Council Homes

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:58 pm on 4 March 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:58, 4 March 2020

Well, I have to say I agree with the second bit. I also was at Swansea at the time, and Mike Hedges will certainly remember that I was on that side of the argument as well. However, the stock transfers were done in order to be able to secure the finance necessary to bring the houses up to the Welsh housing quality standard. That was then and life has very much changed now. So, I think the short answer to your question is that councils that have closed their housing revenue accounts could, if they wanted to, open the HRA account again and start up, but for small numbers of houses, that's quite an expensive route to it, and so most of them—in fact all of them, I'm pretty sure—are choosing not to do that. Gwynedd Council is building four new low-carbon homes to improve the quality of homelessness provision in the borough, but there are some complications, basically, with the way that the housing revenue account has to work as soon as you have council tenants once more, which we are exploring with them. 

What we are expecting, though, as I just said in answer to Llyr, is that in the 11 areas of Wales where councils have transferred their housing stock to a large-scale voluntary transfer housing association, we expect them to work with that LSVT housing association and other registered social landlords in their area to build social housing. I keep making the point that it's not about council housing, it's about social housing. Most people don't care much who their landlord is as long as they get good service charges, good tenant relations, good repairs, good whatever. So, what we want to do is make sure that the sector, wherever you are in Wales, steps up to that plate and we have good tenant satisfaction and good services across the social house sector.