Rent for thousands of council house tenants in Carmarthenshire is expected to rise by an average of 2.7% in April, or £2.85 per week. It’s one of the lowest increases over the past 20 years and most people living in the council’s 9,400-odd homes would only pay 2.62% more, councillors were told.
The proposed rent increase will be debated by the council’s cabinet and need full council approval before coming into effect. Cllr Alun Lenny, cabinet member for resources, said housing contractor costs had risen a lot and that employer National Insurance contributions were also going up. “Keeping rents affordable for tenants is proving to be very difficult,” he said.
If the council’s rent proposal is approved it’ll mean tenants paying on average £108.59 per week, which members of the communities, homes and regeneration scrutiny committee heard was significantly below private rental rates. A committee report said 40% of tenants received universal credit – a monthly welfare payment which replaced a number of other benefits. A further 20.4% were on full housing benefit, which is generally being superseded by universal credit, 12.3% were on partial housing benefit, and 27.3% didn’t receive any housing benefit. Rent arrears to date, said the report, had only gone up slightly.
The council intends to spend £282 million maintaining and investing in its housing stock and providing housing services over the next three years, including £50 million building and acquiring affordable homes. The report said: “We, along with all authorities in Wales, are experiencing unprecedented housing pressures where demand for affordable housing is exceeding supply.”
On average 35 households in the county presented as homeless every week and only 15 social homes were on average allocated for them. There are 150-plus households in temporary accommodation at any one time. Most need single-person accommodation. There was further pressure, said the report, from requirements of recent immigration and asylum policies, as well as early prisoner release schemes.
Energy-efficient council houses have been built in areas including this scheme at Dylan, on the outskirts of Llanelli
(Image: Carmarthenshire Council)
Just over half of the £50 million investment in affordable homes over the next three years would fund new-build schemes, while some of it would be spent buying private sector homes and on supported temporary accommodation. The report said the council intends to develop large-scale council housing sites. Cllr Ken Howell asked, among other things, where these would be located, adding that there was “no space for them out in the country obviously”. Cabinet member for housing, Cllr Linda Evans, said there wouldn’t be any in Cllr Howell’s home area of Penboyr, but she didn’t go on to say where they might be built.
Affordable homes are also built by housing associations, and by developers as part of legal agreements tied to planning permissions. The committee was also told that 144 council homes were currently empty out of the circa 9,400 total, and that work was being carried out in almost half of them. Cllr Evans said this proportion of void properties was very low. She added: “It does take time to get them back into use.”
Just over a fifth of council housing stock in Carmarthenshire has oil heating, more than two-thirds have gas, while just over 1% have air source heat pumps powered by electricity. A council officer said more air source heat pumps would be added via retrofit projects and when new homes were built. “That (number) will increase in the future,” she said.