New standards proposed for all social housing homes in Wales: what do you think?
The Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS) is a set of standards that all council and housing association homes in Wales must meet. It was introduced by Welsh Government back in 2002 and aims to ensure that all dwellings are of good quality and suitable for the needs of existing and future residents.
The Welsh Government wants to ensure that all the people of Wales, including social housing tenants, can live in good quality homes, in safe and secure communities so is planning on replacing the current standards with a new set proposed updated standards called WHQS2023.
WHQS2023
The purpose of this Welsh Housing Quality Standard 2023 (WHQS2023) is to improve the quality of social homes in Wales. All social homes in Wales will be required to meet and maintain the standard. This includes Housing Associations and Local Councils who manage homes.
The existing Standard requires updating to reflect changes to how people live, work and feel about their homes, and to start decarbonising the Welsh social housing stock at scale.
The Standard consists of individual elements, supporting guidance, good practice examples and details on assessment.
Parts of the existing WHQS standard remain unchanged but some elements have been modified to reflect updated legal requirements. In addition, some parts are new such as increased requirement for flooring, consideration of biodiversity and water poverty have also been included.
TPAS Cymru is really pleased to see the proposed standard for homes to have suitable floor coverings when tenants move in – this is a concern which we heard from tenants and detailed further in our research report – ‘Floored’. During our research Tenants told us how important flooring throughout their home is. https://www.tpas.cymru/blog/floored-provision-of-appropriate-flooring-in-social-housing
The existing WHQS contained energy efficiency (affordable warmth) requirements, but these have been boosted significantly to reflect decarbonisation ambitions and to minimise energy bills for tenants.
Find out more and how to have your say…
Welsh Government wants to continue to drive up the standard of existing social housing, and WHQS2023 is a demanding standard which all social landlords in Wales will be legally obliged to meet.
Setting a standard which is both bold and achievable is highly complex and the Welsh Government is now seeking your views on the WHQS2023 proposed new standard.
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You could join us and colleagues from Welsh Government for an information and discussion session on the proposed updates to the Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS). This event is free of charge and exclusively for Tenants: http://www.tpas.cymru/whqs-consultation-tenants
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Welsh Government have produced a useful Easy Read version of the proposed Welsh Housing Quality Standards which can be seen here