National Assembly for Wales

I'd like to welcome Members and the public to this meeting of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I just need to note that we've received an apology from Anthony Slaughter. No substitute has been offered up. Before we start, I just need to say, before we move on to the first item, I may need to leave this meeting at short notice today, so if we can elect a temporary Chair under Standing Order 17.22 to step in if necessary. Can I therefore call for a nomination for a temporary Chair under Standing Order 17.22?

I nominate Peter.

Okay, noted. As there are no other nominations, Peter Fox is appointed temporary Chair should I need to leave.

The public items of the meeting are being broadcast live on Senedd.tv and a recording of these proceedings will be published. The meeting is bilingual and simultaneous interpretation from Welsh to English is available for all. Are there any declarations of interest in the room or from Rebeca? None. 

We go on to item 2, follow-up inquiry into empty properties, evidence session. This is the second meeting in the follow-up inquiry into empty properties. Today we will hear oral evidence from two panels, the first panel being representatives of social and private landlords. Welcome, all. Could I ask you to introduce yourselves to Members and the public?

Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation to give evidence today. Timothy Douglas, head of policy and campaigns at Propertymark. Propertymark is the UK's largest professional membership body for property agents. We've got 19,000 members across the UK, 500 directly based and working in Wales.

Good morning. Steven Bletsoe, head of regional business at the National Residential Landlords Association. It's not so much a declaration of interest, but I think it's common knowledge that I'm a local authority councillor in Wales. Anything I say today or any evidence I give is on behalf of my paid employment with the NRLA.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Luke Takeuchi, chief exec of Beacon Cymru. We're a housing association with approximately 9,000 homes across south Wales.

Good morning. I am Louise Attwood, I'm exec director of development, assets and sustainability for Trivallis housing association. We're a housing association predominantly based in Rhondda Cynon Taf, but operate across the Cardiff capital region. We have about 10,500 houses, and we also have about 150 private rented homes in Cardiff Bay as well.

Good morning. I'm Clarissa Corbisiero, I'm deputy chief exec of Community Housing Cymru. We represent 31 not-for-profit housing associations in Wales.

Thank you very much. Now on to the difficult part. I'm going to invite Members to ask questions. We've got a running order here. Mike, did you want to ask the first question?

Sorry, I was waiting for the microphone to come on. We know there are lots of empty properties. We know it varies a lot. We know some are empty because they're going through a renovation, and we're happy about that. But we also know there are long-term empty properties. I always think of one in Penllergaer, where there's a nice four-bedroomed detached house that has been bricked up. These properties have been left, some of them, for some time. I don't want to go into the reasons for it. But do you think that if we could get those empty properties back into use, it would reduce some of the pressure on housing? 

Anyone can answer.

Can I start? I'd be happy to start, if that's okay. Thanks, Mike. I think you're absolutely right that empty properties and bringing them back to use has to form part of a broad picture. It's great to see a continued focus at the start of this Senedd term on maximising the number of affordable homes that we have available in Wales. The need is absolutely colossal. We are in a housing emergency, and to move to a housing recovery we need to move at pace and scale across building, acquisition and bringing empties back into use. So, Mike, yes, absolutely, they need to form part of it. I think the challenge is that, at the moment, we don't have the long-term plan that we need to be able to give confidence, tools and the building blocks that we need to be able to move fast and purposefully on all of those different fronts, whether it is building, acquiring or bringing properties back into use.

Feel free to jump in. 

Thank you. Every single property that you bring back in is one less family in temporary accommodation. It's one less financial burden on local authorities to fund that. So, you can look at this in two ways. You can be looking at the policy of how you bring a group of empty houses back into use, and you can also look at it on a case-by-case basis, one by one. But in direct answer to your question, every single house that’s brought back into use is one less family in a hotel or in accommodation that isn’t suitable for them, regardless of the tenure that comes back in. I’m obviously here to speak about the PRS, but if somebody bought that, or somebody rents it or whatever it is, every single house makes a difference to somebody’s life and a revenue pressure somewhere.

From a Propertymark perspective, yes, we’ve long advocated—obviously, I’m here representing property agents—for the use and reuse of property. Fundamentally, we believe they're a wasted resource. It's obviously a multifaceted issue. The Welsh Government's own statistics say there's an unmet housing need, and all political parties at the elections committed to more housing or reallocation of types of people in different housing. So, it's definitely about the use and reuse of empty property and getting to the heart of those issues, why they are empty, and providing those support mechanisms—whether that's advice, guidance, and funding—to allow them back into use.

Thank you. Louise. And then, Marc, if you want to come in with a question after Louise.

Thank you. I think it's really worth noting the scale of the opportunity here, and let's frame this as an opportunity rather than as a negative position. There are about 23,000 empty homes. When we look at the stats from local authorities, some of those are going through probate, some of them are being refurbished, there's sort of a churn. So, it usually works out that about half of that figure are actually long-term empties, which are the ones that we're really interested in tackling. So, call that 10,000 homes. Well, that's actually half the housing target that the Welsh Government have. So, there's a massive opportunity there for them to be brought back into use. Those properties are already in existence, the embodied carbon has already been used, they've been built, they're in communities that have primary schools, have transport, have infrastructure around them, so we don't need to build on green open space as well.

If we look at the timescale to bring those back into use, even if we're talking about going through compulsory purchase orders or any of the other routes that are available to local authorities, that's probably similar to or shorter than going through a planning and construction process for a new build. So, I think it is a real opportunity that hopefully—and it's great to see cross-party here today—everybody gets on board with and that we can really bring them back into use, because they have such a benefit in terms of local communities and regeneration, as well as actually a wasted resource. So, I think the scale is massive and a real opportunity that we need to grasp. 

Thank you, Louise. Peter, do you want to move on to data? 

I've got one more question. Are there any easy things we can do? Could housing associations bring houses back quicker into use? I'm not going to talk about Beacon, but there are a lot of housing associations where having a house empty for six months is not unusual. Can you do more on that? And what about buying up ex-council houses that have just been left? Those are two examples of what we'd describe as low-hanging fruit. Do you agree with those? 

Luke, do you want to go first? 

Thanks, Chair. I do certainly agree with the first point, Mike. Yes, the opportunity is there for us to bring more homes back into the sector. There's a willingness to try and do that. The constraints at the moment are around standards. We have regular opportunities in partnership with private house builders, for instance, where it would make more sense around viability and risk sharing for us to take a share of some of those developments. Unfortunately, they wouldn't then meet the standards that are required under the Welsh housing quality standard around space. So, there are opportunities to bring more homes into the social housing sector, and there's a willingness to do that.

There's an onus on us as housing associations for our day-to-day operations to make sure we're turning these homes around as quickly as we can, and our figures are positive on that. Inevitably, we will have empty homes, but that's for a very short period. Where the challenge is starting to come, and this is more of a societal challenge, I guess, and this is by no means across the piece, but we're seeing more extreme cases of property condition. So, when those properties come back into our management, particularly since COVID, whether that's people not accessing services, the condition of those homes is quite extreme, and that takes a lot longer and a lot more cost to turn them around. So, that is a challenge for us as a sector. 

Thank you, Luke. Clarissa, do you want to come in? 

Just to build on Luke's point, actually. Luke's absolutely right that the number of voids in the social housing sector and housing association sector is very, very low—1.8 per cent of the total stock—and for all the reasons that Luke just set out. Just on that point about the complexity and the cost of investing in existing homes, running the core landlord service—like everything, it feels, at the moment—is becoming more and more expensive. So, £460 million per annum housing associations are investing into repairs and maintenance. That number goes up every single year that we publish the global accounts into the sector.

Mike, just to respond to your question about what could we do that's easy, you mentioned the right to buy and buy-backs, bringing those properties back into the social housing sector. That is something that's incredibly attractive to housing associations, if they're in the right place and all those kinds of caveats. But I think, as Luke said, part of the reason that that's so attractive is because of the standards. Something easy or something straightforward that is within the gift of the Welsh Government is to consider whether or not the standards for acquisitions, particularly around empties, are appropriate. There is no tolerance on space standards at the moment, which leads housing associations to sometimes buy a three-bed at market rate and having to—. Louise was talking earlier, actually, about having to then go through the construction cost of turning that into a two-bed just to meet a particular space standard, where there's no wriggle room at all. We think that is something practical that the Welsh Government should look at.

In terms of the cost, it's actually more expensive for a registered social landlord to be able to do the work than a private individual. We don't have the ability to recover the 20 per cent VAT on the construction cost. We sell a property at auction, for example, on a very rare occasion, but somebody can then put that back into use for less money than we are able to—because we've got different standards that we need to build or develop to, but also because we simply have to pay 20 per cent VAT on top of it.

Long-term empties are an interesting one, because anything longer than 24 months attracts only 5 per cent VAT. We have to wait for it to tip into 24 months before you can qualify for the 5 per cent. So, there's a perverse incentive to actually leave it there for a little bit longer, rather than bring them back into use, because councils record it 12 months, but actually the VAT rating is for 24 months. So, that's just worth noting as well. 

Can I just pick up on that point? Certainly for the private sector, residential sector—and I'm sure we'll talk about funding and the grant—the main Government grant is quite restrictive. It doesn't allow the grant to be used and targeted towards housing need in an area. It needs to be a main resident, you have to be the legal owner, and you've got to potentially live in it for five years. That means it can't be used in the social rented sector, it can't be bought by a local authority, it can't be bought by a housing association, it can't be bought by a private landlord. And if you are someone from outside of Wales, or even outside that local area, who's going through probate or a long-winded legal or financial system, you can't access that to do it up and sell it on. So, I think we could do with a bit more flexibility in the grant system to support the whole cycle of the sector.

Thank you. Peter.

Good morning. One thing that's really important to us is data, and it'll be important to you as well, but we're very keen on it. We need to know what your views are on the current level of data out there, be it from the Welsh Government or from local authorities. Is there enough data identifying the real issue here?

Can I come in on that? We've signed a 'Wales Accord on the Sharing of Personal Information' data-sharing agreement with Rhondda Cynon Taf. We started trying to negotiate that WASPI in 2025. I think it probably took us 12 to 18 months to get that document signed. That enables the local authority to share with us data around those empty homes, because under general data protection regulation rules, they obviously have to keep that, because they use their council tax. So, if we don't have the names of the owners of the empty homes, then it's very difficult to engage with them.

They wrote to the owners of those properties, providing our details, asking them to get in contact. I think they sent out about 2,000 letters, and we got about 20 people back, of which we made offers on five, and zero people accepted, because they all wanted more money than the asking price. So data is great, and it's a starting point as well. Council tax is one methodology, although it's not perfect, but let's not let perfection get in the way of actually delivering some solutions here.

I wouldn't want to have to sign a WASPI with all 10 local authorities in the Cardiff capital region, because if it took me 18 months for one, you can imagine—. So, if we could have a more general data-sharing agreement for these purposes, whether it's via a shared services organisation or whatever, I think that would certainly speed up and make that information a lot more accessible to social landlords.

So it was a challenge for you to put that in place, but probably a good pilot, if you like, to show us where the challenges are in actually putting those agreements in, so that we can learn from that. Steve, did you want to come in on that?

Yes. Within the private rented sector, I think it's become known as the NRLA's call for a Wales housing survey. The calls for doing so predate my time with the NRLA. It's been a very long-standing call. And I've got a briefing document here, and it's littered with, 'Estimates stand at', 'This report estimates that', 'We're basing this on council tax', and it's been accepted that that's not the perfect way to address this. We firmly believe that better decisions are made with good data. When we're talking about the entire housing sector in Wales, we don't know what the starting point is. I've got two lines here that show me: 'estimates state that empty houses were this at this point', but, 'It's estimated that it's that now'. We should know this. This is our Government here in Wales and we need a good strong starting point, and we need to know what every house in Wales has as its tenure so that we can make better decisions.

We're about to enter into a cycle now of talking about a new renters (Wales) Bill, and when the White Paper was presented to the last Senedd on rent controls, it fell because there was a lack of data on how it would impact different tenures. We have to have that information. The NRLA—[Interruption.] We have an England housing survey, and regularly, when we're putting reports together for evidence sessions, we use Rightmove indications or we use council tax information. We should be referring to a housing survey. We have to know what houses we have in Wales, what tenure they're in, who's in them—everything we can know. There's a cost to that. We know this. There was a business case made in the last term and now we're talking about gathering rent data. It's a step back. What we need to do within these walls here is know what the housing situation is. We talk about housing crises, catastrophes, whatever they are. We actually don't know what the housing market is in Wales because we don't have that data. We need it desperately.

That's really helpful, because I was going to ask what are the gaps in the data that we need. Now you've identified some of those, and there may be others as well, but then how do we get that data? What are the barriers to getting that data?

Cost. It's cost. It is expensive. It's an expensive thing to do. The business case has been put in front of the Senedd. The restriction is the cost, but everything has a cost. Where's the value? We feel at the NRLA that the value of having that data outweighs the cost of it.

That's absolutely a key question. Are there other gaps in the data, other than what Steve said?

I think, from a Propertymark perspective, certainly we've also joined forces with the NRLA and calls for that Welsh housing survey from a Propertymark perspective. Then you could go into a national empty homes database. But you could do that against lots of things. But I think an overall Welsh housing survey would be able to co-ordinate lots of different things across the sector and give a bigger picture. I think census data, council tax, business rates on non-residential properties and planning applications tend to be the focus areas there. But, ultimately, council tax doesn't tell you whether the property is habitable, the owner is looking to sell it, the owner is looking to let it or that work needs to be done to it. So, I think that there is a secondary level of detail that's needed on an empty home, because then you can attach the resource to it or the funding to it, depending on the status of the property.

Yes. Thanks for that. There were some good pointers there. Within the data we've got, or what we're looking to have, should that be picking up those real-life circumstances that lead to empty properties in the first place, or have we got that data?

I don't think we have that data. And I think one thing that we would have to consider as part of that survey is how we get people to actually engage, because one of the biggest challenges in bringing empty homes into use is non-engagement with the owner. We've got a particular property in one local authority that has been vacant for a significant number of years and we've been trying to trace the owner and we've been using a genealogist company to do it. And we've actually found the descendant of the person who owned this property, who lives in Scotland. I know that genealogists have found them but they aren't able to share their details with me under GDPR. They've been writing to the owner, or to the potential owner, of this property with no response. So, how is it that you can ask people for this information and for this data but you're asking for personal information, legal information, and, if they're not prepared to engage, then there has to be a mechanism to get that information as well, because otherwise you'll still end up with the same results that you've got now, in that those who will respond, respond through council tax? Those who won't, don't respond. So, there is something in that: do you make it mandatory that you have to provide this? We know that probably about 25 per cent of the empties at the moment are going through probate or being churned. So, again, the data is not a standstill point. It is ever changing. That will only give you a picture of a point in time as well.

So, that real-life data of why something has happened is quite fundamental. You need that. And you talked earlier, Louise, about GDPR when you were setting up your WASPI with RCT, and now you've mentioned GDPR again. So, it looks like GDPR is a pain in the neck to get the data we need to actually make the system work well.

A lot of the data is actually publicly available. So, for example, if you wanted to find out what's going through probate, you just have to look at the probate registry. And the land registry is also publicly owned data. So, a lot of this is there. We could actually use credit referencing, which is what genealogists actually do when they're looking for owners. It's a bit like Heir Hunters. I don't know if you've ever seen it on the tv. That's exactly what we need to do with a lot of those properties. So, you parcel up all those little bits of publicly available data, which then gives you the answers that you need. So, there are ways of actually utilising that without having to ask people for it, but you have to triangulate all the pieces of data, and that has a cost to it.

That's really handy. That's all from me for the moment. Thanks.

Thank you, Peter. Rebeca, did you have a question?

Yes, thank you very much.

I'm just wondering what your one call is on the Welsh Government during this term and whether that's a pan-Wales approach, or do you feel it would be better to be giving tools for local authorities and such for a more tailored approach for your organisations? And also just to ask how successful you think the empty homes grant has been and the effect that that's had on the areas that you work in. Diolch yn fawr.

I'd be happy to start, if that's okay. In terms of one call, I think we would say that housing is a long-term business and we need a long-term approach—so, building confidence, a clear vision, and then supported by delivery tools. I think that's perhaps where we've seen a gap here, that actually what we need is a set of action plans that sit underneath a long-term plan, which sets out the real delivery tools that are needed to bring these homes back into use. I've mentioned standards, but I would say that that places a real chilling effect. For example, we have a funding stream in Wales, the transitional accommodation capital programme; it's oversubscribed every single year. We can't spend it quickly enough in the social housing sector. It's a really helpful grant fund. However, the standards that sit alongside it place a chilling effect on which properties you choose. And when you're looking at complex long-term empties, where perhaps you haven't got a chance of meeting WHQS, even within the 10-year period that you're given to do so, then the viability then means that you're looking at, 'Well, actually, is this worth me investing in, maybe doing some of the reconfiguration works that Louise talked about, then having to sell it within five to 10 years?' It just doesn't stack up. So, on a very practical measure, I think standards, but, on a more global level, Rebeca, I think a long-term plan would really give us confidence to move forward with more pace.

I think, if I just touch on that, just to give you the example that we've bought a property under the empty homes grant. So, I'm on my first one after two years, but we're getting there. It's been a strong learning curve, shall we say. It's a three-bedroomed property, but, because it doesn't meet WHQS standards, we're going to have to knock two bedrooms into one. Now, obviously, if you're a family living in temporary accommodation, to have a three-bedroomed house that has a box bedroom is far preferable than living in a bedroom with a family, and I think that it's that pragmatism that we need to start utilising.

My other bit, my one ask, would be a clear requirement of local authorities to start utilising their CPO powers, because, at the moment, we put in offers on properties that are empty and have been empty for considerable periods of time. We've offered to pay market price, as determined by a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors chartered surveyor, and people have said 'no'; they want more money. So, there's no consequence to that. There is an ability already in place for local authorities. If we declared a national housing emergency, which there absolutely is, we could use a set of general statements and reasons, as required by CPO, and then we could go ahead and CPO these properties. I appreciate that that's quite a strong message, but I think it needs a message from Government to make people stand up and listen to that. And we have the powers—the legal powers—already to do it; we're just not utilising them.

Thank you. David, do you want to come in on that, quickly?

I think it's been covered, but I'll ask the question anyhow. Do you think the regulations that Welsh Government have put on housing are preventing you from bringing houses back into use—and I think you answered that, I know, but—about the size of the rooms and all that?

Just to touch on the point, I think, for me, it would certainly be standards. I think what's worth just stressing is that our starting point as a nation is that we have a severe lack of supply. So, when you've got that as your starting point, to have a very aspirational, in my view potentially gold-plated, standard around WHQS, where we're looking to deliver very aspirational homes—. When your starting point is a severe lack of supply, as far as I'm concerned, that is very difficult to deliver. So, if we can get more pragmatism, and I think that's the key word for us a sector, and good quality, warm, affordable homes—so, not compromising on those key elements, but delivering those—if you want pace and scale, then we can get pace and scale about bringing these homes into the sector.

Sure. Marc, do you want to come in on that?

Yes, I'm going to speak in Welsh, if you need translation. 

I think—. Do you want to go, Steven?

No, no. I mean, we usually say the same thing anyway. [Laughter.]

I think there's a kind of bringing together of the three questions there in that. Because the original question was, 'What would our call be from this Government?', and it's kind of built from there. And whilst I've made the clarion call for data, I'll call for something else now. And it's exactly the point that you've just made there. We need more joined-up thinking on where these grants come across. Because we were talking in the room earlier about how lots of grants conflict with other grants. I think you were saying that you can't use the empty homes grant in order to meet WHQS. Well, where are we starting from? 

And then again, just bringing in another thing, if we make the point: without the joined-up thinking, the proposed ending of Leasing Scheme Wales early next year is going to have a detrimental effect on your work in addressing empty homes. The Welsh Government's evaluation of Leasing Scheme Wales last year showed that 444 properties were on Leasing Scheme Wales—307 of those were empty before they came on to Leasing Scheme Wales. Now, people may not be looking at Leasing Scheme Wales as a way of addressing empty homes, but it's obviously worked, because three quarters of the properties on the scheme were empty. So, whilst not designed to address empty homes, it's worked in that respect.

Now, as of currently, we've been told that the amount of properties is 686 on Leasing Scheme Wales. So, it's gaining momentum. It was working. It was doing a job that it was maybe not designed to do, but, without the joined-up thinking, and if the rug gets pulled, then addressing empty homes is going to be more difficult. Because, without Leasing Scheme Wales, 300 more properties would still be empty—probably because there was no other mechanism to bring them in. 

But, in bringing all three questions together, as a Government, you've got to be looking at, 'Well, it comes from here, it comes from here, it comes from here', but we all have the same aim. All of you got involved in politics for the same reason, to make people's lives better. And it seems that the grants available just conflict with each other, or you can't use it for this, or it can't do that. We need that joined-up thinking. So, the call for the Government is to have that that joined-up thinking. The answer to you is don't ever have grants that conflict with each other, and we can all get to the same aim and achieve the outcomes that we want.

I agree with that. Building on the last two points—and I will come to the original question of priorities—there's no clear definition of a housing provider. So, if you look at what I've just said about the grant scheme, we don't define private landlords as housing providers. Under the lease scheme, if you join up to that, you can get money to get your property to energy performance certificate C, which is way above the current rules of E. But if you're a private landlord outside of that, still offering a service, providing housing for tenants, you're not viewed that way. So, I think we have to be consistent on the definition of a housing provider.

As Steven said, we've got to be consistent in the funding that's offered. You can put stipulations around that. You have a regulated private rented sector in Wales. Landlords and agents have to be trained and regulated and licensed to operate. So, it's not as if you're giving that money away to people who aren't regulated. So, I think the definition of a housing provider is really important. And then you can build that network out, bring in property agents, surveyors, other people who can support the need and access to housing across the sector.

In terms of the key asks, I've already alluded to it in terms of the grant. I think the grant is positive, and we've always welcomed that, but it needs to be extended and made more flexible to meet housing need. And probably just two other points I'd bring into that. For non-residential, so commercial property, is there more we can do? I know Wales has more recently looked at business rates relief, but relief around where a property is taken up by small businesses in the first 12 months, improvements are made, or reuse. So, I think business rates and a wider spotlight on a review of all the costs and taxes, land transaction tax, in the housing sector, which then, I think, would play into your housing providers and would provide more incentives or not, and link to other bits of funding for people in the sector to actually meet the housing need that we've got across Wales.

The empty homes grant is available to registered social landlords, but it does specifically state that we are not allowed to use it for Welsh housing quality standard works. So, the property that we've bought at the moment—. You can claim up to £25,000. It's in a pretty poor state of repair, and we can only claim, I think, £7,500 to £10,000 at the moment of that potential £25,000. We're having to fund any other WHQS works ourselves if we wanted to. So, I think changing that would certainly make the empty homes grant more attractive to RSLs.

Just to add briefly, I want to point to a funding stream that is working and working well, which is the transitional accommodation capital programme fund. I was reflecting on what is it that made it work well. Standards aside—we've laboured the point about standards—actually, in the last Senedd term, there was a very clear message from Government that meeting the housing emergency wasn't just about new homes, it was about more homes and acquisitions. There was confidence around acquisitions, and TACP played into that. So, I think continued messaging from Government around the role of acquisitions is important. TACP, in the last three years, has invested in 2,700 homes, with 930 empties within that. And, as I said previously, it's oversubscribed all the time. There is real scope within that.

One of the changes that has been made that is less helpful, I think, is that the eligibility for what you can use TACP on has been restricted. Housing associations, previously, were able to use TACP to bring long-term, complex voids back into use. That's now been stopped. That was a very helpful addition to be able to bring homes that had effectively stopped being part of the functioning social housing stock, to be able to bring some additional investment aligned with the investment that a housing association might bring to bear. So, reopening that would be a really helpful thing to do. Thanks, Chair.

Rebeca, do you have any more follow-up questions?

No, I'm all good on that. Thank you. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you. David, do you want to talk about local authority capacity?

In local authorities, there are different capacities in all of them. Some don't take part in the grant scheme because of capacity. However, one of the questions I'd like to bring in around that is this: do you find there are blockages in some local authorities because you're not the preferred housing association that they want to work with? Although you might have the money and the capability to bring these houses, do you think that some local authorities are isolated to their own housing associations, and that they don't let other housing associations in?

Luke, did you want to come in?

Yes. I'll be fairly brief. In my experience, no. I think there are some really strong relationships across Wales. I think, ultimately, it's about delivery. If you can show that you've been delivering, I think that partnership will be strong. So, no, from Beacon's prospective, I've not experienced that, and that's across five or six different local authorities.

From a national perspective, we would say that that point about partnership is absolutely crucial. There have been changes to things like zoning arrangements, which allow more housing associations to be able to participate, perhaps, in geographical areas that perhaps they didn't previously. The successful delivery there requires the building up of a partnership over time. I would expect to see that happen over the course of time. The housing emergency is such that it needs every player to be working at full pelt to be able to make the contribution that they possibly can, and that's what our sector wants to do in partnership with local authorities up and down the country.

Steven, did you want to come in with something?

I don't know if Louise did want to jump in or not, but your original question was about capacity. Just to restate, I'm speaking as an employee of the NRLA here. I watched the first round of evidence sessions that you gave. You had an empty housing officer here in front of you, and the first thing you were told was that they were part-time. Local authorities need to be making that at least one minimum full-time equivalent. There should be more. If you're expecting local authorities to deliver work in the empty homes sector, how local authorities are having part-time staff—. Perhaps that's something that you need to be looking at, because you need to look at the funding mechanisms. These are the people on the ground doing the work that the Welsh Government wants them to. But having a part-time housing officer, is that enough for what you want?

I think capacity is a really important point to raise. We went along to a session that was held by a local authority two weeks ago on empty homes. The key ask from their empty homes officer, who is clearly very passionate about bringing homes back into use and was trying every possible tool in her box to do that, which was fantastic to see and really proactive—. I would say they were a really good example of how to do it. They highlighted a challenge to their partners. There was private sector, there were house builders there as well, so it was a real mix of people in the room. But the clear ask from them was that we do not have the legal support to be able to deliver these systems. Their one legal officer was on maternity leave, they had a locum cover, and they had to deal with a lot of work across the entire local authority.

One of the options that we're looking at—and it's very similar to what we do in planning agreements at the moment—is whether there's a way we can combine our own resources and pay for a legal officer to support that. Because what we need is a shared resource, and that needs to revolve around legal support, whether it's licensed conveyancers, surveyors, people who can look at the grant, because they have to check it under the rules of the empty homes grant. You have to have a local authority surveyor come out and inspect your works. If you're going to do this at scale and pace, you can't only have one surveyor to do that if we're going to tackle, say, 10,000 homes across Wales.

We need to have a really clear team who are going to be progressing this on behalf of a number of local authorities, and I think that will deal with that capacity issue. Because at the moment we have, in CCR, 10 empty homes officers. There are 10 people trying to do the same legal work. If we pulled them all together, pulled that resource under a shared services agreement, that would really help alleviate some of those challenges, because it's more of a factory and a conveyor belt to get these homes.

It needs to be streamlined, doesn't it?

It does, very much so, yes.

That was going to be my second question. I don't need my next question, because you've answered it.

Was that yours on funding as well, David? Okay. Alun. Sorry, Marc, did you want to—?

Before we move on from that, I think we've all been councillors, so we're all very aware of the problems facing various local councils and the inconsistency. I think what's really struck me in previous evidence sessions is that I think we've seen the overachieving councils attend. I think it would have been good to see the underachieving ones, just to see what the issues are. My former authority was Wrexham and it hasn't had an empty properties officer for five years, and that shows. They just don't deliver.

I'm also keen to ask further about the issue of compulsory purchase—you know, the carrot-and-stick approach. There are lots of carrots—maybe there's not enough carrots to go around, but there are lots of carrots—but I really do feel strongly that the stick is not there. When landlords, for whatever reason, are not playing ball, you need that expertise. We are talking about the difficult properties. But the difficult properties, I think, are the ones that really affect communities. They're the eyesores, they're the real downers in communities. Obviously, you're coming at it from two very different places, but to what extent would you support that stick perhaps being a central stick? Because councils don't have the resource. They just don't have the resource.

I think the point that the panel has already made is that the stick exists, it's just having the capacity and the confidence sometimes to use it on what are tricky processes to go through. The empty dwelling management order process is full of opportunities for overturn, as this committee will have heard, I'm sure. Building on Louise's point, it is clear that there is a capacity gap, and that shows in different ways across the country. Thinking creatively about how we use the resources and expertise, whether that's at a national level or whether that's at a regional level, feels like the obvious place for some progress here, to be able to manage some of the capacity gaps that we see across local authorities for various reasons.

Can I come in on those points? The last time the committee, in 2019, looked at it, there were calls for empty homes officers in every authority and a national strategy. We know the difficulties with that. But surely there's got to be greater scrutiny on the enforcement action plans, which, I think, from local authorities, are interacting and have focused the mind on things, but surely there are gaps within that.

I have two points that are hopefully not too controversial. On compulsory purchase reform, we've seen that in Scotland, and they have a successful empty homes partnership. There are only 32 authorities up there and, on the whole, they have a dedicated officer in each authority and they pretty much put the success of their scheme down to that. On compulsory purchase, you just need clear guidance on what constitutes reasonable efforts to contact the owner. I think, fundamentally—I don't want to get into the argument of property rights—there's a balance there, isn't there? It's about carrots for people to do something with their property. The caution on compulsory purchase reform is where is that line drawn.

And, dare I say it, the final point: do we need to look at the correlation where local authorities have doubled council tax on empty homes and done nothing on empty homes? I think doubling council tax is a blunt instrument, because it doesn't lead to action. Cynically, you could argue that we'll vote to up the council tax on these properties, we'll take the revenue and we'll just keep them empty because we'll get more revenue off them. I think that might be a bit of a cynical point, but it does need to be looked at in the round as well as a bit of a blunt instrument. Is it a blunt instrument? I don't know. We probably need to investigate that. 

To build on Marc's analogy, I think the view of the private rented sector landlord in Wales—. We have 115,000 members across England and Wales. What we'd like to see is more carrots for good landlords and more sticks for bad ones. There is a feeling within the sector that the stick is being used on good landlords a lot, and we need a few more carrots for those—those who want to work. The question that we always ask is, 'How many landlords are not registered with Rent Smart Wales?' And the answer we always get back is, 'We don't know.' Those are the bad landlords. Those are the landlords that you're talking about who are leaving houses empty and everything else. What we need to do is create more carrots for the good landlords who want to work with the authorities and find a lot more sticks for the bad ones who are operating in the shadows. Their houses are damp and full of mould, they're empty or whatever. What we need is a concentration on the sticks for bad landlords, because we don't believe they've got any place in the market. We represent the good ones; we educate, we train and we work with good landlords. We need to find the bad ones, we need to find a lot more legislative sticks.

I think it's really important to note, though, that I feel like we're villainising the people who own these properties, and I don't see CPO as a stick. It's a tool, it's not a stick. The reason why I say that is because a lot of the evidence suggests that, when you look at empty homes, a lot of the owners of those can often be elderly, frail, unable to deal with their estate. They might be unaware that they even have it, because people may have not left wills and so on. So, there is also quite a section of people who are unable to progress this through. You've got to be a very wealthy individual to just sit on a house, happy to pay 300 per cent council tax, and just let a property rot. There's got to be something more fundamental in this as to why they are being left for so long. Because capital appreciation will only get you so far, and it tends to be the preserve of the very wealthy.

What we haven't covered off in a lot of this is those properties that are commercial, or residential above commercial units, because they'll be covered as a commercial unit under business rates, and they won't show up in council tax. There is a specific area that we need to focus on with residential above shops, and that will have a massive impact on communities, footfall through retail areas and so on, night-time economies. So, there's a big section there that's missed out when we're looking at council tax data. Going back to your data point earlier on, we need to include business rates. These figures don't include anything that's been taken out of the ratings list as well. It's a lot easier under business rates to have properties removed from ratings—for example, Merthyr General Hospital is not in the business ratings list, so you would never be able to find it in data, and that's been empty for 20 or 25 years. So, we need to look at business rates as well as council tax. But it's a tool. I don't think it should be seen as a penalty, because it is also helping those that can't bring homes back into use.

Thank you, Louise. Francesca, you wanted to come in.

It was just picking up on Tim's point, and just to add to that. You've only got to look at Swansea Council, which was the council I was on, and they apply that additional blunt tax, which I don't think is doing anything in the market to bring properties back. Because empty properties have increased in Swansea—I think around about 18 per cent since 2022. So, it just goes to show that, even though people are willing to pay that extra money, where is that money going? Can't that almost be—? I would love to see it ring-fenced to bring others back into use. So, I just think it's a blunt instrument used and not achieving anything.

Thank you. Elyn—sorry. Do you want to come in now?

Diolch, Gadeirydd. I'll be speaking in Welsh as well. 

I'll start. The problem that you have is that you devolve this to the 22 local authorities around Wales, and it's like employing 22 different solicitors—they're going to interpret it 22 different ways. You're going to have local authorities who make decisions on how they're going to spend that money, and unless you, as you say, ring-fence it—. And that could be crossed over into everything. Would you say that income from fly-tipping fines is ring-fenced for dealing with fly-tipping? It's that conversation to have. There's certainly a case to be made for that. It's depends on the importance and what this building is going to enforce on the 22 local authorities. Because giving them the ability to interpret it their way, you'll get 22 different interpretations. We are talking about the fundamental right for a person to have a front-door key to a house. Taking the 1,000 per cent rise in temporary accommodation costs over the last 10 years into consideration, there is a case to be made there, but it depends on whether you, as a committee, are going to encourage the Welsh Government to go with that. It's a power to you and it depends whether you want to use it.

Elyn, do you have a follow-up, or are you okay with that?

I'll pick up the two questions, if possible. On ring-fencing, empty homes is not a statutory duty, is it? So I think, where possible, we would say that it should happen, but we obviously understand the realities that local authorities are operating in. I think if it went statutory from Government, it would need some centralised resource and funding to support it. But I think, where possible, yes, local authorities should be encouraged to put that money back into housing and empty homes.

On the issue of land transaction tax, I think our view, from a Propertymark perspective, is don't just look at land transaction tax in isolation linked to empty homes. It doesn't work for rightsizing, downsizing. It could be reviewed for use in the PRS—the additional side of it split for buy-to-let property versus, maybe, holiday-let property. So, I think a wider review of land transaction tax, and all the costs that private landlords are facing from mortgage interest relief, would be welcome in order to support first-time buyers, second-steppers, downsizers, as well as the empty homes issue as well. So, I think, yes, it should be part of the conversation, but there should be a wider review of the effectiveness of land transaction tax across the housing sector.

I was speaking at an event in Nottingham on Tuesday. It's strange, because you've got to have one half of your brain on Welsh legislation and the other half on English legislation. I was sitting on a panel, and I was challenged. The person said to me, 'You've decided to have a separate form of taxation in Wales. You want it to be something different from stamp duty. You wanted to call it something else, but you just copied the English model'. So, there is scope to change land transaction tax. It's a devolved power, you can do what you want with it. My only note of caution on that is that land transaction tax is a tax on a new purchase, not an existing empty one. So, you would be using purchases of new houses to provide something on existing empty ones. We've all discussed that the doubling of council tax on empty homes is a little bit of a blunt tool, but you would be taxing newly purchased properties to deal with existing ones. So, there's a complication there. But the challenge to Wales as a country is to do something innovative with land transaction tax. If we're going to be different, why are we copying England? I know we have got a slightly different variation on second homes and the increase and stuff like that, but—

But just on that point—and Mike will know, because I sat next to him many years ago at a round-table when land transaction tax was being developed—actually, Wales did go for a higher starting threshold—I think it was £180,000—linked to average property prices in Wales. So, I completely get the point, but, yes, we have got a system here that we can develop, and we did, and we need to look at it again.

I don't think it's going to solve some of the problems that we would anticipate, building on that value and that cost point. Because the average house price in Wales is—. Well, it depends on who you speak to, but call it £213,000. But a lot of the properties that we're talking about, especially when we come outside of Cardiff and Swansea, they're quite low when we're doing this. So, I don't think that the land transaction tax is really the point here; it's access to the owners, access to the grant to be able to do them up, and the speed at which we need to do this.

Going back to why is it that people aren't taking up that grant, it's because it's really hard to get access to it. It's complicated, it's timely, and you've got to think to yourself, 'Oh my goodness, two years. Is £10,000 really worth it for two years of employing somebody to do that?' If you're a private individual who just wants to make money, there are much easier ways to do it. So, that fundamentally has to change before we start looking at more complex things like taxation rules, I think. Get access to the grant a lot easier and make it less of an administrative burden for everybody, whether you're an RSL who has a whole team of development and in-house maintenance staff or just Joe Bloggs on the street.

I think David is going to come in quickly.

There are 22 local authorities, as you know, but do you feel that best practice is shared amongst them when we're talking about taxation? Because they're all working in silos, as far as I can see. 

In our role as partner agencies, we wouldn't have insight into how local authorities as a sector share their knowledge, but as our own sector for housing associations, we've got lots of tools to make sure that housing association colleagues are able to come together in peer groups to be able to share their experience, sharing best practice and running webinars, and part of our conference offer, to share some of that. And to give each other a bit of support, actually, because some of this stuff is not easy. 

I just wondered if I could go back to your previous question on tax, and say that where tax reform may be useful is around reducing some of the viability pressure and the viability gap that we see, thinking about higher transactional rates on land transaction tax, fully accepting Louise's point that, actually, in many parts of Wales you're talking about lower cost properties, but that's not the case everywhere. But also the point that's already been made, which is a UK Government issue around the VAT rules for refurbishment work.  

Thank you. I'm mindful that we're about to run out of time, so given that nobody has picked up on legislation, I'm happy to send you a written question on that, or questions. And Tim, you've actually answered one of the questions already around CPO. So, Rebeca, you have the privilege of wrapping up the session, if you'd like, with communities and partner agencies.

Diolch yn fawr. Just a quick one from me. I'm just wondering how housing associations can support community-led housing in our communities.

Luke, do you want to make a start on that one? 

Yes, sure. It's obviously a key driver. We see ourselves very much as anchor organisations there. We're in communities, we understand thousands of residents that live in those areas and their needs. We've got the unique insight, if you like, into those people's homes and lives on a daily basis. We really see it as our responsibility to try and overcome some of these challenges we've got, to be broader than just our core housing stock. We work in town centres, we're very active in the chamber of trade, for instance, in RCT and other areas.

We've brought commercial buildings back into use, and I think that's a really key point to flag as well. This isn't just our day-to-day residential; we've had some real challenging commercial buildings that have sat empty for five to 10 years. We've had to take risk there and worked very closely with local authority partners, actually, and the Welsh Government to get those back in line. So, I think it's a really broad offer from us of how do we engage with the community, with the third sector, how do we use our skills around development and maintenance to bring these properties back into use.

There are real opportunities there. We've got some very strong contractors that want to work with us around social value objectives. In Tonypandy, for instance, we've worked with a contractor there where we've brought local children back into the community to look at that construction site. That's been a really challenging site to bring that commercial back, which was empty for a number of years. But the outcomes of that are apprenticeships, skills, training. There's a real broad offer from us, we see, and a key role to play.

Thank you, Luke. Does anyone else want to come in? No. Thank you very much for coming today, on behalf of Members and me. We will send you some questions on CPOs, if that's okay. And you will receive a copy of the transcript of the meeting, so that you can check it for its accuracy. But again, thank you very much for making yourselves available. We'll adjourn now until 10:40, so you can take a 10-minute break.

Good morning. We're at item 3. This is the committee's final evidence session to inform its inquiry into empty properties. We're going to hear from a panel of local authority representatives. So, without further ado, welcome to the session. Could I ask, if we start with Councillor Harrington, could you introduce yourselves to the Members?

Bore da. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to attend this session. I'm Councillor Andrea Harrington, deputy leader of Swansea Council and also the Welsh Local Government Association spokesperson for housing in Wales.

Thank you. Helen.

Bore da. Good morning. I'm Helen Pembridge. I work for the Shared Regulatory Services, which covers Bridgend, Cardiff and the Vale. I'm responsible for the team that covers housing enforcement in Bridgend and the Vale. 

Thank you. 

Hi, I'm Rhian Evans-Mclean. I'm from Caerphilly County Borough Council. I'm the private and accessible housing manager, and I deal with the empty property team and implementation of that.

Thank you very much. 

Thank you very much. Right, we'll go straight into it, shall we? We'll cover off the questioning in the session the same as previously. Obviously, just be aware that we're dealing with different representatives here. So, Mike, do you want to go straight into it? 

I want to talk about empty properties and a number of them that have been empty for some time, and how, if the length of time the councils take to bring housing back into use, if that can be reduced, then housing will be usable. And what about buying back ex-council houses that have been left? We can see that on quite a lot of estates. As you go around, like Andrea and I did—and I'm sure other people did during the election—you go past and you see letterboxes that have been sealed up, et cetera. What about bringing some of these former council houses back into council ownership and having the ability to provide housing from them? 

That's open to anybody, so it's probably best just to take the lead as you see fit. 

Thank you.

In Bridgend, we're not a stock-holding authority anymore, but, in the Vale, they do actively buy back council properties. There are sometimes issues with the condition of the properties and the amount of money that it costs to renovate them. So, a similar issue as Anglesey, then.

Okay. Thank you.

In Caerphilly, we have a mechanism where they have to offer the property back. So, Caerphilly Homes will look to see if it's viable to bring the property back into use. We don't see many ex-council properties long-term empty. There is that mechanism, and, where it's feasible, they will buy back the ex-housing stock.

To comment on the length of time, unfortunately, the length of time of bringing empty properties back is quite significant because there's so much involved in bringing an empty property—a problematic empty property—back. On the legislation itself, we use enforced sale a lot in Caerphilly. There are strict requirements for that. There are three months you have to serve the notice for. There are preliminary notices that you have to do beforehand. So, even the process itself will take around about nine months, because of the statutory implications of the legislation. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done beforehand, before going down that road. So, it's inevitable that it will take longer to bring empty properties back into use, but they're the problematic ones that we need to target.

Thank you. Councillor Harrington.

Yes, thank you. We need to recognise that we lost 4,000 council homes in Swansea. That's a significant amount of properties. We already have quite a significant plan of acquisitions to bring those ex-council right-to-buys back into stock. That's been very successful. We've actually doubled the budget this year to £3 million. But I think we do need to acknowledge that the big and commercial buildings, flats above shops, mixed-use properties, they also present opportunities. The WHQS has been referenced. It's easier in some respects with ex-council right-to-buys—they are transitioned quite easily into the standard, albeit sometimes expensive—but it's the properties that aren't ex-council properties that sometimes we cannot buy back, because they don't meet the requirements. So, I think a flexibility around the standards in terms of acquisitions would be really helpful and really welcomed.

In terms of the timescales for delivery, I think the quickest way is early intervention, working with the landlord or the owner, giving them advice, giving them financial assistance. That early engagement is really important. We don't really want to go down the route of forced sale, because that takes time and money and resource. So, we do quite a lot of hand holding and encouraging people to sell their properties. But, in terms of council right-to-buys, they're coming to us, they're saying to us, 'Do you want to buy our ex-council house?' So, that's been quite positive for us as an experience in Swansea.

Thank you. Mike, any follow-up questions to that?

No, that's me. I got it all in one.

Done, yes, all good. Peter, anything on data?

Yes, I would like to know a little bit about data and what's good and what's lacking. It's fundamental, isn't it, having enough data. I wouldn't mind getting a perspective from you of what you feel. Is there sufficient data within Welsh Government and within local authorities themselves to actually shine a light on the issue or help us understand the issue a bit better? If there are, what are the gaps in the data you would perhaps like—?

If I can take this one—[Interruption.] Sorry, do you want to go first?

Yes, apologies, if I can come in on that. So, I think definitely a more consistent national approach in terms of accessing and sharing existing data would be really useful, supported by local intelligence understanding why properties are empty to determine the right response. National guidance on data sharing would be very useful. But also, there is a gap, as you've mentioned, Peter: properties that are removed from valuation can sometimes be difficult to identify. For example, a removed valuation property could be one that was demolished and another one built in its place, or one that's been converted from one dwelling to three flats, and that makes identifying it as a true empty more difficult than perceived. So, there are gaps in that. We would like to count those properties. So, any national approach and help would be very welcomed in that respect.

Thank you. Rhian, sorry.

We're having quite significant challenges with the data, because we're using council tax data. They're not collecting that information for our purpose; they are collecting it for council tax purposes. We're having a lot of issues with second-home properties that we believe that we're having complaints about because it is a true empty, is a property that's just been abandoned, but it's down in council tax as a second home because—. It could be as simple as that the curtains are closed. Because the definition under council tax is that properties that are furnished and empty are second homes; unfurnished and empty are empty properties. It could just have been left as it was. But we know that property is a true empty, there's no-one going back and forth. It could be that there's no ownership details, they've moved on. Then we're targeting it, because we're having complaints, but when we're encouraging sale or change or action, when they go to access funding—for example, the national empty homes grant—they would be exempt, because the council tax data is not suitable. So, we're nagging them and sending letters to them and saying, 'You need to do something with your property', and they're trying, but then they get the block, then, because of the definition. That is something that really frustrates us as professionals, because we know that property is empty. So, that is something that I think really needs to be considered, and it doesn't encourage then the difficult empties.

Also, I think you've got the transitional empties that are easier to bring back into use. So, they're the ones that have been empty for less than five years—you know, there could be probate issues, legal issues et cetera. And then you've got the problematic empty properties that have been empty for more than five years, and they are the ones that need real intervention. They are the ones that are taking us sometimes 18 months to deal with, but they are the ones that will not be brought back into use without us intervening. And you get the same recognition, really, whatever one you bring back into use. For example, in Caerphilly, we did a bit of analysis on our empty properties, and, when I started the empty property team, there were 183 properties that were long term—five years plus—and, out of the same cohort, so the 183, only 24 are empty today, and all of them, or the majority of them, we are actively dealing with or there are reasons for that. And that data is what we need, I think, but that gets lost with the low-hanging fruit.

Thank you. Sorry. Dave, and then Marc.

[Inaudible.] With empty properties, as you said, it's hard to get data, because people say they are living there, but you know they're not living there. But they're saying they're living there because they're having a single person's reduction, and I know—I have heard—of people living in other houses, and they are getting a council tax rebate there. Is there anything that the council does then when they find out this information? Do they prosecute, because that's fraud, isn't it?

The council tax departments, they do ask for proof of residence. So, when people are applying for the exemptions, they do ask for bills and things to show that they're living there. If they don't provide that, they will remove the exemption from them, then, and I believe all councils would pursue action against incorrect information then.

Thank you. Marc. 

I'm going to speak in Welsh. I should explain that in English, shouldn't I?

Could I come in on that, if that's okay? I do think that there's a difference across councils. There are different situations in terms of local housing market need and affordability, and every council's different, so there needs to be a bit of local flexibility. But in terms of skills, different councils might have different levels of skills. In Swansea, we have a dedicated empty properties officer. I think that's critically important. That officer works closely across other directorates that impact on bringing empty homes back into use.

But referring to the 2019 evidence session on empty homes, a clear recommendation came out of there for a national action plan. A national action plan could be the key to sharing good practice among authorities, to having some consistency in terms of approach. I think that could lift some of the councils that are struggling a little bit, and the councils that are doing well could help support those councils. I would recommend taking that approach across the piece so that councils like ourselves that are very good at what we do—we bring a lot of empty properties back into use every year—can help and lift other councils to do the same. 

I know we've talked about dedicated resource, which we're lucky we have in Bridgend, Cardiff and the Vale, and that's from the empty property officer role, but it's not just the empty property officers who carry out that work. You have to have corporate buy-in for it to be a success. There are many other departments; there's planning, building control, regeneration. You need council tax, you need legal services, you need all those people to be there in place. I think where we've been successful is we've recently renewed our strategies, we've consulted with our partners within the councils, making sure that they all had an input as well.

The action plans have enabled raising the profile of the work and for our housing solution teams to recognise that this is something that they can be involved in, because it does reduce the use of temporary accommodation. The use of Leasing Scheme Wales has been really successful. We've got examples in Bridgend. Since that scheme has come into place, there have been 40 households that have been placed in accommodation that would otherwise have been in temporary accommodation. I know that the figures in Cardiff are about 156, I think, with another 30 in the pipeline as well. So, if you can show the advantages to the other departments and everybody has this corporate buy-in, I think that drives success.

The one issue—and I think this goes across the board with local authorities—is legal support. You do need quite specialist legal support, especially with the more complex enforcement options such as compulsory purchase and enforced sale. It's been something we've been limited in being able to do, because we didn't have that resource. But with the Transforming Towns enforcement fund that was made available to us, we've been able to make applications to that in Bridgend on a property-specific basis, and we've been able to buy in specialist legal support that has allowed us to undertake these more complex enforcement actions. I think that was another driver of success.

Thank you. Peter.

We've gone off the point. We were just talking about data. If I just bring it back to a quick bit of data, because I know it's really important that we can communicate well to get as much data as possible. I know it's challenging with GDPR on many things. Helen, because you're running a shared service over three authorities, you've obviously been able to level some of the barriers for sharing information. Well, perhaps you haven't, I don't know; we'll hear in a minute. But how much is GDPR getting in the way of you being able to tackle these problems?

With SRS, if it's council tax data, it's all very separate, there wouldn't be sharing across authorities. We're lucky that our council tax officers attend our working group meetings in Bridgend and Vale. They're very responsive in sharing data. We do, as enforcement officers, have a legal basis to request data, so it is something that we can have access to. That's set down in legislation for us, especially if it's for the purpose of bringing empty properties back into use. It can, though, vary between authorities. Sometimes, there is a fear of risk on sharing of data, but there is that legislation that allows us to have that.

I think maybe we're looking a lot at figures of empty properties and things, but we haven't got a lot of data on the reasons why properties are empty, and that sort of thing would be useful as well. Also, ownership details can be inaccurate at the moment. Land registry delays are greatly impacting our work. Properties are changing hands, and we can't find out who the new owners are. We really need that information, and also ownership through probate delays as well. So, those are the things.

If we had those reasons why properties were empty and had more research into that side of it, we could then target our initiatives to specific areas, why that's happening, so that would help as well. And perhaps look at geographical mapping, where we put down where the empty properties are and match that against areas of housing demand. I think that would be really useful to drive strategy.

Is there anything additional from anyone on GDPR and how it's causing you problems, or has Helen has captured it all? Okay. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Helen, I'll just go back to something that you mentioned about the resource and not having the resource in place. How do we do that? Is that going to be something that has to be statutory? How do we get to that place where we do have that resource across the board?

Obviously, if you make duties statutory, then it focuses the attention on those, and that's where council funding would be concentrated. But I am worried, with all the competing priorities and things within, that if that didn't come with additional resource, then I think councils would struggle to meet any demands of new legislation.

Just following on, I completely agree with that. Evidence from councils shows that the success of tackling empty properties depends very much on sustained capacity, appropriate funding, and also—no surprise—longer term funding so that we can plan better. Whilst we've got a range of enforcement powers available, their effectiveness depends completely on having the workforce to deliver them. This supports the wider case that is set out by the WLGA manifesto for a strategic whole-Wales approach to strengthening local government capacity. If we could work together on a long-term workforce strategy that supports recruitment, retention, training and development of specialist skills, then that could help us tackle empty homes.

Thank you. David, did you want to come in with something?

Do you think working in collaboration like you do is good for getting better results? Because I know there are some councils that haven't got any workers, others have got half a person working. Do you think that, if you had area working with different local authorities, like Bridgend and the Vale are doing, and Cardiff, that would bring better results?

I think with us, it's good for sharing of information and best practice, but if you're going to talk about regional empty property officers, what you've got to recognise is every area operates very differently, every council operates very differently. For that person to pick up all the different nuances in the councils, I think that would be really quite difficult.

But from a sharing of best practice stance, I think that's really good. We do have some empty property working groups as well in south Wales and north Wales. We do get together as authorities and we do share a lot of information. If somebody's done, for example, enforced sales, some of us have got procedures, we actively share those. If there are requests for standard letters and correspondence about other matters as well, we all get together. So, we do try and do that. 

I think maybe a legal resource on a regional sort of basis would help, because the legislation that is being enforced is the same across the board. It's quite specialist. I know Georgina from Bridgend came and presented about when we did a compulsory purchase order—very specialist, very resource intensive, took a lot of time, and we really needed that legal support. But if you've got those solicitors out there that can deal with these specialist issues, and that was available regionally, and they were coming around—.

The other thing we had as well, obviously, was Andrew Lavender was provided from the Welsh Government as the industry expert, and we utilised him on option generation, making applications for the Transforming Towns enforcement fund, and with the compulsory purchase and more complex areas of legislation.

And if they work together, they could share the cost, couldn't they?

Yes.

Can I just quickly go to Councillor Harrington, because she's had her hand up for quite some time?

Thank you. I support Helen's comments. I think from a WLGA perspective, there needs to be that local intelligence, local flexibility. There may be some things that people can collaborate on. We also should remember that we need to partner and collaborate with housing associations, with community organisations and the third sector, because we can't do it in isolation. But as a national thing, we have been calling in Swansea for a national genealogy department in terms of determining who the owners are. If an owner dies, we need to find the relatives, the surviving family, to be able to deal with them, to bring those properties back into use. So, a national genealogy department would be my plea, please.

Thank you. Elyn. 

Diolch, Gadeirydd. I'd like to understand a bit more about the hesitancy from local authorities in terms of doing those compulsory purchase orders. Is there anything you think we should be looking at as a committee to make that easier?

We recently completed our first compulsory purchase order. It was only possible through accessing the Transforming Towns funding. If you look at that order, we'd been dealing with this property for years; it wasn't something we jumped to straight away. We explored all other options, and then we looked at the compulsory purchase order. There was a lack of expertise within our team at the time, because it's not something we'd done before. So, Andrew was very useful with that as well. And the lack of legal support as well. But the compulsory purchase order procedure is extremely lengthy, extremely complicated. There are financial risks to authorities as well, then. There are numerous points where appeals can be made as well. And it took just about two years for us to complete that process.

Once we purchase the property, we then become liable for it. So, we have to quickly get insurance for that and then we have to go about selling on that property, which we have done successfully last week, which is really good, to a local developer. But now we've got to work with him to bring that property back into use. There are also quite a lot of costs involved in it, which the council can't recoup from the sale of the property, and that's down to the way the compensation code is set up within legislation now. So, I think, for it to be more widely used, we would be looking for a simplified process and more support, really, on the legal side of it, then, yes.

Thank you. Councillor Harrington.

Is that me?

Yes.

Thank you. I echo everything that's been said. CPOs are costly, complicated and very resource intensive, so we'd want to try and avoid them wherever we can. We'd welcome simplifying existing powers to reduce financial and legal risks. And I'd go a step further and say that Welsh Government might wish to consider drafting some further legislation in this area, which allows debts incurred by local authorities through securing a property in default to be recorded as a local land charge, because this would provide a stronger base for recovery of any costs incurred.

Thank you. Rebeca, did you want to ask anything about the strategic approach?

Diolch yn fawr, Gadeirydd. I'll be speaking in Welsh as well.

Yes, if I could just come in and just reiterate that a recommendation previously was around a national action plan—I completely support that. At the moment, on a local level, officers are dealing with processes and approaches individually and not having a consistent approach across Wales, and so I think a national action plan would be the best solution.

I'll give an example. When Swansea—I've mentioned it in the chat—developed an enforced sale process back in 2014, we had representatives from other Welsh councils invited to a seminar. They discussed the process. It included standardisation of letters and notices, and it helped other authorities to develop a similar approach. So, if we all work together, sharing good practice, dealing with the challenges—. I think that that is a recommendation that has been upheld all this time and would be very much welcomed.

Thank you. Helen.

I do support a national action plan, because it would raise the profile of our work, but I would be concerned that it does need to recognise local priorities as well. As I've said, Bridgend, Cardiff and the Vale have just produced their own empty property strategies and now we all have action plans as well, so there'll have to be flexibility within that national plan to take that into account then. But, from the point of view of raising the profile of the work on empty properties, it would be welcomed.

Thank you. Rebeca, does that address your question and do you have any follow-ups?

No. That's great. Thank you. Diolch yn fawr, bawb.

Thank you very much. David.

No. They've answered.

Nothing at all. Okay. Nothing on funding. Okay. Elyn, do you have any questions you'd like to cover off?

Yes. I'll be speaking in Welsh.

With Bridgend, Cardiff and the Vale, there's a statement on each of the websites saying what happens with the empty property premium. In Bridgend, we had the empty property officer prior to the introduction of the premium, so it wasn't used to fund that. Bridgend says it's used to support a wide range of services, including the council's housing and homelessness services, to meet housing needs. In the Vale they used it to fund an empty property officer, and it also says it helps prevent homelessness and contributes to sustainable communities. Cardiff, obviously a larger authority, funded a team, but it has also more recently funded additional housing officers to meet some of the problems that Rhian has just mentioned then in the private rented sector, preventing those properties from deteriorating and becoming empty as well. It also says about increasing the supply of affordable housing and improving communities. So, those are the statements that are available for those authorities.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Harrington.

Thank you. We believe that actually this should be a matter for local democratic decision making. This shouldn't be a national approach. So, local authorities are best placed to decide what they want to invest in and what they need. That would be our stance. And in terms of council tax, I feel like I should reference—because we're seeing it in Swansea and I'm sure it's reflected across other local authorities across Wales—that when people inherit, a family inherit, a property, and it goes through probate, it takes often a lot more than 12 months, and so that property then ends up having council tax, which is an additional expense and stress to the family. I think that is something that we do need to look at, because we don't really want to penalise bereaved families that are struggling to go through probate, which can often take well over 18 months—sometimes years. That's just an issue that we've flagged and we're very sympathetic about that, so, if a solution can be found, that would be very welcomed.

Thank you. Peter.

Andrea, you mentioned about councils wanting discretion over how to use the moneys, and we recognise that, but is there a push to utilise that money across the local government family to encourage more houses back in? Because there is an anxiety among the cynics out there that it may be used as a bit of a cash cow, if that surplus is available on empty houses. It's not your experience that houses are being kept vacant to draw in extra revenue, is it?

No, that's not my experience.

Good.

Okay, thank you. Elyn.

Do you want to go first, Councillor Harrington?

Do you mind if I come in on that? We had the homes above shops—. There was targeted funding, and that was really successful in bringing homes above shops back into use. And it's ring-fenced grants like that that can make a massive difference to your high street, and get more residential in above commercial properties. So, if grant funding like that became available, we would definitely take advantage of that, and we know it has been very successful, and it does work.

We have, in Bridgend, done some joint schemes with regeneration on multipurpose buildings, empty commercials, and we've put commercial back on the ground floor, with accommodation above. We've also looked at converting empty commercials into residential as well, and using those different streams of funding. 

I will say that sometimes we get information from Welsh Government, and some is from the regeneration arm, and some might be from a housing arm as well. And how that information is received by local councils can be very different, because, if it's regeneration, it might go one way, housing another way. So, it's trying to get a joined-up approach on the residential and commercial, and those regeneration and housing arms, and bringing them all together, then, really. So, it would be welcome if we could have that sort of steer from Welsh Government there. 

Thank you. Okay, all right. One from me, really, about enforcement. It was suggested by the Empty Homes Network that we could look at a statutory empty dwellings sales order, which would obviously mean that the authority would just require the sale of a property rather than taking ownership of it. Is that something that is viable? 

I assume that's different from the enforced sales, in that you don't have to secure a debt against the property then. And, yes, we'd welcome more flexibility in the enforcement options, with the caveat that we do need appropriate resource to support any new enforcement powers. 

Okay. Anybody else? No. That's fine. Peter, anything? Do you want to ask anything on enforcement? No. Okay. Rebeca, anything on communities and partner agencies, or anything at all? 

Councillor Harrington. 

Yes, if I can come in from a sort of housing cabinet member network approach, we meet regularly—all 22 local authorities, housing cabinet members, heads of housing—and empty properties is part of the jigsaw. There are lots of different ways of bringing homes back into use, building new homes, and this has to be a big part of that. 

And also, in terms of collaboration, I meet regularly with our registered social landlords to discuss how, together, we can increase stock and increase affordable homes in the city, and that is a very useful forum for us to not just share problems, but also to share good news and good practice. 

I do think that we definitely need to work closely together, but there's also that element of on-the-ground intelligence from local members. We do rely a lot on councillors flagging up, 'There's an empty property. It's been dilapidated for some time. It's a blight on our community.' And so that is also fed in to our officer and then she will make engagement, or perhaps she already is in the middle of engagement. But it's about that communication and engagement, which is then fed back to the community, to provide, hopefully, reassurance that it is in hand and it is being looked at, and that we are aware of it.

Thank you. Well, you'll be glad to know that we've actually finished a bit earlier; we're ahead of time here. So, as expert witnesses, is there anything you'd like to add that we may not have touched upon, or you may wish to elaborate on?

I just think, really, I touched on the leasing scheme and how successful that was, and I've had feedback from our housing solutions teams how disappointed they are that it doesn't appear that that will be continuing, because they have seen that as a real benefit to reducing the use of temporary accommodation. And the other success story has been the national empty homes grant as well. We've seen it help first-time buyers, we've seen it help people where they've got into difficulties because of the cost of living, with the amounts that works now costs, and they've no longer been able to renovate those properties, leading them to become empty. So, they've both been very successful schemes. The problem with the empty homes grant is that it was available and then we've been given several dates to stop. Every time we're given a date to stop, we publicise it, and we have a flood of applications. So, it's hard to sustain that, then. So, if there could be some more long-term direction on funding that was available, I think that would be welcomed by councils.

Thank you. And then Councillor Harrington.

I completely agree with longer term sustainable funding. The reality is we're not asking to create more powers or programmes, really. We're asking to improve what we're doing with the existing system, to make that work better, and also acknowledging that it's a local issue requiring local knowledge with tailored solutions, rather than a prescriptive national response. Obviously, Welsh Government's target of 20,000 empty homes is a big part of working towards reaching that target, and that's recognised. In terms of the empty homes grant, it is successful, but I often get feedback that £25,000 just isn't enough, because construction materials and the costs of building have gone up. So, perhaps that's something that could be considered to be increased to make it more enticing for people to bring properties back into use.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My last note is that, as well as the national action plan, a few years ago we were required to do a local action plan, and each authority had to do the action plan, and it was a corporate approach. And it really focused the authority on empty properties; we all came together, and it was really successful. What we found was, when the action plan was a requirement from Welsh Government, they asked for updates on it, and it was keeping it at the forefront of the authority. Now, as that became less of a priority, and Welsh Government didn't ask for the update on the plans, it got harder and harder to get the wider council and the corporate buy-in, because it just drops the priorities. There are so many conflicting priorities within local authorities, so many challenges, we need that pressure on to keep the momentum. The action plan really worked for us in Caerphilly. It gave us the drive, it gave us the plan of how to implement this new empty property team, and it was really successful. We had it colour co-ordinated, it was all green, we'd done it, but there was no review, there was no—. And when I tried to review, really, without that Welsh Government pressure, it wasn't as successful because you need that pressure from Government.

Thank you. Peter.

Andrea, I wonder if I could take the liberty of asking you your perspective from the WLGA as a whole, to give a flavour of—. The target of 20,000 houses is going to be quite fundamental, isn't it, whichever way we achieve that. How do the councils feel across the piece about that being achievable with local development plan processes and land availability? We all aspire to more houses, but what can be deliverable? Has the WLGA got a position on that at the moment?

Yes. So, there are a number of competing priorities that I'm on the record for saying on behalf of the WLGA. We've been calling for quite some time for a focused approach. So, for example, asking us to bring our existing council stock up to the Welsh housing quality standard 2023, asking us to deal with the homelessness Bill, the building safety Bill, the fire safety Bill, and build new homes and bring new homes back into stock, empty homes, ex right to buys. We need a focus, we need a timeline of what's achievable. And if the priority is to build and have more social housing in Wales, then that's what the priority should be. We can't do it all, all at the same time; we've only got limited resource and capacity.

I'll give you an example. So, to bring our 14,000 homes in Swansea back to 2023 standards is going to cost us nothing short of £1 billion. We haven't got £1 billion. So, I think it would be very helpful if Welsh Government had a pragmatic, practical approach, and as I said earlier, part of that is it would be helpful if there was a relaxation on the standard in terms of properties that we can acquire, because if they don't meet the room size requirements, for example, then we can't buy them back. So, we do need to look at all angles. It has to be all in the mix if they're going to have any chance of meeting that requirement.

But just to add, in addition to that, 20,000, in my opinion, is going to be hugely ambitious, because we're dealing with nitrates, we're dealing with phosphates. We've got a number of developments on stop at the moment. And those are thousands of homes on stop. And that's not just council sites, that's registered social landlords and private developer sites as well. So, we do need to overcome those issues to get development back up and running.

Thank you. That was really helpful.

Thank you. I think we're done. So, I'd like to thank you all for your time and for fielding some awkward questions from us all. We will send you, obviously, a transcript of the meeting, so that you can check its accuracy. But again, thank you from all of us here. Thank you so much.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Right. So, what we've got is we've got five papers to note—

We note them.

Yes. You're happy to proceed? Okay.

So, we're going to move to item 5. It's under Standing Order 17.42: I propose, in accordance with the Standing Order, that the committee resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of this meeting in order to discuss the evidence received under items 2 and 3 of today's meeting and to consider the supplementary legislative consent memorandum for the Representation of the People Bill 2026-27. Everyone happy? Yes.