James Evans has called for a “radical overhaul” of the planning system to increase the numbers of houses being built.

The Brecon and Radnorshire MS’s comments come as the latest Senedd figures show that the number of new dwellings started across Wales between April 2021 and March 2022 was 5,659, with 5,273 dwellings completed.

In Powys, 352 new dwellings were started across the same period, with 237 of these completed.

Mr Evans said: “These figures are disappointing. The Labour Government in Cardiff Bay have failed on housebuilding and there aren’t enough houses either from the private sector or social housing. Labour have imposed stricter regulations on developers making it much harder to obtain planning permission to build new homes in our area.

“However, there is a solution - we need a radical overhaul of our planning system to encourage development. I believe that if a site has not applied for planning or been developed within a certain time frame then the planning permission should be revoked”

“We cannot keep our young people stuck in generation rent forever,” he added.