Perhaps it’s time the massive rural housing problem was handed over to someone who can appreciate the issue; it should be split from the rather different issue in urban areas.
I say this after getting the feel that otherwise not much will happen unless someone starts burning homes down again.
In other words, a special housing section should be set up under rural affairs minister Elin Jones – who currently does not much more than look after the nation’s cows and sheep – although there are more of them than there are of people, and sometimes they are more sensible.
I say this after hearing the performance from deputy housing minister Jocelyn Davies. I found it truly amazing how government ministers can be totally de-sexed politically once the civil service get hold of them.
Ms Davies was responding to the strongly-argued final report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Commission on Rural Housing in Wales.
This is an issue which never gets the action it deserves because – whatever the politicians say – it is too-totally subsumed into the similar, but different, urban housing problem.
If you don’t experience its problems in some way or other, it’s difficult to get worked up. If you do suffer, or live in its midst, it’s difficult to disconnect from one’s internal anger.
Although she’s Plaid, Ms Davies hails from Newbridge in Gwent’s Western Valley, and presumably comes into the first category. Admittedly, her speech at the launch listed 10 initiatives, four of them new.
But it took commission chairman Dr Derec Llwyd Morgan, former vice-chancellor of Aberystwyth university, to breathe some excitement into the dry civil service-ese. He spoke of the four rural housing “enablers” in parts of Gwynedd, who have “worked superbly” in organising all stages up to the construction of four small estates.
When he heard Ms Davies setting aside money to enable appointment of a string of such officials, he breathed how “glad” he was that the minister had not delivered the “anaemic” response he had feared.
The truth would seem to be that everything rural is on such a small scale that no-one can be bothered – particularly when set against urban problems.
And, with civil servants in charge of the agenda in an extremely complicated area, it is inevitable that officers will lead.
When Ms Davies spoke, I’m afraid her words sounded like an HMV record – Her Master’s Voice. I suppose it’s the lack of personal experience of the problem.
The civil servants wouldn’t relish the upset of handing the rural problem is Ms Jones. But the problem might get solved faster – if only because the minister would breathe personal fire over some of the local authority officials, who seem the chief culprits.
Comments
