Wales’ final Budget includes £437m for new homes

Audit Wales, the body responsible for making sure public money is managed well, estimated last year that the Welsh government may need “as much as £580m to £740m” in extra funding “to get close to meeting the target” of building 20,000 new low-carbon social homes for rent by March 2026.

CIH Cymru said the increase does show “a commitment to developing much-needed new homes in Wales and helps mitigate some of the inflationary pressures of the past now baked into the Welsh economy”.

The Budget also includes an £81m uplift in funding for the Social Housing Grant and Transitional Accommodation Capital Programme, as well as an additional £21m for the Housing Support Grant, which funds frontline housing and homelessness services.

These are also unchanged from the draft Budget.

However, CIH Cymru said there are concerns that “other homelessness prevention grants have received a cash-flat settlement at a time of rising homelessness and temporary accommodation use”.

Research from CIH Cymru last year found that the impact of overstretched budgets and heavy workloads had left housing professionals in Wales “at breaking point”.

Housing charity Shelter Cymru has also warned that families in Wales face an increased risk of homelessness after the UK government’s decision to freeze housing benefit levels.

The local government settlement will see an additional £8.4m in 2025-26, with each local authority receiving at least a 3.8% increase.

Funding for decarbonisation is also a concern, CIH Cymru said, with an extra £3m taking the total pot to £95m.

Matt Dicks, national director at CIH Cymru, said: “The additional £3m allocated to decarbonising our homes is unlikely to meet the shared ambitions of social landlords in Wales and Welsh government around building new affordable homes and decarbonising our existing homes.

“The capital investment allocations are unlikely to shift the dial enough to deliver on those ambitions at the pace and scale needed to end our housing emergency, while also making our existing homes more sustainable.”

The Budget will go to a final vote on 4 March.