Welsh councils granted more time to meet housing quality standard
2012 deadline extended
The Welsh Assembly has given a number of landlords significant extensions to the 2012 deadline it set for them to bring their homes up to its housing quality standard.
It has also set up a task group to monitor the progress of struggling landlords. The country has a total of 221,000 social homes.
No central data has ever been gathered on who will hit the target, with landlords left to measure their own success and there is no standard way of measuring landlords’ compliance.
The new task group will come up with a uniform way of measuring the standard.
The Welsh Assembly Government confirmed that five of its 22 councils have been granted an extension. They are Blaenau Gwent, Carmarthenshire, Vale of Glamorgan, Caerphilly and Neath Port Talbot. Three housing associations have also gained extensions: Newport City Homes, Methyr Valleys Homes and Tai Ceredigion.
Carmarthenshire’s head of housing, Robin Staines, explained this was because the local authority had created a higher standard for itself. ‘We had a different method of looking at the standard,’ he said.
‘There are certainly some authorities that will struggle to meet it. But most authorities will have robust plans [even if] it [meeting the standard] may be after 2012.’
Other councils, such as Swansea and Wrexham, which have seen tenants vote against transfer in the past few years, will struggle to hit the standard in time. Peter May, cabinet member for housing at Swansea Council, said current financial rules mean it ‘can’t access the money needed to meet the government’s standards’.
A spokesperson for the WAG said that ‘applications for extensions beyond 2012 will be considered on their own merits’.
Elin Jones, housing and regeneration manager at CIH Cymru, said: ‘The problem [with monitoring] is they [landlords] are all measuring it in different ways and I doubt many are measuring it [at all].’
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