On Tuesday 4 November the Senedd will debate a proposed new law that the Welsh Government says will provide the legal basis for its plan to make homelessness rare, brief, and unrepeated.
The Homelessness and Social Housing Allocation (Wales) Bill aims to do this in three main ways:
- by ending the priority need and intentional homelessness tests, to move towards a more universal service that assists any eligible applicant;
- by increasing early prevention, with a duty on local authorities to intervene when someone is six months away from homelessness, from the current 56 days; and
- by giving other public bodies beyond local authorities a level of statutory responsibility for addressing homelessness, including ‘ask and act’ duties.
Our Bill Summary briefing explains in more detail what the Bill does and its background. This article sets out key themes from the Local Government and Housing Committee’s scrutiny at Stage 1 of the Senedd’s legislative process.
All the evidence heard by the Committee agrees that successful implementation will require significantly more resources flowing into homelessness, housing support, and social housing supply. But the Welsh Government claims it will save money long-term.
“Unsustainable” pressures
The Bill is based on an earlier White Paper which in turn was based on recommendations from an Expert Review Panel. Many witnesses told the Committee that the Panel had developed these recommendations through “constructive compromise”.
Academics, legal experts, and third sector representatives praised the Bill as “transformative”. Even so, there was resistance from most local authorities to many key provisions.
While councils stressed that they supported the Bill’s policy aims, they doubted that the Welsh Government would provide them with enough resources to implement it successfully.
Local authorities described “unsustainable” current pressures, and Cardiff Council said the Bill would “encourage more people into a system that can’t cope already”. The WLGA cited previous experiences of overly-optimistic Welsh Government cost assessments.
Other witnesses said the Bill’s provisions would help local authorities better manage demand. Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, who chaired the Expert Review Panel, said:
The way that you decrease the pressures on the temporary accommodation system and the homelessness system generally is by reducing the number of people who have to enter the system in the first place, by doing a lot more on prevention than we’re doing at the moment. And equally, you have to increase the flow of people out of the system into suitable accommodation, and that's precisely what the core package, that was presented by the Expert Review Panel and has found its way into the Bill, is intended to achieve.
The Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Local Government told the Committee she understood the pressures that local authorities are under:
and that's why I've proposed a phased approach to this implementation, but recognising that the reforms need to be funded sufficiently and sustainably, reflecting that true cost of delivery.
The Committee supported the Bill’s general principles but emphasised that “legislation alone will not be enough”, calling for “a major effort” from the Welsh Government and the housing sector to deliver social homes.
It said the Welsh Government must ensure that this effort is “a cross-government priority and not undermined by other policies”.
“Incredibly punitive”
One of the Bill’s most controversial provisions is the ending of the intentional homelessness test.
The Welsh Government said the test is a barrier to ending homelessness. Third sector witnesses said the test can disproportionately impact vulnerable people. Crisis called it “incredibly punitive”.
The Bill creates a new ‘deliberate manipulation’ test. Instead of cutting applicants off from all support, it removes priority for social housing in cases where someone has deliberately manipulated the homelessness system to gain preferential access to social housing. However, local authorities would retain a duty to help those households find a new home.
Only 87 households were found intentionally homeless in 2024-25, and 13 of 22 local authorities didn’t formally use the test that year. But local authorities said the test is often used informally in discussions with applicants and is "an important tool in clarifying expectations and options".
Local authorities doubted that the new test would be a strong enough disincentive. They pointed out that private renting is unaffordable for many homeless applicants, meaning that denying them priority for social housing could leave them stuck in temporary accommodation.
Others voiced concern that deliberate manipulation, as defined in the Bill, isn’t different enough from the current intentionality test and could end up repeating the same harms.
The Committee sympathised with local authorities but concluded on balance that it supported ending the test and creating the new one. It welcomed that many authorities have already stopped using intentionality formally, and called on the Welsh Government to support wider take-up of that good practice. It also highlighted a need for more intensive support services, such as preventative support for anti-social behaviour, to give local authorities better tools to manage complex needs.
Social housing
Another key element in the Bill is a new duty on housing associations to not unreasonably refuse a request from a local authority to rehouse a homelessness applicant.
Modelled on Scotland’s Section 5 duty, the Welsh Government said the aim is to address inconsistencies in the extent to which some housing associations grant tenancies to previously-homeless applicants.
Professor Fitzpatrick described the provision as “one of the most important ways that we can ease the current pressures on the temporary accommodation system”.
After some resistance the housing association sector broadly accepted the provision but called for a reciprocal duty on local authorities to share information about referred tenants.
The Cabinet Secretary said she didn’t believe a reciprocal duty would be "workable or necessary". The Committee said information-sharing should be addressed in “tightly defined” statutory guidance to specify when housing associations may refuse a referral.
Other provisions
The Bill also includes:
- steps to prevent homelessness among prison leavers;
- new local authority powers to define ‘qualifying persons’ who can apply for social housing; and
- steps to prevent care leavers having to become homeless to access social housing.
The Senedd will debate the general principles of the Bill in Plenary on Tuesday 4 November 2025. You can follow proceedings on Senedd.tv or view the transcript shortly afterwards.
Article by Jennie Bibbings, Senedd Research, Welsh Parliament
