Community & Adult Services Scrutiny Committee

Members were advised that this report sought to provide Members with background information to enable their pre-decision scrutiny of the draft Cabinet Report. The Chair reminded Members that appendices B to G were exempt and as such any discussion pertaining to these documents would have to take place in closed session. For this item, the Chair welcomed: Cllr Lynda Thorne Cabinet Member for Housing & Communities Helen Evans Assistant Director of Housing & Communities Jane Thomas Director of Adults, Housing & Communities Dave Jaques Assistant Director, Development and Regeneration The Cabinet Member was invited to make an opening statement, after which officers gave a presentation. The Cabinet Member noted that a number of emerging pressures had placed even greater demand on what was already an ongoing housing emergency. This report sought in-principle approval for further large-scale property purchases, particularly in relation to single homelessness, and also provided feedback on the public consultation as agreed by Cabinet in May. Officers added that since its declaration of a housing emergency in December 2023, Cabinet had considered and approved a range of recommendations to reduce demand and increase emergency, temporary and permanent accommodation. The key underlying issue was the lack of affordable housing, and this led to the current situation where all standard temporary accommodation units were full and there were more than 9,000 people on the housing waiting list. They identified a number of key areas of progress, including an 80% rate of homelessness prevention and waiting times for appointments reduced from 30 to 8 days. The Gasworks project in Grangetown was nearing completion, and would offer 154 high quality units of family accommodation. Purchases from the open market had resulted in an additional 146 properties available to let since April 2022, and they were working with registered social landlords to identify new and existing properties providing additional temporary and settled accommodation. The early release of low risk prisoners was a key emerging pressure, leading to an increase of more than 120% in the number of prison leavers requiring accommodation (from 52 to 115). The government had also allowed some eligible prisoners to be released after serving 40% of their sentence, in two tranches on 10th September and 22nd October, with Cardiff having the second highest number of expected releases across the UK. The acceleration of asylum decisions by the Home Office also had an impact, with 341 single people and 119 families presenting since September 2023. Work was underway on the Scott Harbour site in Cardiff Bay, offering 33 units by March and a further 65 next September, while plans were progressing on Pierhead Street, which would offer 120 modular units in the same vein as the Gasworks scheme. Three further potential options had been identified on the open market which could provide 280 further units for single people, and the report sought approval for these. All three opportunities were within the parameters of the approved HRA business plan. One was an existing student accommodation block with 103 units, which could be occupied by clients in October 2025, the second was an operational hotel with 150 units for immediate use, and the latter was a 20 bed House of Multiple Occupation (HMO). The Chair invited comments and questions from Members. Members thanked the officers for their efforts and explored how the arrangements for placing individuals out of county worked: specifically who paid for it, how far from Cardiff they might go, and what happened if they refused. Officers explained that if they refused the offer they might not be offered another property, although they would have the right to review that decision. As these were offers of permanent accommodation in nearby authorities, after a while the individuals would become residents of that local authority. Members probed further into the reasons an individual might have for not agreeing to move, such as a strong connection to Cardiff or the lack of a proper support system outside of the city. They stressed the importance of engaging with the consultation feedback and especially why people might not support these proposals. Officers emphasised that they sought to be as sensitive as possible and take into account all the relevant factors. Neighbouring authorities had more housing supply and lower rent: it was a pragmatic decision rather than trying to move the responsibility elsewhere. If an individual had clear reasons not to go outside of Cardiff, for example children attending a particular special needs school, then this would be considered. At the same time, individual circumstances might make it beneficial to move outside of the city – for example, someone with family in Ely could be closer to them in the Vale of Glamorgan than on the other side of Cardiff. Members highlighted the need for immediate solutions given the urgency of the situation, with an enormous waiting list and more than a hundred people waiting to access temporary accommodation. Officers explained that they had recently taken on another hotel for single people as that was an area of significant pressure at the moment, and had been able to move a number of families on from hotels to free up space. They had a range of options, including buybacks, new builds and working with RSLs. There was a lot going on to alleviate the situation, but it was not possible to open all the sites needed immediately. They paid tribute to the officers coping with unrelenting pressure and finding innovative solutions. Members acknowledged the need to find a balance between speed and quality of delivery, and asked whether the new units would comply with all the relevant policy standards. Officers confirmed that they would. It was challenging to speed up the delivery of new homes, but if they were able to deliver everything on time this year that would mean more than 450 new council homes, with roughly two third being new builds and a third being property purchases. It was noted that Cardiff was ranked in the top five local authorities in the UK for delivering social housing last year. The Committee explored the proposal that fell through in December and asked whether there were additional safeguards in place to this happening again. Officers acknowledged that things would not always go to plan, but they were more advanced in negotiations on all of these three properties than they were on that particular case, and had the heads of terms in place. It was important to focus on realistic property purchases and give sellers confidence that they could proceed. Members asked about the impact of repurposing accommodation, and specifically what would happen to the 103 individuals currently living in the student accommodation block. Officers explained that the universities did not have their own housing strategy so it was difficult to understand the impact on the private rented sector. Members queried whether repurposing hotels had an economic impact too due to the loss of hotel space, and heard that this was always going to be the case to some degree. Hotels were a temporary solution, a roof over someone’s head rather than a permanent place to settle, and the council had an exit strategy in place allowing them to sell these assets on so they could become hotels again. The Committee discussed the prisoner release schemes and heard that a particular difficulty was that all the individuals in the first tranche were released on the same day, and in the run-up there had been a changing picture where people kept appearing and then disappearing from lists. This made it very difficult to plan ahead for individuals and their support requirements. The Cabinet Member added that they had a good relationship with the prisons service and were communicating with the government about the issues they had experienced. She also reassured Members that any specialised support the prison leavers needed was costed in, and all the schemes they ran had support and security on site. Members discussed the long-term vision for the Pierhead Street project, and heard that in the future it could be the site of a metro station. This acquisition secured the site for the local authority in the long term, but for now it was intended to be a dense development similar to the Gasworks, with a large number of temporary family accommodation units. The Committee explored the process of change of use, in particular of student or hotel accommodation lacking individual kitchens and bathrooms. Officers explained that student accommodation was mostly self-contained, although hotels needed greater reconfiguring in order to broaden their use. There was a balance to be found between the speed of reconfiguring and enabling people to keep living there throughout, which was crucial. A phased approach, doing one wing at a time, helped to minimise the impact on residents. RESOLVED – That the public be excluded from the meeting at this point during consideration of this item as the Committee discussed exempt information of the description contained in paragraph 14 of Part 4 and paragraph 21 of Part 5 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Action 1972. The public may be excluded from the meeting by resolution of the Committee pursuant to Section 100A (4) of the Local Government Act 1972 during discussion of this item. AGREED: that the Chairperson, on behalf of the Committee, writes to the Cabinet Member conveying the observations and recommendations of the Committee when discussing the way forward.