Introduction

Pembrokeshire County Council’s Housing Services are a critically important function within the County, with a role and impact that is central to local place-shaping and to the creation of healthy and sustainable communities. Housing sits at the very heart of the Council’s broader leadership role within Pembrokeshire, delivering important front-line housing services to the local community but also strategically planning and delivering key aspects of the Council’s collective vision for the County.

National government acknowledges the importance of the strategic housing role of local authorities and delegates a range of duties and responsibilities that recognise that Councils are best placed to understand local housing needs and develop the strategic responses to meet those needs. The legislative and funding frameworks relevant to the Council’s housing role and duties both guide and obligate the Council in terms of its broad housing responsibilities and local pressures, for instance across homelessness, can represent a significant financial burden against Council resources. For Pembrokeshire, the housing role also extends to managing and maintaining significant numbers of social rented homes, guided by national policy directives and complex or controlled funding mechanisms which do not necessarily accommodate local pressures or priorities. Our comparatively low rent levels, for instance, are constrained by Welsh government-set formulae, which hampers our ability to invest in meeting the challenging de-carbonisation targets, also set by Welsh Government.

Pembrokeshire’s strategic housing responsibilities necessitate significant levels of interaction and cooperation with both internal and external public services, and the voluntary and private sector in order to deliver effective housing solutions across key housing needs and themes. Those partners, statutory or otherwise, need guidance from the local authority with regard to the housing challenges being faced, the priorities to be addressed and the actions necessary to deliver change. In broad terms, that is the role of the Housing Strategy and whilst it is supported by a number of thematic strategies and action plans this Housing Strategy seeks to identify the key challenges being faced in Pembrokeshire, the priorities to be addressed and the actions to deliver the required outcomes.

Developing this Housing Strategy has required Pembrokeshire County Council to understand the local housing market, local housing conditions and understand local housing requirements across the County’s diverse communities of need. Those needs are often expressed at the crisis point of homelessness, but are often hidden from view and linked to vulnerability or disability, therefore service delivery approaches need to account for the fact that every customer is unique and can require tailor-made, individual solutions to their needs. Importantly, the Housing Strategy is supported by specific detailed strategies, for instance around homelessness, which explore in greater detail the evidence base and set out the detailed action plans to address the identified needs and challenges. Where there are gaps in relation to the evidence base, or gaps in terms of detailed plans, the housing strategy seeks to identify how and when those gaps will be addressed in order to gain a full understanding of the housing needs of the county and the actions required to address those needs.

As Pembrokeshire is the landlord for its own housing stock, managed through a ring-fenced Housing Revenue Account (HRA), there is also a diverse community of customers to deliver direct services for. This carries additional challenges associated with complex budgetary and legislative considerations and externally imposed targets. Importantly, in respect of the Council’s landlord role, the Council’s strategic plan is set out within the HRA Business Plan. The HRA Business Plan sets out how the council intends to prioritise and manage its ring-fenced resources to support the management, maintenance and improvement of the housing stock in its ownership. It also sets out plans and funding strategies for the development of new homes to meet needs over the next 30 years. Therefore, whilst the Housing Strategy provides a strategic overview for how Pembrokeshire will address its key housing challenges and outlines priorities that cut across the landlord function, the HRA Business Plan is ring-fenced to the Council’s landlord responsibilities.

This Housing Strategy therefore includes an overview of local housing challenges and needs and then seeks to set out approaches to address those needs within the context of the council’s priorities. Importantly, the strategy and action plan is inevitably framed within national and local legislative and policy context and the Council’s resources.

The national legislative and policy frameworks within which Pembrokeshire’s Housing Services operates is complex. The Welsh Government has set out a large number of ambitions and obligations in respect of both the broader Housing responsibilities of local Councils and in respect of their landlord services. In the context of increasing budgetary pressure and funding cuts for local authorities this makes the Housing Services role even more challenging across both revenue and capital budgets. These policy commitments and targets impose significant capacity and resource pressures on Pembrokeshire.

However, in developing this local housing strategy Pembrokeshire possesses a potentially powerful place shaping tool through which we can work in partnership towards addressing the housing challenges facing the County.