Council Homes

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:55 pm on 4 March 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:55, 4 March 2020

Yes, it's a very good point. We are, of course, supporting the 11 councils in Wales who have retained their stock of council homes, but we're also working very hard with the non-stockholding councils who did stock transfers. We do provide what's called 'dowry' to the large stock voluntary transfers—basically, they're registered social landlords, but they used to be the council housing. So, we are working very hard with them and the local council to make sure that, together, we can get an investment programme going. Of course, we put social housing plant into those and, as I said, we provide what's called 'dowry' to them as well. So, we are working very hard to make sure that people who live—. You ought not to be able to notice whether you live in a stockholding council or a non-stockholding council. What we build are social homes, and some of those will be run by our registered social landlords and some will be run by the council, and it ought not to matter to the tenant what difference that makes. 

Again, in response to the affordable housing review, we will be looking at the way that we use that grant to lever some changes in for the tenant. We want to make sure that tenant satisfaction ratings are up high, that we have the right kind of tenant participation in decision making and so on. That will affect council housing as well as the registered social landlord sector. I've also said many times in this Chamber that I'm looking at a governance review for the tenant satisfaction part of being a council house runner, not the governance and finance part, because obviously that's controlled through the local government settlement.