Hayley Macnamara explores what the Affordable Housing Taskforce report means for Wales.
The publication of the report and recommendations of the Affordable Housing Taskforce, led by Lee Waters MS, marks a major step forward in shaping the future of affordable housing delivery in Wales. The report is a detailed road map for overcoming the immediate and systemic challenges that continue to slow the pace of delivering the homes Wales so urgently needs.
The recommendations don’t sit in isolation, they build on momentum already gathering across the sector. The Senedd inquiry into the supply of affordable housing and the Wales Audit Office report have already underscored the need for bold, joined-up action. Now, the taskforce’s work sets in motion the direction of change needed at both national and local levels.
Key areas
The taskforce focused on two key areas. First, it tackled short-term barriers, including ways to unlock stalled sites in the 20,000-home programme and explore public land for temporary, ‘meanwhile use’. Second, it addressed long-term system change, making 41 interconnected recommendations aimed at streamlining planning processes, boosting capacity, and improving coordination to scale up delivery of affordable homes, particularly social rent.
Lee Waters is well known for tackling knotty issues head on, and discussions were, necessarily, frank focused and often challenging – and rightly so. The opening paragraph of the final report makes its position clear: ‘This represents a housing emergency’.
Community Housing Cymru (CHC) welcomes the focus on prioritising social housing across the system, and yet the report openly acknowledges the tension between the urgent need to deliver more homes and the challenge of meeting high standards. When capacity is constrained on every front, priorisation is critical. To address this, it calls for greater clarity on Welsh Government priorities, which is a vital step in striking the right balance between ambition and deliverability.
To empower decision-makers and cut through red tape, the report urges every local authority to assign a senior responsible officer to every affordable housing application, someone with real authority to unblock delays and make key trade-offs.
This focus on clear accountability and reducing complexity is a recurring theme. The taskforce makes a compelling case for standardising processes wherever possible, from Section 106 clauses and viability models to planning guidance, thereby removing unnecessary variation and ambiguity.
A key recommendation is to elevate affordable housing as a top priority within the planning system, with structured pre-application advice, faster decisions, and a presumption in favour of development on land already allocated in Local Development Plans. Furthermore, statutory consultees should face stricter deadlines, and planning decisions shouldn’t be held up when responses are delayed.
Bold intent
Some of the recommendations are already being explored through the Welsh Government’s consultation on permitted development rights. Meanwhile, the UK Government’s planning reform working paper demonstrates bold intent, with a strong emphasis on accelerating the delivery of new homes. However, policy reform alone won’t be enough. As the report makes clear, the severe capacity pressures facing local planning authorities must be addressed. Investment in the current and future workforce is essential.
Collaboration is key. The report proposes twice-yearly ‘check and challenge’ meetings between Welsh Government and councils to review progress and resolve issues. CHC and the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) are urged to take a more active challenge role, encouraging stockholding bodies to maintain and expand their development pipelines. CHC’s approach has always been to listen to our members, share their challenges, and push for the changes that will unlock homes.
Advocacy in action
The taskforce itself is evidence of our advocacy in action; we called for this during the Welsh Labour leadership contest in 2024. We will continue to ensure that our members’ experiences are brought to the table, and we will be upfront about the actions required to boost the capacity of the social housing sector and deliver the homes Wales desperately needs.
Housing associations stand ready to deliver, but current systems hinder progress. We are in a housing emergency that demands nothing less than bold and unified action.
The Affordable Housing Taskforce has not offered a silver bullet, but it has laid out a practical, achievable, and well-informed blueprint for action. It presents both a challenge and an opportunity to align national ambition with local delivery, and to use every available lever to its maximum effect.
Hayley Macnamara is policy lead at Community Housing Cymru