Welsh government plans to invest additional £81m in delivering new social homes

Furthermore, an additional £26.25m has been made available in development loans to RSLs via the RSL Development Loans scheme, £57m for Help to Buy Wales and £5.5m in capital funding in the Independent Living Programme, which supports housing adaptations.

The Welsh government is extending the Help to Buy Wales scheme by a further 18 months and the RSL Development Loans scheme for one year.

It said that the primary focus of capital investment in the housing and local government portfolio will be on social homes, helping the country’s government to meet its target of building 20,000 social rent homes.

Mark Drakeford, cabinet secretary for finance, said: “This is a Budget for a brighter future, delivering an extra £1.5bn for our public services and priorities, helping to put Wales firmly back on the path of growth after 14 difficult years. This is in stark contrast to the last couple of years when we have been forced to make some very difficult and painful decisions.

“This draft Budget offers a real opportunity to start to rebuild and reinvigorate our public services. It delivers increases to all departments and a significant boost in capital funding, meaning more investment in the very fabric of our nation – in our school and NHS estate, in housing and in public infrastructure.

“This is a good Budget for Wales. But it will take time to reverse the damage inflicted on Wales over 14 long years of neglect from previous UK administrations.”

Reaction from the sector

Matt Dicks, national director of the Chartered Institute of Housing Cymru, welcomed the £81m in additional investment to deliver more social rent homes in Wales, but said this falls short of what is needed.

“We welcome the additional £81m to help deliver more homes at social rent in Wales. This ongoing commitment to delivering new homes is vital so that we can tackle the ongoing housing emergency,” he said.

“Despite this welcomed increase, it falls well short of the additional £580m to £740m that a recent report by Audit Wales said would be needed to reach the 20,000 target by March 2026.

“Furthermore, there is no significant increase in the amount allocated to improving and decarbonising our existing social homes.

“Social landlords in Wales share the ambitions of the Welsh government around building new affordable homes and making existing ones more sustainable, but those twin ambitions have already placed great pressure on existing business models of housing organisations, and whilst there is a significant increase in capital investment in this draft Budget, it is unlikely to shift the dial enough to deliver on those ambitions at the pace and scale needed to end our housing emergency.”

Stuart Ropke, chief executive of Community Housing Cymru, the membership body for housing associations in Wales, said the draft Budget is “an important step forward” for building the affordable homes urgently needed and preventing more people from reaching crisis.

He said: “The additional £21m allocated to the Housing Support Grant – the primary mechanism for preventing homelessness and supporting independent living – means that the vital services funded by it can continue their life-changing work for another year. Support providers will be better placed to continue to run high-quality services, and pay staff fairly for the important work they do.

“As housing associations build approximately 70 per cent of social homes in Wales, the extra £81m capital funding allows us to continue to make progress at pace on building the new homes so urgently needed.

“There is much more to do to address the full scale of the housing crisis in Wales, but today’s draft Budget provides much-needed certainty that will help us make progress together at pace.”