CHC statement on Welsh Government response to Housing Vulnerable People report
Bryony Haynes outlines how the Welsh Government's response to the report represents a missed opportunity
The Welsh Government’s recent response to the Local Government and Housing Committee’s report on housing support for vulnerable people has been debated in the Senedd.
A common theme of the debate was the tribute to the housing support workforce. Joel James MS called for consistent funding that is guaranteed and permits them to get on with the job of helping people, rather than having to spend so much time applying for grants, worrying about the next funding cycle, or worrying about whether they will qualify for an uplift in funding.
Our response to the Committee’s inquiry reflected the numerous challenges our members’ housing support services are experiencing, including funding certainty, the lack of robust national data, partnership working at a local level, and workforce retention.
Central to these concerns is the historically underfunded and undervalued Housing Support Grant (HSG), which is an essential instrument for preventing homelessness and sustaining people in tenancies. Our response called for the Welsh Government to:
Stabilise the housing support sector by protecting existing commissioned housing support services through sufficient and ring-fenced multi-year funding that fully meets the cost of delivering services and investing in the skilled workforce.
Invest in granular data on housing needs to better understand the demand for, and progress made, on meeting housing support needs. This should be used as a basis to establish a more accurate long-term investment of HSG funding. We were pleased that this ask was also referenced in the Committee’s report.
Whilst the Welsh Government accepts many of the challenges around demand, complexity, pressure, and the necessity of the HSG, we are disappointed that their response maintains budgetary constraints, stopping short of structural reforms to rebase and ring-fence funding.
We welcome the embracement of the role that the Homelessness & Social Housing Allocations Bill could play as a key vehicle to embed many of the changes in prevention and cooperation.
However, the success of legislative reform relies on a properly funded HSG. We feel that a vital opportunity has been missed to articulate a vision for a future system that unlocks untapped potential by building long-term funding certainty so that providers can effectively plan and deliver better outcomes for service users and their staff.
On data, we are pleased to see the Welsh Government accept ours and the committee’s recommendation to share a national summary of the HSG outcomes data later in 2025, based on data submitted relating to 2024-25. This will enable the housing support sector to evaluate progress being made and identify good practice.