North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has challenged the Housing Minister this week over the lack of targets for accessible homes for disabled people.
Responding to this week’s Statement in the Assembly Chamber by the Minister for Housing and Regeneration: ‘Integrating Housing, Health and Social Care’, Mr Isherwood expressed concern that current housing targets fail to focus on the housing needs of disabled people.
He said:
“I was delighted to see that the need for housing to be put at the heart of health and social care, and broader community regeneration, is acknowledged - a point I was banging away on back in 2003 in this place, when there were warnings that if urgent action wasn't taken, Wales would face the housing supply crisis that we now have.
“But, moving on, two weeks ago, I Chaired the Cross Party Group on Disability and I wonder how you respond to the findings presented to us by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on 'Housing and disabled people: Wales' hidden crisis'.
“I'll just give three of them: how do you respond to their findings that there's no target in the Welsh Government's 20,000 affordable housing target by 2021 for accessible homes, that only one out of 22 local authorities have set a percentage target for accessible and affordable homes, and that only 15 per cent of local authorities in Wales said that the information they had about disabled people's housing requirements was 'good'?”
In her reply, the Cabinet Secretary said she does recognise “the seriousness of the report and the need to ensure that we do more in terms of accessibility”.