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Consultation launched on plans to prioritise Cardiff’s social housing for those most in need

By Mark Mansfield
Cardiff

A public consultation has opened on proposed changes to how social housing is allocated in Cardiff, as the city continues to face what the local authority describes as a housing emergency.

Cardiff Council is asking residents, housing applicants and stakeholders to give their views on reforms intended to prioritise social housing for people with the greatest need, amid unprecedented demand and a severe shortage of available homes.

Around 10,000 households are currently on Cardiff’s social housing waiting list, while only a small proportion of the city’s housing stock becomes available each year. Despite having approximately 26,600 social homes across the city, annual lettings over the past three years have ranged from just 1,248 to 1,680 properties.

The pressure is particularly acute for larger family homes, meaning many households wait years for suitable accommodation.

The council operates a joint Social Housing Waiting List in partnership with local housing associations. Applicants are assessed based on housing need and local connection and placed into priority bands, which are used to allocate homes as they become available.

Officials say the current system needs to be reviewed to ensure it remains fair and focused on those facing the most urgent housing pressures.

In recent years, the council has taken a range of measures to increase supply, including building new low-carbon social homes, purchasing properties on the open market, bringing empty homes back into use, extending existing properties to accommodate larger families, and supporting residents to downsize or access affordable private rented housing. However, demand continues to far outstrip supply.

Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities Lynda Thorne said difficult decisions were unavoidable. “There is a much greater need for social housing in Cardiff than the number of homes available, which unfortunately means many people are waiting a long time for a suitable home,” she said.

“Even with the work we are doing to build and provide more affordable homes, there still aren’t enough to meet the level of demand. We need to review and amend the allocation scheme to make sure that homes are let to those who need them the most.”

She said the consultation would play a key role in shaping the final policy. “This is an important opportunity for residents to help shape a system that supports those in greatest need. The council is committed to ensuring these proposals are informed by the views and experiences of Cardiff residents and stakeholders.”

New priority 

The consultation sets out several proposed changes to the allocation policy. One proposal would introduce a new priority band for households that are overcrowded and also face additional complex needs, such as disability or serious health conditions.

These households would receive higher priority for rehousing.

Another proposal would see additional downstairs living spaces, such as parlour rooms, formally counted as bedrooms for the purposes of allocation and overcrowding assessments.

The council says this would help make better use of existing housing stock.

It is also proposing to raise the age at which people of the same sex are expected to share a bedroom from the current threshold to 25.

This change would bring Cardiff’s policy into line with other housing services and benefit rules and help ensure that larger homes are prioritised for families with the greatest need.

Further proposals include giving higher priority to households with complex needs who are threatened with homelessness. The aim is to enable quicker access to permanent social housing and reduce the need for temporary accommodation that may be unsuitable for vulnerable households.

Another significant change under consideration would restrict access to the housing waiting list to applicants who can demonstrate both an assessed housing need and a local connection to Cardiff.

To take part in the consultation, visit: Social housing allocation scheme consultation.

The consultation closes: 6th April 2026.

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2 comments

Padi Phillips

Most of these proposed changes are seriously retrograde. Social tenants are already stigmatised and now Cardiff Council, a Labour controlled council, wants to futher entrench the the degradation of social tenants through the implementation of these new policies. Counting parlour rooms as bedrooms is on a par with the NHS taking the wheels of trolleys in corridors and calling them beds, a neoliberal scam tickbox exercise to massage statistics in an attempt to present a more positive picture. Aren't poor people entitled to a separate, dedicated living room that is registered as such and cannot arbitrarily counted as a bedroom to satisfy the failures of the local authority in providing adequate amounts of social housing. Cardiff Council has stood by and allowed private developers to get away with reducing, or even eliminating the number of Section 106 contributions on private housing developments largely through accepting the spurious claims from developers that such provision would make these schemes unprofitable, and thus Cardiff Council colludes with the private sector in reducing the number of social housing units being completed. Aligning occupancy regulations so that people of the same sex up until the age of 25 should have to share a room is a retgrograde step. Under the law anyone over the age of 18 years is an adult. As such, they should be treated as such, and far from the social housing rules be amended to accord with discriminatory legislation introduced by the Tories requiring people who are adults to live in single rooms in a shared environment etc, it is those rules that should be abolished and once again those who are legally adult treated and respected as such, and not effectivley infantilised. I am sick and tired of seeing a Labour administration fall over itself to please the uber rich, and let property developers off the hook when it comes to Section 106 obligations. I would like to see the obligations increased to a situation where at least 25% of all developments consist of social housing, without 'poor doors' or other segregation. If it pushes the prices up for the units for private sale, so be it, those with more money that sense can enter the long term ponzi scheme that home ownership has now become. Rather than further punishing the poor who are already stigmatised because they alone can apply for social housing the Bevan ideal of social housing should be for universal provision - and adequate taxation of the very wealthy and the global corporations that currently get off tax free should be used to pay for this housing. Cardiff Council should be standing up for those principles rather than colluding with the neoliberal orthodoxy that is behind their moves to infantialise the poor through the implementation of policies that degrade both them and their living conditions. Poor ordinary citizens are not responsible for the housing crisis, local authorities run by political parties that refuse to adequately tax the extremely wealthy and global corporations at source are. These moves on the part of Cardiff Council, a Labour controlled council, are utterly despicable and any Labour councillor supporting this kind of measure should hang their heads in shame. This is not the kind of policy that Keir Hardy or Aneurin Bevan would support - but clearly Starmer and Reeves would.

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Otto

The article talks of "additional downstairs living spaces, such as parlour rooms" which doesn't suggest the living room itself is counted as a bedroom. Sharing rooms until 25 isn't unreasonable because it will encourage young people to move out. S106 cash is spent on new roads not more social housing. A scheme that doesn't go ahead because it's genuinely unviable with this requirement means the city is stuck with a building site instead of 20 new homes. Who does that help? When there are 10,000 on the waiting list, urgently making better use of available space is essential. Of course we need the council to build more homes but this can't happen overnight, and getting angry for past choices doesn't fix this either. But I agree that there should be enough social housing for everyone who wants the state as a landlord to have one, not just the poorest. This removes the stigma and keeps the private sector under control not through strict rules but consumer choice. Ideally there would be a surplus of state owned housing and long-standing tenants could be again offered the option to buy their home.

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