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Apologies that blogging has taken a back seat for the past few days. I'll comfort myself with the thought that .

This morning the death was announced of the Housing LCO. One half expected to find a small announcement in the obituaries section of the Western Mail - perhaps along the lines of:

In Affectionate Remembrance
of
THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING LCO
Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances
R.I.P.
N.B. - The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Gwydyr House.

Those of you of a sporting bent will get the reference...In terms of the saga itself, I won't go through it again. I'll leave you to catch up with the tortuous life and now death of the Assembly Government's first attempt to gain powers that would allow them to increase the numbers of affordable houses.

It has been formally withdrawn but don't despair. A new one has been born, even if Andrew Davies' announcement at this morning's briefing felt every so slightly premature, as though the man holding the new baby could have done with a few more weeks before telling the world about it.

But a brand new LCO there is. It'll be included in the Government's new legislative programme before the end of the term and then tabled in the Autumn. There's some suggestion that having seen the original, this LCO's spin around Whitehall departments for approval could take a little less time. All the same, I'll state the obvious: there will be an election by next Spring at the latest and if the LCO hasn't made it through all the hoops before then, it'll be back to the beginning in Westminster terms at least.

Will the new Order include the controversial powers that would allow the Assembly Government to abolish the Right to Buy in some areas? Mr Davies said that their "thinking on the whole issue of affordable housing has moved on considerably" and there was now a need for much broader powers over the area.

Here was proof, he said, that the LCO system was working.

Funny that. Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have read it as proof that the process is, in NIck Bourne's words, "falling apart at the seams".

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