What is the Welsh Government doing to increase housing supply in South Wales Central?
Welsh Government is committed to delivering more homes across the whole of Wales, as signalled by our Programme for Government commitment to fund the supply of 20,000 new low carbon homes for rent in the social sector. In recognition of this commitment, we have set record levels of investment through the Social Housing Grant: £300m for this current year with indicative draft budget allocations of £330m in 2023-24 and £325m in 2024-25. For South Wales Central, this means an increase in investment from £56.6m in 2021-22 to £65.7m in 2022-23.
The Land for Housing scheme offers Registered Social Landlords loans to secure land for the development of housing. We have invested £82 million in the scheme to date, which will facilitate the delivery of over 7,800 homes across Wales, 72% of which will be affordable homes. A further £8 million has been made available for the scheme for 2022-23.
Whilst our housing target focuses on social housing, we also recognise the continued need to support the provision of homes of all tenures. We especially want to support small and medium sized house builders to play a larger role in delivering the homes we need in Wales. The Wales Property Development and Wales Stalled Sites Funds offer loan finance to SME house builders for housing development. In 2021-22, we allocated an additional £15 million to these funds, bringing the total funding provided to £117 million. This investment supports a revolving fund available to support housing development on an ongoing basis.