The Local Government and Housing Committee is looking in detail at legislation on homelessness and building safety. Jennie Bibbings reports.
Over the last 25 years of Welsh lawmaking, it has always been momentous for the sector whenever housing legislation is laid before the Senedd.
Housing stakeholders spend huge amounts of energy on each Bill. Sometimes efforts begin years in advance as organisations campaign for change and then help the Welsh Government develop initial proposals.
When the legislation is finally laid the sector’s task is to envision how it will work in practice and then inform the Senedd’s scrutiny, coming up with proposals for amendments if needed.
This summer, the sector’s bandwidth is having to stretch to accommodate not one but two major pieces of legislation – the Homelessness and Social Housing Allocation (Wales) Bill, currently at Stage 1 scrutiny, and the Building Safety (Wales) Bill, which at the time of writing was due to be laid before summer recess.
The Senedd’s Local Government and Housing Committee will be concentrating on scrutinising these two Bills for the rest of 2025 and into 2026.
A Bill to prevent homelessness
Broadly speaking, the Homelessness and Social Housing Allocation (Wales) Bill is aiming to do three things:
- Increase the early prevention of homelessness, by requiring local authorities to assist when someone is within six months of losing their home, rather than the current 56 days
- Get other services outside homelessness to take more responsibility for addressing homelessness, by placing cooperation and ‘ask and act’ duties on a list of agencies including social services, prisons, local health boards (apart from primary care) and housing associations
- Move towards a more universal homelessness safety net, by eliminating some of the tests (the priority need, intentionality and unreasonable failure to cooperate tests) that stop people experiencing homelessness from getting help.
Whether the Bill will actually achieve those aims in practice is, of course, the key question. Stage 1 scrutiny is when the Senedd considers this, looking at the general principles of the Bill. This includes what its policy aims are; whether as drafted it will achieve these; and ultimately whether a new change in law is needed.
The committee is working to a timetable of 17 October 2025 for making its Stage 1 report to the Senedd. A Stage 1 plenary debate and vote will be held soon after this date, and then – provided the Bill passes that Stage successfully – members will be able to table amendments which will be considered by committee during Stage 2.
Stage 2 is timetabled to finish by 19 December, and then the whole Senedd will consider further amendments at Stage 3 in early 2026.
At the time of writing, the Committee had heard evidence from the minister in charge, cabinet secretary Jayne Bryant MS, and had also heard evidence from stakeholders on 19 and 26 June.
Stage 1 includes not one but two evidence sessions with the minister in charge, the second due to take place after summer recess. This is when members ask the cabinet secretary to respond to issues raised by stakeholders.
As we do for every Bill, Senedd Research has published an impartial guide to help inform people who want to get involved in scrutiny but don’t always have time to get to grips with the whole Bill and the lengthy explanatory memorandum.
You can find our Bill summary on this page, together with a bilingual glossary to help scrutiny through the medium of Welsh, and other helpful articles that explore various aspects of the Bill in more detail. We’ll be updating the page as the Bill progresses.
Building safety
The Building Safety (Wales) Bill is the latest element in the Welsh Government’s response to the Hackitt Review that made recommendations in 2018 with the aim of ensuring that a tragedy like Grenfell never happens again.
The Bill is expected to introduce a new safety regime for multi-occupied residential buildings, aiming to create clear lines of accountability for ongoing fire and wider structural safety while a building is lived in.
Our recent article explains the background to the Bill and what it’s expected to cover. While the exact timetable for scrutiny wasn’t confirmed at the time of writing, it is likely to be going through Stage 1 and 2 slightly later than the Homelessness Bill.
Housing stakeholders may wish to get involved in scrutiny of this Bill, not only from the perspective of social and private landlords, but also from the perspective of residents, who are expected to be given new rights and responsibilities under the legislation.
Stay tuned for the launch of the written consultation – the committee will publicise this on its X channel and its webpage.
Jennie Bibbings is a senior researcher at the Senedd. Senedd Research provides impartial research and analysis to Members of the Senedd and committees. They publish lots of their work for everyone to read at research.senedd.wales and you can follow them on X @SeneddResearch.