HB 43
National Assembly for Wales
Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee
Housing (Wales) Bill: Stage 1
Response from: Flintshire County Council
Dear Minister
Housing (Wales)
Bill
This is a
really exciting time for us as a Welsh nation as we develop our
first Housing Act. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the
draft Bill. Flintshire has provided feedback at every stage so far
and worked closely with the WLGA and the Housing profession to
provide input and views, but I wanted to take this final
opportunity to summarise this councils view on some key
areas.
Homeless
prevention
Flintshire fully
supports the increased focus on homeless prevention, and Flintshire
has agreed to pilot the new legislation and the introduction of a
Housing Solutions service from April this year. We do however have
a concern about the increased cost to local authorities at a time
of severely constrained budgets. We support the proposals to assess
the vulnerability of those leaving prison and for the duty to only
apply to those who are vulnerable, rather than all ex-offenders as
at present. .
We do have some
concerns that the duty to provide accommodation for intentionally
homeless families with children, from 2019, will produce the
unintended consequence of increasing homelessness within this
group. Flintshire supports the proposal to strengthen the duty of
Housing Associations to work positively with Local Authorities to
meet the needs of homeless people. We are not convinced of the
benefits of a separate homeless strategy and feel this could be met
via identification of need and actions to address it in the Single
Integrated plan.
Private Rented
Sector
Flintshire is
developing a package of options to support the growth of the PRS to
enable it to discharge duty there. The council supports proposals
for the introduction of a licensing scheme, as a means to raise
standards, however this could increase costs for the Local
Authority as if issues with property standards are uncovered
additional pressures will be created for the Environmental Health
Service in taking forward enforcement action.
Gypsy
travellers
We fully support the
proposals to create a legal responsibility to meet the needs of the
Gypsy traveller community as in Flintshire we have always taken
this responsibility very seriously and have felt that neighbouring
authorities have not always been as pro-active. However this duty
needs to recognise that Councils will need WG capital resource to
meet this responsibility.
HRA subsidy
system
Finally as you are
aware the council fully supports the proposals to exit the HRA
subsidy system as this will not only provide some additional
resource to fund the delivery of the WHQS programme, but will also
provide the potential for a council house building programme.