Communities and Children Secretary Carl Sargeant today welcomed figures that show that 79% of all social housing dwellings met the Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS) at March 31st 2016, which is a rise of 8 percentage points on the previous year.
The WHQS aims to ensure all homes provided by local authorities and housing associations are safe and secure and offer modern amenities.
The Welsh Government provides Ā£108 million each year to help all social landlords meet and maintain the WHQS by 2020. So far expenditure of Ā£452 million on the project has been tracked and 85% of that expenditure has been re-invested in Wales. The investment has also helped over 777 people into employment or training, and provided the equivalent of 19,920 weeks of training.
The Cabinet Secretary said:
“The Welsh Housing Quality Standard will ensure that over 220,000 households in Wales have a home that is safe, warm and secure. It is also vital to us achieving many other of our goals as a Government including improving the nationās health and well being and creating jobs and training opportunities which help to tackle poverty.
“The statistics show our continued investment in our social housing stock is having a significant and far reaching impact.
“We have seen good progress, helping us towards our target of ensuring all social housing meets our high quality standards by 2020. I congratulate social landlords for their achievements so far, although there is still work to be done. We will continue to work with them to improve their housing stock.”
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