodies (Wales) Act 2024, which allows automatic registration, which was passed by the Senedd in 2024, doesn't allow regulations to be made in relation to national insurance numbers, for example, to data held by UK authorities. That was obviously in the context of 2024. There may be a different—. Now that the UK Government is more interested in this, there may be an opportunity to revisit that in the future. At the moment, the regulations relate to local data sources, because that's what is within the powers of the overarching Act. Ben.

The particular thing that we can't do, which happens at the moment, is get the Department for Work and Pensions to verify national insurance numbers, because the restriction in particular is around modifying the functions of reserved authorities or adding to them. It's not so much that we can't use national data sets per se, if they have them for other reasons, lawfully, locally, but you can't be getting other people to check them for you. They've got to be things that you know are data already. There might be other reasons for that, to do with, say, benefits information that might have been held centrally. No doubt, most of the information they're going to have easy access to is going to be locally held, so locally held by the local authority, but it needn't be exclusively that.

Just to take one example, we've discussed those universities. It's local in the sense of being close to certain local authorities, but it's not their data as such. They can get it from them, and from other bodies potentially as well and providers of other services, but then it's for the electoral registration officer to be verifying that against other data that they have, rather than getting other bodies to verify it for them, like, in particular, the national insurance number.

Take me, for example—and I'm going to move on to more complicated ones afterwards—I'm known as Mike Hedges, Michael Hedges and Michael John Hedges in different places. But it's also more complicated in some families, where first names and surnames run down the family. The classic is, for those interested in golf, Curtis Love IV. I don't know if he's got any children. My guess is they'd be called Curtis Love V. And actually trying to match data, when you've got names, but are they two different people both called David James, or is it one person called that? That I see as a problem. I've got no solution to it, but that is a problem if you're trying to match. You may find more matches than you expect because of those sorts of problems.

That's a really good point that you make there. It exists now, of course; it's not just related to automatic voter registration. Again, it's the mitigation that happens. There are checks and balances within the system now, aren't there? I have a similar problem because, on my passport, I actually am Siân Gwenllian Jones, but I don't use the Jones, and it does create a bit of a tension sometimes. The agencies are always checking. There are checks and balances in there. I never get to use both names for registering for voting, and I wouldn't dream of trying anyway, of course. But it is a common problem. I can tell you from personal experience, even now in the system as it is now, there are checks and balances in there that can root out that kind of issue. I don't know if there is anything in particular on the AVR.

The point I'd make is that we call it 'automatic voter registration' for shorthand, but formally and technically it's 'registration without application'. The point is, and I think stakeholders share this view—Sandra Matthews, who's probably the most expert in the process for this in the United Kingdom, she was talking about the amount of manual work that has to happen—the duty is on the electoral registration officer to make sure that there is consistency. So, if it's Mike versus Michael, then I would think that the ERO could be very easily satisfied, but when it gets more complicated, then that's where they might look for more information. They might need to send out an invitation to register, so to send them through the—. Not doing it on their behalf, but asking them to register, and at least they've been identified, I suppose, is the benefit.

And finally from me: some women, when they get married, change their name to their husband's surname. That's their decision; I'm not going to say whether it's right or wrong, but some people do that. You may have two of somebody there, especially if they got married in the last few months. One of them is Margaret Jones and one of them is Margaret Williams, because Margaret Jones married Mr Williams. Are you able to identify those sorts of problems, or are you confident that's not going to occur?

The thing we'd always come back to is that the fall-back position is that the duty with this is that they have a duty to add people to the register. If they can be satisfied that that person isn't eligible, what happens there is they don't just reach a deadlock; this duty is discharged, and then they can seek to try and register them by other means. So, this is an add-on, really, because it's undoubtedly the case, as you say, that there will be hard cases and ones where they can't be satisfied, for some reason, but it's just that that then opens up a new route to try and find out more information from the person, either by invitation to register or other means of contact that they're allowed to do, and then they can try and pursue it that way again as well. That will always be at their discretion to decide, 'We can't do it with this position, we'll try another way.'

Thank you. Francesca, do you have a question?

No.

I beg your pardon. Elyn.

Thank you, Cabinet Minister. We heard a great deal of evidence from previous panels regarding the quality of the data sets, and a lot of the things that Mike has already outlined. Is it possible for us to take this opportunity to ensure that we can use one data point in order to make the data more consistent as we move forward, and hopefully reduce the workload that goes on year after year throughout this process? Something like the unique property reference number, but we heard from Sandra that that wouldn't work in Powys, for example. But I do think that having one data point could facilitate our work moving forward.

And the second thing is—you mentioned this earlier, Michael—how could we ensure that local authorities are able to share data with each other? That can sometimes be a great frustration to them. Can you explain more about how we can improve that?

Your general point regarding trying to simplify the way we collect data is one that's appropriate to be doing. In terms of these regulations, we have set which local data we're hoping that electoral officers will use, and I've written to them talking about universities and housing associations and so forth. On the general point that you make, maybe not within these specific regulations, but certainly there is a need to ensure greater consistency across the situation, not just with electoral data, but data in general, in terms of the data that the health service is collecting, for example, as well. Sorry, what was your second point?

It was to do with sharing data among different departments within local government.

That is something that we do encourage under these regulations. The schools will have data, for example—those that reach the age of 16, for example. I think that the ability to gather that data and then give young people the opportunity to register is important, because, as you know, in Wales, young people who are aged 16 or 17 can vote, but perhaps many families aren't aware of that and therefore don't add those names automatically. But this creates an opportunity. So, schools are one aspect. There are other departments where we encourage that, Michael.

I'll respond in English, because that's likely easier.

We know there is a mixed picture across Wales already about the way that they use internal data. The example we're doing already about registered social landlords, some people, when housing swap transfers have happened, they didn't have visibility of their social housing tenants, for example. So, that's part of the reason why the Cabinet Minister wrote to RSLs. There were some areas like council tax that weren't previously being shared.

So, electoral registration officers have had the power for, I think it's over 10 years now, to already use data that's held by the local authority for the purpose of electoral registration or verification. Some of them haven't been using that as much as they could've done. Some of them have been using it really well, and there is a broader opportunity here for local authorities to see the benefit of sharing data. So, I know that Newport, for example, in their pilots, already used a lot of data sharing, which meant that the council had a lot of better insights about their local population, and other local authorities were building that as part of the pilots. So, there is a mixed picture already.

I think part of the continuous improvement that we'll see with this registration process in the future would be seeing the opportunity for better quality data, better comparable data sets in the future, and maybe introducing things like UPRNs, where they are appropriate.

Thank you. Rebeca, you've got a question on future evaluation and alignment of AVR.

Yes. Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you very much to the Cabinet Minister for joining us this morning. Could you talk about what you think would be the benefits of AVR? Also, to what extent are you considering a review of AVR following the local government elections? Thank you very much.

Thanks. Thank you for the question. In terms of the advantages, I think that I've tried to convince you already that this is an incredibly important thing for us to be doing in Wales. It expands people's ability to use their vote if they wish to do so. I believe, therefore, that we're at the vanguard in terms of what's happening, and perhaps we'll see something happening from the Westminster Government's side also before too long. It's only going to improve people's access to their democratic right to vote. I'm very convinced of that, and that's why I want to see it happening as soon as possible and have brought forward these regulations in order to allow it to happen in the next set of elections, the local government elections. I didn't want the same situation to happen with those, for people to turn up thinking that they were able to vote only to be turned away from the polling booths.

In terms of evaluation, it's likely that there'll be an ongoing process over the next few years, because there will be new data sets, this work will need to be done continually. It's not something that will happen just once. People will be reaching 16, 17 years of age, for example. We need to be collecting the data and creating a register that's as complete and broad as possible. If we then need to look at ways to improve that, and different ways of doing certain elements, well, of course we will be completely open to that. Thanks.

Thank you. Are there any other questions for the Cabinet Minister, because I just want to jump back to one area, if I may? No. I just want to go back to frequency of registration, and I know, Michael, that you covered that off a bit in terms of the decision to go to one year. I guess the report cited the pros and cons of that and, obviously, one of the concerns was around mobility of people, for example, students, certainly in Swansea, where you've got places like the Uplands, where we've got a very, very mobile population. Have we considered that enough? And if we are going to go to one year and we're going to use a rolling programme, have we considered how we're going to capture that? How does that trawl capture those people? And I guess, finally, what reassurance have I got that a local authority is conducting that in an accurate way, rather than just using it as a tick-box exercise? Sorry, that's three.

So, as you say, it's a minimum of once a year. I think, just in terms of good use of resources and public money, they can have the benefit of doing a repeated exercise. Obviously, in an ideal world, it would be a super-automated, up-to-date register. As you heard from stakeholders a couple of weeks ago, there is a lot of manual work in it. So, I think it would be difficult to justify asking local authority teams who are quite small, working on elections, to be spending a lot of their time trawling through data to make sure that the registry is up to date as much as possible when there's not an electoral event immediately on the horizon. So, I think it's just that balance is probably what I'd come back to.

It is a balance, isn't it, of where do you put your resources. In our local authorities, some of the electoral teams have become very, very small because of cuts to public spending where councils have been protecting education and social services, quite rightly. It's these kinds of services, the electoral services, which are really important to enhance our democracy, that have been cut back. So, it is a matter of making sure that we're using our resources properly, and I think the balance, on the whole, is correct, but, in the run-up to an election, there may be more activity happening during that period than, say, in 2028, where maybe there won't be an election, and time to sit back and look at the process during that period. Diolch.

Okay. Thank you. Francesca.

Sorry, this will be my last question. While you were talking, it was quite interesting to think of the next stage. I appreciate this might be off the cuff, but is there the facility with this software—and I'm not a software expert—and is there any scope, going forward—. You know, we've talked about, maybe, the duplication, of the potential voting in two different areas, perhaps. Is there a facility, going forward, where that software could perhaps reduce the likelihood of a person voting either twice or—? Even in the Senedd elections in May just gone, I had residents phoning me to say that they'd gone to vote and somebody had already voted instead of them. So, I appreciate that was—

That's not right.

Absolutely, it's not right. So, there are obviously issues there. That can't be an isolated situation. I just wonder if there's any sort of capacity in terms of the software that could be looked at to avoid that, going forward.

Well, the software is about the registration, isn't it? It's not about how people actually use their vote.

But I wonder if the two—. Obviously, when you go to vote, you do have the IT system there. If there is going to be the two that are going to talk—the IT systems—could they talk to each other? Because I'm sure, in this day and age now, with the advancement in technology, if there's any way that we can try and reduce the chance of that happening—.

So, obviously, this is a broader point and I'm just speaking off the cuff: longer term, one could imagine electoral registration officers being able to pool their electoral registration data and having one big database. So, for example, in Northern Ireland, they've recently introduced a single—. You can look up whether or not you're registered, and that's the only part of the United Kingdom where you can do that because there's only one electoral register for the whole of the north of Ireland. If it were in GB, we would be—. Every local authority or every electoral registration officer has their own register. So, it is, I suppose, hypothetically possible. It would require a change in the law, and if you were to do that, you could then see if people are registered in two places and, therefore, look out for them trying to vote in two places. But, ultimately, that is quite a way away from where we are now, and it would require changes to legislation—possibly primary. I'm not sure.

But the main point is you're not supposed to use your vote twice.

No, no, absolutely.

It's against the law.

Okay. Does anybody have any further questions for the Cabinet Minister or her team? Okay.

I think it just leaves me to say 'thank you very much', Cabinet Minister, and your team for coming here, assisting and giving evidence. We will break for lunch right now.

Thank you again. We will, obviously, send you a transcript of today so that you can check its factual accuracy, which is quite telling given that we're discussing AVR. But, again, thank you for your time. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We'll take a lunch break until 1.15 p.m. Is that okay? Thank you.

Casey Edwards. I'm the community-led housing manager at Cwmpas.

Thank you.

I'm Wendy Dearden. I lead on the housing work at the Bevan Foundation. To declare, I'm also a former empty homes officer, so I kind of come with many different hats to this, I feel, today.

You've let yourself in for that one.

Chris Bailey from Action on Empty Homes, also known as the Empty Homes Agency—primarily English based, but, obviously, we do work across the four nations.

Thank you so much. Trystan.

Trystan Jones. I'm the chief executive of the Community Impact Initiative. I'll be bringing some practical light to this, maybe.

Thank you so much. It just leaves it for me to say that, obviously, we're going to invite the Members to ask you some questions over some themes that we've been running through all the morning. So, in relation to data, Marc, did you want to lead on this again?

Yes. I'll ask you slightly different questions to the ones I asked the other people because you're coming from a different perspective. I just wondered what role you think community organisations, community councils and councillors have in collecting data, because one of the big issues, I feel, is that we don't have accurate data on what's an empty property, and in particular those empty properties that blight neighbourhoods and cause the greatest angst in our communities. So, do you think there's a role there?

I'm happy to start, if that's helpful. I completely think that there's a role for community organisations and even community members to contribute to the data on empty properties and empty homes. A really practical example of community-led data collection is the Ynys Môn Public Map platform. So, they've trained a group of community researchers who have been able to map key assets on the island, but not only assets; they've actually been able to map where there are anti-social hotspots, for example. So, obviously, that key community insight is invaluable, isn't it? They're the people living and working in these communities, so they obviously know their areas best. So, I would really advocate for that kind of community-led and community-member data collection. And working with stakeholders and organisations like rural housing enablers as well, I think they can support that community collection of data as well.

Yes, I would agree. It's what we call community intelligence. And the other thing I would say in relation, Marc, to your commentary on data is what we've certainly noticed in looking at data at a micro level, when either we've been working with individual authorities or looking at the reports from local authority-level data, is that where there's a rationale for a local authority to do something about finding out what's actually going on in its housing stock, like a change in a premium regime or a change in some of the regulations, or even a change of administration sometimes, you see wide change in the reported data for vacancy and types of vacancy, because they've gone out and looked at it harder. And community intelligence, as we call it, can be really helpful, I think, in this area.

It can also be helpful in other areas as well, because sometimes things people think of as empty homes turn out not to be; they turn out to have an isolated older person in who really needs some assistance. So, I think it's a really valuable overall part of the package, really.

Thanks.

Just to say that, yes, our data is rubbish when it comes to empty properties, but there are other big areas in housing that we also have. So, we've recently done research into second homes and the data on that is just as patchy as it is on empty properties. We're quite good at people data, I would say, but not very good at property data and how properties change between uses.

One thing we have highlighted is that, in the last Senedd term, there was a commitment to have a Welsh housing survey. Now, that, at the moment, is looking at housing need. So, it's to help us with how many houses we need to build, but also looking at property conditions. If that's going to be a census-style survey, why couldn't it be helping us with the, 'Well, where didn't we get responses to that survey?' Rather than relying on UK-wide census data every 10 years, could we be getting the mantle, because, ultimately, our council tax data is there for taxation purposes, not for the use that we're trying to say, in terms of enforcement and incentives and all that sort of thing. So, I think we need to start thinking differently about the data that we can collect.

Yes. Actually, one of the things that I would probably chip in on that aspect is that we've got, in the English environment, a number of new databases coming in. We've got a short-lets register, we've got a private landlord register, now called 'list your rented property' or something—it's got some kind of title. And the short-lets register comes in March 2027. And we are stressing, really, that we should be using unique property reference numbers—a UPRN system, which already exists at Land Registry—across all of those databases, and giving enforcement officers access to that, even if the data is semi-anonymised, because only in that way can you tell if stuff is slipping between different statuses. Also, you can see movement as well, and that's quite interesting in terms of some of the stuff we've seen with second homes, things moving off the residential register into the business register, which has been a common feature of both the Welsh and English experience recently.

Thank you. Trystan, did you want to come in?

Just on that point, really, we bring properties back into use, and we've done that for the past 10 years now in Wales. We've seen numbers ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 properties, and there is no real understanding of what that real figure is because we don't have those kinds of—. Tax collecting is one area of getting those numbers, but there's nothing else. That community-led outreach would be really useful.

We find the proactive identification of properties nearly impossible. We tend to buy our properties from auction at a point where a seller's gone through that process and wanted to sell and move on, and the consequence of that is that we know little about that property and what's come before. So, having someone to get a database in place that is aligned to that need and the use of the property rather than the secondary purpose of taxation would be very useful. That was the point I just jumped in on from earlier.

Thank you. Rebeca, did you—? You're down for a question on this.

Yes. Thank you. Diolch. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, everyone, for coming today. It's been a really important session, I think, this morning and this afternoon for us. So, I think a lot of you are pointing to the fact of the over-reliance on the council tax data. I think the point about the Welsh housing survey is a very valid one. There seems to be this massive variation in data, doesn't there, across the sector? I'm just wondering, are there any other sources of data that we can tap into? I'm just grateful for your opinions on that and whether we can learn from other countries in terms of getting this data as right as we possibly can in order to actually tackle the issues. Diolch yn fawr.

That's up for anyone.

Silence.

Well, I suppose, probably the most—. In some respects, that is the thing we've been talking through recently. It's about taking the data that you know is most likely to be complete and right, which is the Land Registry data and the UPRN system off that, and then using that to populate across your other public databases. We have the same issue in England with the census. The census has some pretty robust mechanisms for determining both what is a second home and what isn't, and what is an empty home and what isn't, and they still come up with a number that's between 400,000 and 500,000 higher than the council tax base does for homes that are unoccupied or not in residential use, even when you take account of all the second homes on the council tax base.

I'll probably mention quite a few times today the work that's been going on in Scotland and the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership, which gets funding from the Scottish Government. One of their roles—and Shelter Scotland get that money—is in terms of just raising awareness amongst the public. So, we'll talk about the limited capacity of local authority officers to just do the job, but, that 'report an empty home' type of thing, what do we do with this wasted resource? It's that sort of messaging to communities to actually realise that there's something they could be doing to help from a promotion point of view—so, not data in itself, but more reporting of concerns.

Just to build on Wendy's point, I would really push for that data to be transparent, so that community groups and community organisations can access that data. Because a key barrier that we see on a daily basis is that people might be able to identify an empty property, but then have no knowledge or capability to be able to do anything about it. I think if that data is transparent and accessible, that would be really helpful to bring them back into use.

The gathering of data is really important for local authorities. Our experience across local authorities is that you have more proactive and less proactive empty homes teams and empty homes officers. If there's a point of contact where the community can engage with a person or a department at each local authority, hopefully that would give support and that data can come through as well.

Yes, that's such an important point. When I was a councillor, people would actually report the empty homes to me, and they'd just be constantly asking for updates. I felt like there was nothing going on, whereas the reality was there was lots going on in the background. But, obviously, everything takes so long, doesn't it? So, I think having that data available for the public is something that would be really good and beneficial. Diolch.

Does anybody have any other questions with regard to data? Let's move on to the Welsh Government's strategic approach.

We've dealt with the 'what', haven't we, although we might not agree exactly how many there are. But then there's the 'why'. I think Chris mentioned earlier that people are in hospital or in nursing homes long term, and they would say they still lived at that address, even though they were actually living, for all intents and purposes, somewhere else. Do you have any information or data on why some of these homes are empty for over 12 months?

Certainly, my observation would be that you'd need to distinguish between different types of vacancy. It's like fishing: you don't use the same bait for all fish. Making a decision about whether you enforce someone to bring a home into use when they are in a distressed state—in care or in hospital—would be a big move, and probably one that, in general, we wouldn't recommend. Because that is not the largest reason, even in a nation with an ageing population, for homes being empty. The largest reason is that people either own them or have inherited them, and they're not bringing them back into use. I think it's definitely worth looking at earlier intervention and a different strategic approach in terms of what you might call the homes of the deceased, the class F, which are not all waiting to go through probate. A lot of them have been through probate, or the probate is being delayed intentionally or unintentionally, because either people are not fully aware of the inheritance tax situation, which most estates won't pay, or they're concerned about some aspect of bringing the home into use. So, I would look at those, and I would look at the ones that are officially long-term empty—the ones that are empty with no reason, not covered by an exemption class—before I looked at the ones that were empty because of people in care or in hospital, because that is a smaller section. I think it would be tricky both from a practical and human rights perspective, but also from a political and popularity perspective, to start getting into that area, and it's probably not significant enough in terms of volume.

I think it's probably more significant than what you're telling us.

Well, if you're living next to one in a terrible state and the family are doing nothing about it, then I think the local authority does have measures it could use, and maybe those need to be a bit chivvied up.

More often than that, there are all sorts of reasons, from people getting planning permission to make changes, or it used to be one house and it's now been made two houses, and although it's showing as a property, it actually was part of the first property. So, there are quite a lot of reasons, and I think we need someone to inform us as to what those reasons are, and I discussed that earlier today.

The Welsh Government previously had two strategies: the carrot of offering money for people to bring homes up to a better standard so they could be sold, and the stick of charging additional council tax. If people still refused, then there are compulsory purchase orders, which are incredibly difficult, incredibly expensive, and nowhere near as certain as some of those who shout it out as a solution actually understand. But do you think those things done so far are helping, or are they just barely touching the surface?

I would say that both the carrot and the stick require capacity. You can put all the good ideas down on paper, but if you haven't got the men on the ground to actually do that work—. You could offer free money, but if you haven't got the people on the ground to work through the eligibility and the forms, the money will be unspent. Most of the enforcement things are time-consuming, cumbersome and technical. Officers I've spoken to recently said it's not particularly the tools that we need to change—it's the men on the ground to actually do all the paperwork that's needed for them, and the years and years of work that might be needed. Going back to your previous question about reasons, every empty home has a separate story, and you have to really get into the nitty-gritty of that particular property. Blanket things, from experience, don't particularly work in that place.

I will just mention my experience. There's an empty home not too far from where I live. It's empty because it has been inherited by two siblings, and one doesn't want the other one to get any money.

Empty homes have emotion attached to them. However, we did a report that was referenced this morning into church-based assets. There are commercial assets and church-based assets and different organisations that don't have that emotion, but quite often get picked up in the market by private developers, and they then face the funding and planning permission, and all that sort of thing. So, if there are the easier hits without the emotion and all the other things, then perhaps if you had a strategy, you'd be starting to look at those sorts of ones as a starting point, alongside the individual action against individual owners.

I suppose with your example of the contested inheritance, essentially, or the family fall-out, that's not completely uncommon in this area, as I'm sure the officers have probably told you. I think there, perhaps, you can look to what some of the overarching powers are in terms of the incentives. Obviously, we have the premiums, so they're presumably paying a council tax premium.

We've recently—just this week—in the English environment had news from the Government that they're going to remove some of the constraints on the empty dwelling management order, so it can get back to being a more effective power as it was intended to be. We welcomed that and had recommended it, not because we thought that councils should be taking hundreds of thousands of homes off people, but because we think it will give people a kick up the pants if they're involved in one of these family disputes, or they're just sitting on their hands a bit hoping it'll go up in value.

I'll finish with this—it's the last thing. There are lots of chapels and lots of pubs, not only in town centre areas, that have been a lifestyle choice by people. Chapels have far fewer people going to them now, pubs have far fewer people going to them now, and you have these buildings that get left. Do you have any suggestions for what we ought to be looking to do to bring those back into useful use? I know some of them get sold, they get sold again and they get sold again, and a planning application, which you know is never going to succeed, is put in, then it gets sold on, and there's another planning application, which you're just looking at and you think, 'You'll never get that many flats in there, and if you do, you've got no parking for them'. This is something that most people who've sat on councils have dealt with lots of times. Do you have any suggestions for what we can do to bring some of these into purposeful use, as opposed to letting them be moved from developer to developer without much happening?

I think we can do a joint answer—you start.

As the representative from Cwmpas here today, in terms of co-operative and community-led solutions, I would always push for encouraging community-led solutions to these buildings. Old schools, old chapels, even old pubs, do have a lot of meaning in communities as well, and I think if there is a community solution to be able to bring those back into use, I think they are more likely to be able to be converted, because, obviously, the community is behind them. I think if there is a private developer coming in, for example, and saying they're going to put 15 flats in a church, then obviously the community might be against that. But if the community have the power to be able to do it themselves and work in partnership, then I think they're more likely to succeed. We've got some great examples of this already happening across Wales. There's the Ysgol Cribyn example in Ceredigion. They've just brought the old school back into use as a community hub, but also as an affordable home. We've got many chapels as well that communities are working to bring back into use. Schools and chapels definitely seem to be our main bread and butter at the minute in the world of community-led housing, but I would always advocate for community-led solutions.

I agree with you, and we just need a community right to buy.

Hopefully it's happening.

Community right to buy or community right to acquire I think is quite an interesting area to look at in that respect. The Scottish example does offer some legislative examples.

There is—

I'm sorry, Wendy, can I bring Trystan in? I can see he's been trying to get in for quite some time, and I think he feels I'm ignoring him. So Trystan, apologies. Please come in.

I appreciate it's difficult watching for hands raised on a Zoom call. I'm sorry I couldn't be there today. I've made notes on all the questions I was going to put my hand up to and then missed.

Just to go back to the reasons, most have been covered. I think it's important to say that the empty homes number isn't static. Empty homes are being brought back into use regularly, but then these new ones are constantly joining the end. On top of what's been said already, we see the cost of maintenance is a big thing. People can't afford the ongoing cost, which leads to the property becoming empty in the end, awaiting for the house prices to rise, waiting for the costs to fall. We see that a great deal in terms of reasons for houses arriving at the state they become when they're empty.

There's a point about the carrot and stick. We've got to be careful the stick doesn't hit everyone. We have issues with the council tax premium. We purchase properties and we carry out community projects within these properties, but we're hit by these 300 per cent council tax premiums. I know work is been done in this area, but we're footing this council tax premium bill whilst we're trying to bring it back to use in an effective way. There's something to note there.

In terms of homes and chapels, I think with that case you mentioned—that real community love of these facilities—so much community engagement is needed, which comes at a cost, and a lot of time needs to go into that. But communities do buy into these processes. It just takes time. It has to be done in the right way, and that does take time, before you turn the local pub into houses. There's a lot of negativity that comes from that in the first instance. So, that community engagement piece, which is a long piece, is super important. I'm just rattling through the questions that Mike was asking there. Thank you.

Thank you, Trystan. Wendy, do you want to continue? Then Dave will have the next question.

This picks up nicely on Trystan's point—we could have planned that. I'm thinking about prevention now, so we're thinking about the eyesores that we know in our community already, but we know that there are going to be more churches and chapels becoming empty. We know that local authorities are having to sell off assets. From being a local authority officer trying to get my hands on those assets for social housing, you can actually—. There is a point at which a property is still in use, but you know it's going to become empty, but there is still a huge amount of groundwork for a community group or housing association to take that on. A housing association won't be able to commit to that until they know they've got their grant in place. They haven't got their grant in place until they've got their planning permission, and all the other stuff and all the on-costs that they've spent.

One thing that we've said in our churches report is that we are losing lots of opportunities to pick up these properties before they become empty, because the church needs to sell it on because it's insuring it, and the cost of mothballing that property and holding on to it. We talk about some sort of holding agency or role within the Welsh Government, whether that sits in Unnos, which is talked about a lot, of actually recognising, 'This is a community asset that can't be knocked down'—particularly in terms of a church that might be listed—'we have to find a reason, we have to find a way to do something with it—a building needs a use'. We're going to miss that. Quite often the private sector will be able to move fast to take on that asset, but then will go and sit on it for a long period of time. If we're going to have a strategy at getting better at that sort of thing, that would be really powerful, I think.

David.

This is a question to Casey. Do you think local authorities work closely enough with people like yourselves?

I think it's patchy and inconsistent across Wales, if I'm really honest. In terms of the work that we do in community-led housing, we've got some really engaged local authorities who are supportive of the community groups who are trying to create affordable homes. We're starting to pull together a network of community-led housing champions who work in the local authorities, because we see that as a key role. We've had some great uptake from local authorities, but we've also had a lot of unanswered e-mails, if I'm honest. Local authorities, obviously, have a key role to play in bringing these empty homes back into use, but also supporting the community-led housing sector. We've seen some great examples. There's a chapel in Gwynedd that has had some funding from a local authority, and that has enabled that property to be brought back into use. But it's really patchy and it's inconsistent. One thing that we're doing to tackle that is our community-led housing champions, but it would be great to see more people take up that mantle, essentially, and work with us to be able to bring these homes back into use.

My second question is: do you find planning an obstacle to getting these homes into place?

That feels like a loaded question. [Laughter.] I suppose, just speaking from community-led experience—I did see Trystan with his hand up as well; I'm sure he has lots of experience on this—

He has been noted.

—planning is a barrier, especially for the community-led housing sector, but I think for the affordable housing sector at the minute. Obviously, the capacity and resource within local authorities is limited, so it does take a very long time often for planning applications to go through. But, from our perspective, what we really struggle with is just the general knowledge and awareness of community-led organisations who want to develop either affordable homes or even community assets. So, that is a huge barrier, and even though community-led housing is recognised in national planning policy, we've often had cases of local authorities just completely ignoring that national policy. It needs to be embedded within the local development plans and across departments in the local authority as well, not just sitting with one person, essentially.

Can I ask a little question?

Of course.

Do you find regulation within the Welsh policy of planning hard to get around?

Is that one for you?

I would say—obviously not directly; I'm commenting on what other people would say to you—yes, definitely. A key area I talk about is the Welsh housing quality standard for social homes, and the fact that, yes, we are gold-plating our social properties in terms of zero carbon and everything else, but that is actually making the appetite for taking existing properties wane. It isn't just the zero carbon and the decarbonisation. We write, in one of our reports, that even buying back existing or what were existing council houses, where rooms are not quite the right size—. So, the house next door may still be a social property, but because it doesn't meet the current standards, it can't be bought in. Also, I suppose, are the perceptions of how much it costs to refurbish a property versus how much it costs to rebuild from new.

The other element of our work is just talking about the children growing up in temporary accommodation and the need for properties. How on earth do you say to them, 'Sorry, we can't buy that one because the bedroom's not quite big enough for you', when, actually, a whole family might be sharing one bed-and breakfast-room tonight. Just the whole—. 'Yes, definitely', is the answer to that one.

Thank you, Wendy. Trystan, I'll bring you in before Marc, because I'm hoping you may actually be able to answer the question that Marc is already going to ask you. So, the floor is yours, Trystan.

I've forgotten what the question was now. Let's go back to the local authority point. With what Casey said, I fully agree. We've brought 19 empty properties back into use in the past 10 years, two are being actively renovated now, two in the purchase process, and we've never worked with local authority in identifying purchase of properties. They've always been through our own work engaging with auction rooms and that type of thing. So, we do find it difficult with local authorities. It's so patchy across south Wales.

In terms of planning obstacles, we find the planning process okay in itself. What we find difficult is the tension between local authority departments or social services departments wanting a house and planning holding things up. We're always in conversation with more than one local authority department when bringing houses back into use.

And I've forgotten the last question. Did you say that there's another question on the way?

That's fine. Marc, do you want to ask your question? I just thought it might have been answered.

No, he hasn't answered it.

That's okay. It's fine. I was working on a hunch.

Actually, Wendy, you answered my question about the Welsh housing quality standard, because we discussed that this morning, about how RSLs can't purchase or can't buy those properties because they're not up to the WHQS. That seems to me something that the Welsh Government needs to look at, because the gold plating, while admirable, if it means that kids are staying in temporary accommodation, that's not right. This is a question about the strategic approach, and the joined-up thinking seems to be, at the moment, 'Let's give this fund to councils, let's hope they employ an empty property officer, but if they don't, they don't'. As Casey will know from our work together in Wrexham, we don't have an EPO in Wrexham, and that means that all the well-meaning, good work and the funds that are available don't reach the people who need them. For me, one of the great failings is that we've got a pot of money that isn't being spent, and I'll come to that as a separate issue. I suppose the strategic approach is: how do we ensure that community groups have more of a say in this and are linked in with the councils? We did an inquiry seven years ago, or the previous Government did an inquiry seven years ago. We're doing an inquiry now. I don't want to come back in seven years and say, 'Actually, we've still got this problem—we haven't got an EPO in Wrexham.' We have to be more proactive in engaging with the community. You've made some really positive suggestions, but how do we make sure that the Welsh Government actually does this?

I think that putting it at a strategic level is really important, and I think that the Welsh Government needs to have a plan not just for empty homes, but for affordable homes and all kinds of homes in general. There needs to be a national housing plan for Wales that encompasses delivery from an RSL perspective and bringing empty homes back into use. Of course, I would love to see community-led housing being part of that mix, because I think we are putting plasters over bullet wounds in some cases. If there is a plan in place so that everybody knows their role, everybody knows what we're working towards and what we want to achieve, then I think it's more likely to happen than just having interventions here, there and everywhere, essentially.

We haven't had a housing strategy for 20 years. If you don't have a strategy, you then end up with unintended consequences all over the place. If you don't know as a committee already, you certainly will by the time you've looked at all the priorities: housing is such a connected area that you can't do a policy change over there without it impacting on something else elsewhere. Empty homes are just a small bit of that, but one of the mantras we come out with is that we can't build ourselves out of this housing crisis. It's about, I suppose, being more joined up between housing, sustainable communities and regeneration. It's that kind of interaction of people needing homes, but homes needing people and properties needing people. I'd love to see that sort of thing being tied into a future housing strategy for Wales.

Excellent, thanks.

That approach, I think, has got some interesting implications, if I could just chip in quickly. There are examples—for example, the Republic of Ireland has a national empty homes strategy and they've mandated local officers at local authority level. But if you look at it in the context of a housing strategy for Wales, what you are probably mandating is not a specific officer provision, but the provision of some officers or some officer resource that looks after that function. That might seem a bit dangerous, but I think if you're looking at it as an integrated housing strategy, with an awareness of issues like the health and well-being impact of poor housing, poor insulation and its impact on how affordable a house is to live in, as well as what its rental price is, I think if you look at it—. That seems very ambitious, but it does have implications. It's very easy for us all to sit here with our empty homes hats on and say that everybody needs an empty homes officer, but what we're really saying is that everybody needs an empty homes function that relates to its wider housing functions and understands the role of emptiness in housing. Because at some level or other, it's almost a truism to say that all homes will become empty at some point and you want fewer of them to become empty for less time, and you want the position when they are empty to be seen as an opportunity—perhaps an opportunity to improve them or to retrofit them—rather than purely as a problem.

Thank you, Chris. We're going to move on to local authority capacity, if anybody has any questions. We are up against it for time. We've had some exceptional questions and some really substantive answers, and I think that all I'll say is that if we get to a place where we're not able to ask all of the questions we want, we'll submit some written questions to the witnesses, and I'm sure they'll accommodate us. So, on local authority capacity, has anybody got anything they want to ask? Marc, you were down as the lead, but you've probably asked—

I think we know the answer now. We've had it from everybody, so I won't ask you to confirm that there's a lack of capacity.

I think it needs to go beyond just telling local authorities that they need to have capacity. We need to recognise the financial constraints that local authorities are under, that it's not a statutory duty, and actually ask the Welsh Government to put some money in themselves. In Scotland, it's actually match funded for a short period of time to prove the worth of having an officer, and that could be that more council tax comes in, that debts to social services and other departments start flowing in, because it's amazing, when you look at a property, how many different departments might be involved in that property financially. So, that match funding for local authorities to start having that resource to prove the worth I think is a really important message.

Who match funds it—the council?

It's match funded between the Government money and the local authority money, so it becomes less of a—

Burden.

Yes.

Can I just come in on a quick point on compulsory purchase orders as well? Looking to Scotland as an example, they've recently reformed the compulsory purchase order process, because they also recognised that it was not working for the majority of people and was very expensive. So, they've reformed that and hopefully made it more simple for people. But what they've also done is added a clause around working in partnership with community groups and housing associations, as well, to make it easier to bring those properties back into use. So, it doesn't all lie with the council having to bring those properties back into use, but they're able to work in partnership with these new compulsory purchase orders. So, it was just worth a reference to that work that's being done in Scotland.

You know the housing grant is underspent, so do you think it'd be good if you could get your hands on that sort of money? Because there's £45 million that's not spent. So, if it's not being used by the local authorities, surely it'd be good to hand it over to someone who would use it.

He's not offering, by the way.

No, I know. I'll take that back to the office and say we've got £45 million. [Laughter.] I mean, yes, we've long advocated for more funding and resource to be put into the community-led housing sector. We've developed a revolving loan fund business case that we've submitted to the Welsh Government for them to consider. The community-led housing sector is completely reliant on philanthropic lenders or trusts and foundations. If they work in partnership with housing associations, they can access social housing grant, but, a lot of the time, they don't actually want to work in partnership with housing associations because they don't trust them, or housing associations don't have capacity to be able to work with communities. So, if there was a fund available for community-led housing groups to be able to build new affordable homes but also bring empty homes back into use, then, obviously, that would be gratefully received, from our perspective.

I suppose, in a situation where you have increased build costs and a lack of appetite by developers, both social and private, there is an argument that unspent grant money for new builds should be spent on acquisition, because that way you can still carry on adding social stock, if that's what you want to add, or add community-owned stock.

I think the fact that the grant, specifically the eligibility criteria, is just for people moving in has potentially been a barrier to spend. Actually, grant is quite an unusual thing these days; it's normally loans. But we need to think what's happening in our housing market, fewer people are able to get mortgages, so we are offering money to people to do up empty properties to live in just at a time when people are struggling financially just to be able to live. So, rather than saying to local authorities, 'You're really bad for not spending it', it's being aware of the other stuff that has been going on around that money.

Thank you. We've probably covered some of the funding issues off. We've got three issues left. Do you want to ask a question, Marc?

Yes. I just want to take that up, because I think it's absolutely critical. You're aware of the East Marsh scheme in Grimsby— got there in the end. That's a very deprived part of Grimsby, where there was a derelict house in the middle of a street absolutely ruining everybody's lives. The community came together as East Marsh United and found the funding to do up one house, and from that one house they then got the income, the funding and the trust, I suppose, to do up three houses. And then it's gone to 10 houses, and I believe now they're aiming to do up 100 houses. It's one of those grass-roots-up initiatives, which I think Welsh Government could and should be funding. If it starts with one house, because you need that one house to start off with for people to see that it works, and I don't think that's a huge amount of money, but imagine if you fixed that one house in every community that's an eyesore—. It might not go any further than one house, but the potential is there for the community then to—. And I've got to ask a question now, haven't I? I just wonder, is that something that you think is scalable throughout Wales?

Yes, definitely, and I think the beauty of community-led housing as well, and you've touched upon it there, is that they can actually bring in additional grant funding as well to be able to bring these properties back into use. So, they're not solely reliant on Welsh Government or local authority funding. So, it does have the potential to grow, so it doesn't just have to be that one property, for example.

And, yes, we've got many groups across Wales who are currently trying to acquire empty homes to bring them back into use. But I think it's a perfectly scalable model; we see it happening across the UK and Europe and worldwide, so why not in Wales?

But a specific pot of money to enable that to happen would be very slow, I'm guessing.

And something we forget about when we're talking about community-led housing is that in the 1970s, a lot of our smaller housing associations started in that way, so we kind of talk about it as this new grass-roots thing, but that philanthropic community kind of action is where a lot of our housing associations—. They're stock transfers—that's where they started. So, it's not new. I'm a great advocate of looking at what we've already achieved.

Yes, I was recently at a couple of events for an organisation in Hull called Giroscope—one in Hull and one down in London—and they've just celebrated 40 years, and they literally started off that way. They started off with one house, now they've got over 100. Although they did stress that they acquired a third of their stock during that very short period when there was a funding programme that allowed them to have funding to acquire it, and that really emphasises how you can step things up, whether it's at the beginning or later on in the journey.

Thank you. Trystan.

I'm playing catch-up all the time, I'm sorry. You've been mentioning all this in Grimsby and Giroscope—it's what we're doing. For 10 years now, we've been bringing properties back into use without any local authority or Welsh Government funding, through lottery, self-generated income, trusts and grants. A lot of work goes into that. So, the model—it does work and it's doable. [Inaudible.]—10 years this June. So, these things are happening in Wales. We don't often get much contact from Welsh Government or others asking about how we've done it. So, there are case studies, good case studies, in our areas. We don't need to go to Grimsby or Hull to find them. [Laughter.]

Quite right. [Laughter.]

Thank you. Taxation—does anyone have anything they want to raise? Elyn.

I will be brief. I've got two questions. In terms of the class A and class C exemptions, I'd be interested to know what you make of them. Do you think they're having an impact for the newly purchased empty properties? And, secondly, are there any changes you would like to see to the tax system that would better enable community groups and third sector organisations to purchase empty properties?

Trystan.

I was waiting to speak, sorry—I guess I'll jump in first. What's been most difficult over the years is the 0 per cent, 30 per cent tax premiums. Our project takes six to 24 months to renovate these empty houses. We're working with local community groups to do that, so our tax bill is enormous, but we're bringing these properties back into use in a meaningful way and things are happening. So, the new exemptions are a step forward in the right direction, but they're still time-bound; I think they would be 12 months long. It would be good to see them aligned with the renovation plans, perhaps. But it's definitely a step forward in the right direction, anyway.

Yes, I agree with Trystan on that one, and I would obviously want to ensure that community groups are included in those exemptions.

On other taxes, I think land transaction tax can be a big barrier, especially for community groups. So, when you set up a community-led housing project, you will set up a society or a company that will acquire and manage those homes long term. And because of that status, you automatically have to pay the higher rate of land transaction tax. So we, as Cwmpas, would love to see community-led housing groups who are bringing affordable homes back into the market to be exempt from that higher rate of land transaction tax.

If I'm right, if you were a local authority purchasing it, you wouldn't pay the land transaction tax.

You would.

Would you?

Housing associations are exempted but local authorities aren't at the moment. So, even if they're buying back former council properties, at the moment, they have to pay land transaction tax.

Right. Okay, because that is obviously one of the many differences between the English and Welsh systems. Because in general, one of the things that we've been advocating is looking at capital gains tax and moving things from the private rented sector. We've been advocating, in the English context, capital gains tax relief for sales into social use, because that allows you to buy in a non-inflationary way, while also offering a benefit to both parties. Part of our model for that is obviously looking at the land transaction tax, or stamp duty, which isn't paid on sales into social use in most situations. So, yes, that's certainly something you could level out if you broadened the definition of what I would call sale into social use in a range of tax transactions, but certainly with the land transaction tax.

Trystan looks like he wants to say something about that, Chair.

No, it's just—[Inaudible.]—land transaction taxes, council tax. There's nothing more to add.

Okay, thank you. So, for legislation and enforcement powers, I know that Marc and Rebeca were down originally. Does anybody else want to come in as well, otherwise we'll move on from it?

The two exemptions you mentioned, by the way—. You mentioned class A, didn't you, which is for repairs. What was the other one you mentioned?

Class C.

The trickiness of reforming a 12-month class A limit is that it gets taken advantage of by people who are not as well intentioned as Trystan is.

I was just going to say that premiums could be doing more. So, only about a third of local authorities actually charge up to the 300 per cent, which they've been able to do since 2023. There's also no correlation between the ones with the most empties charging the most premium. So, I totally take Trystan's point about exemptions and that sort of thing, but for the ones where we really do want to do the stick of the premium, just thinking about the revenue that it could be bringing in, particularly if it was ring-fenced, then it could be working harder.

The other thing that I just need to mention is VAT. And, okay, it's out of the Senedd's control, but you don't pay VAT on new builds but you do on refurbishments. And I'm sure that Trystan would be more than happy to tell us about VAT as a whole extra subject, but it's incentivising new build as better than doing something with what we've already got.

All right. The last theme is communities and partner agencies, if anyone has anything on that. Mike.

Perhaps I should say I'm a member of the Co-operative Party, and I've written quite extensively on co-operative housing in terms of pamphlets and articles. The Welsh Government, I would say, following my continual pressure on co-operative housing or out of their previous commitment actually started spending and making money available—nowhere near enough. Nationwide also started giving you money. Again, nowhere near enough. Have you put in any long-term funding to be provided so that we can bring more properties into co-operative ownership?

Obviously, the Welsh Government has funded us at Cwmpas as the community-led housing hub for over 10 years now, and we've been lucky enough to access grants from trusts and foundations like the Nationwide Foundation. We've never had a stand-alone fund for community-led housing as they have in England, which I think has been a challenge. It's helped our community groups to be very inventive in terms of where they get their funding from, but it is a jigsaw puzzle on every project to be able to get that funding in place. So, like I mentioned earlier, we've put together a business proposal for a revolving loan fund, which would be a mix of grants from Welsh Government and grants from social investors, but also loans from social investors to be able to grow the community-led housing sector. I think it's really needed. Again, like I mentioned earlier, community-led housing groups are currently reliant on community lending, philanthropic lenders, and then a few banks and building societies that actually lend to this sector. So, I do think there needs to be a conversation about how we can increase the funding for community-led housing.

We have been able to change some policies. So, with the national empty homes grant, for example, community groups can access that. We were lucky enough to have had some land and buildings development funding for some of our groups in the last couple of years, but now that has kind of been stopped and Welsh Government are looking at what the options are. But, yes, we would advocate for a revolving loan fund for the community-led housing sector.

How do we get like the rest of western Europe and North America? I mean, in areas like New York, co-operative housing is popular. The Dakota building, where John Lennon lived—. There certainly weren't only poor people living in those type of houses. You've got it in Ireland, you've got it across the whole of continental Europe, you've got Vancouver, with more co-operative housing than the whole of Britain. What do we need to do in order to try and move in that direction?

I definitely think it's a culture issue, isn't it, really, in terms of—. I think in the UK and in Wales, we're bred to want to own our property and see them as assets and see them as our retirement plan rather than an actual home for people. I remember being in university and a lecturer asked us, 'Do you want to own your own home when you finish?' And all of the British students put their hand up; none of the European or Asian students did because it's just not in their culture. So, I definitely think there's a culture shift that needs to happen. But, yes, I think the key things for us are that investment into community-led housing, but also the awareness of it. Like Wendy said, it's not a particularly new concept. There are organisations that have been going for 40, 50 years. Cymdeithas Tai Gwynedd in Gwynedd—that was set up by Dafydd Iwan in the 1970s, and they've grown and acquired properties as they've gone along. So, it's definitely not a new concept. So, I think funding is a real key issue, awareness and planning as well, making sure that the planning system works for community groups as well.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Does anybody have any further questions for the witnesses?

I think the point about awareness is so important, because, until today, I wasn't aware of Trystan's organisation. And I think, if nothing else, it's been really useful to become aware of the challenges you've got, but also the opportunities. There are so many ideas there and there's so much best practice going on, but, again, like the EPOs, it's very bitty, it's not joined up. And I think it's incumbent on us as a committee, or Welsh Government, to actually join the dots and make sure that we've got best practice everywhere and learning from the good examples we have here in Wales, as well as in Grimsby, about how we can make a difference. And it's not rocket science, is it, really?

No. So, something that we do at Cwmpas is to try and tell the stories of the community groups that we're working with. We had our national conference last week, which was a great success and an opportunity to showcase the groups that we're supporting. But we've also pulled together an exhibition of the community groups that we're supporting, which will be touring across Wales in the coming months. So, keep your eyes peeled for that exhibition to be in a community venue near you soon.

Thank you. A question for the witnesses: is there anything you'd like to add? We've got a few minutes. Is there anything that you'd like to throw in here whilst you're here? It's an open floor. The £45 million underspend was not a conditional offer. [Laughter.] I just want to be clear on that.

We've written it down.

Yes, it's minuted.

I suppose what I would throw in, picking up on the point that's just been made—and this is something that we always try and stress in the English and the wider UK context—is that one of the things that we really do need, and it's another distinction from continental Europe, is that we need more diversity of supply. So, more diversity of delivery methods of housing, whether it's reused housing and retrofitted housing or whether it's new build. Because we are over-reliant on large-scale development in this country. And that is an enormous distinction from all of our major European compatriots, where they have much more self-build, much more community build, much more co-operatives, much more smaller developers. So, that is one thing I would chuck in. We really need to think in a more diverse way. And if that diversity opened up a situation where there was more funding available for community organisations to acquire and for co-operatives to be set up, then I think that would be hugely helpful. And it would fill that kind of gap, which is often talked about, between the housing of most urgent need and the housing of greatest affordability or of easy affordability. Essentially, we have people who can easily afford their living conditions and we have people who really can't and there is actually quite a lot of it in the middle that can be filled quite nicely by some of that more diverse, co-operative and community housing.

Yes. I couldn't have said it better myself. We recently had a report commissioned by Joy Kent, who, I'm sure, many of you will be familiar with. She worked in the housing sector for many years, and she was looking at specific communities that may have not traditionally thought about community-led housing, so people with learning disabilities, people with physical disabilities, young homeless people and people coming through the refugee system. And it was very much that these people may not be in the most need and they may not be atop of that council list, but they have the desire and the agency to be able to do something about it themselves. Often, when they approach the local authority with their ideas, or a housing association, they're shut down, and people don't help them. But, obviously, we are there to step in and to take them through that process. I think that point in terms of the people in the middle who, let's face it, will never get housed by a local authority or an RSL, but can't afford to buy privately—there is a space there for community and co-operative solutions.

Trystan, I noticed you had your hand up.

I was just going to say, along the way, we've got into a bit of a mess in terms of our homes became assets. We talk about rental yields and profits, rather than just being our home. If you watch Homes Under the Hammer, you know, you'll get a feel of that. But Maslow says shelter, home, is the foundation, and I think if we get this area right—. We work with so many people who, when you boil it back down to what's going on, they haven't got that stable home. They can't build on it. They can't get access to employment or training or move forward in life because that home isn't stable. It impacts everything. So, I think, call them 'homes', not 'assets', and getting this right is so important to everything that precedes that.

Thank you. Well, it's been quite an eye-opening morning for us. I'd like to personally thank Marc for raising it before recess as something that we would wish to pursue. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all the witnesses who've attended. Thank you so much for your time. I hope you don't mind, but if we do have any additional questions after this, when we're having a chat, we will send them to you. But you have my and the committee's thanks for presenting yourselves today. Trystan, thank you so much for your appearance. Thank you very much. We will send a transcript out to you to check for factual accuracy, and that will be with you quite shortly. Thank you very much.

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.