New Housing Bill set to make Wales a better place to live

Welsh Labour’s Housing Minister, Carl Sargeant, has today published Wales’ first Housing Bill which sets out an ambitious programme of action to make Wales a better place to live and ensure that everyone in Wales is able to access a decent home.

The Bill takes forward proposals set out in the Housing White Paper “Homes for Wales” in 2012. It sets out a series of legislative proposals that will make a difference to people and communities in Wales by:

• Helping people access a decent, affordable home and ensuring those at risk of becoming homeless receive the help they need.
• Raising standards in the private rented sector and placing a greater emphasis on action to prevent people from becoming homeless.
• Providing local authorities with the power to introduce, should they wish to do so, an increased rate of council tax on long term empty homes.
• Placing a duty on local authorities to provide sites for Gypsy and Traveller communities where a need has been identified.
• Assisting the expansion of co-operative housing as another way of increasing the supply of affordable homes.
• Setting standards for those local authorities that retain their housing stock on rents, services charges and quality of accommodation and supporting the achievement of the Welsh Housing Quality Standard.
• Abolishing the Housing Revenue Account Subsidy system to enable stock retaining local authorities to become self-financing.