In Wales, landlords are required to provide carpet and flooring – why has England refused to follow our lead?

Until recently in Wales (and across the UK), many social housing providers didn’t provide new flooring for new tenants, for several reasons, including the financial cost of new flooring and fear of liability for not retaining good existing flooring from the previous tenant.

Tpas Cymru was horrified to hear stories of social housing tenants queuing to receive free second-hand office carpet tiles from a charitable organisation. Which is why, in 2020, having consulted with tenants and landlords across Wales, we jointly published the Floored report with our partner, Tai Pawb. It struck a chord with tenants, landlords and Welsh government officials.

“Vital to embracing the challenge were Welsh government officials – they understood the impact flooring could have on tenants’ lives”

The stories we heard from tenants were heartbreaking, particularly from those with children. One said: “[My floor was] left bare and in a horrendous condition when moved in... [I] cannot afford to floor the whole house. [There are] huge holes, nails, gaps for bugs to enter, floods and loose floorboards and dangerous areas where the children hurt themselves.”

The report highlighted that a lack of adequate and safe flooring for tenants can have a detrimental impact on their health and well-being. It identified several concerns including splinters, heat loss resulting in tenants being cold or in pain, risks to children crawling on concrete floors and mental health issues.

Tenants also spoke of not feeling able to welcome visitors due to embarrassment and adverse effects on existing health conditions such as asthma. They mentioned landlords removing and skipping good carpet on a new let because their void standards were set as ‘no carpets’.

Following the Floored report, Tpas Cymru and Tai Pawb spearheaded the campaign for flooring standards to be included in Welsh housing policy. A key part of that was involving landlords in the dialogue, which was achieved by facilitating a series of workshops where landlords could share best practice and work proactively on how flooring standards could be improved in their own homes and across the sector.

In bringing landlords together, we set the sector the clear challenge – how do we make this happen? Under what circumstances would you clean and reuse carpets from vacating tenants? How can we partner at scale with other social landlords and with the local supply chain? How do we give the tenants a choice of colour and texture?

“Welsh government officials instructed landlords to ensure they did not purchase cheap flooring that would fall apart instantly or be in a skip within 18 months”

Vital to embracing the challenge were Welsh government officials – they understood the impact flooring could have on tenants’ lives. They saw the barriers facing individual social housing tenants and families attempting to find a solution, with little to no means. The positive change tenants needed in Wales came from Welsh government officials truly getting on board.

Encouragingly, this commitment extended beyond the bare minimum. In one session, Welsh government officials instructed landlords to ensure they did not purchase cheap flooring that would fall apart instantly or be in a skip within 18 months. They understood that quality flooring should last – and that tenant safety and dignity should remain paramount.

True victory for social housing tenants came when the Welsh government included whole-home flooring requirements in the revised 2023 Welsh Housing Quality Standard. It not only set out new habitable room requirements but also set standards for quality and choice. This was published in October 2023, and was implemented across all new lettings in March 2024.

I am very proud of the Welsh housing sector for how it positively embraced this new requirement. Has it always been easy? No. Does it come at a cost and add another task to void turnaround? Yes, it does. But here we are, two years on from implementation and the social housing sector is vastly improved because of it.

We see comments in England that it can’t be done or shouldn’t. To those critics I say: come to Wales and see for yourself. It can be done; we have done it here.

What it really takes is a government that is truly committed to putting it into action. The inclusion of flooring for social homes is about more than aesthetics. It is about dignity and respect for tenants’ safety and well-being. Floor coverings are an integral part of that.

David Wilton, chief executive, Tpas Cymru