Report highlights COVID-19 pressures on housing professionals in Wales

Ensuring everyone can stay at home from an operational perspective and the move to provide accommodation to people sleeping rough and provide support to vulnerable tenants was seen as a success.

The report noted that while many housing professionals had felt supported by their local authority, many respondents said they had struggled with challenges including isolation and juggling work with childcare.
It stated: “For some professionals, the pandemic has meant becoming overnight leaders, overseeing rapid changes to how services move to be delivered digitally.”

Only 19% of respondents felt that their local authorities had responded well by allowing staff to work from home.

Catherine May, Tyfu Tai Cymru manager at CIH Cymru, said: “This survey provides a sobering reminder of the pace with which public services have had to shift their resources and adapt their approach to delivering services in response to managing the COVID-19 crisis.

“We know that local government housing professionals were already experiencing significant pressures in carrying out their roles before the pandemic took hold; our survey clearly shows that despite some optimism amongst staff, these pressures have intensified.

“Pre-existing challenges such as the lack of social housing has made matters worse, whilst the pandemic has created an environment where deadline pressures for government support, the challenge of moving services to a virtual form of delivering services and some staff having to become overnight leaders have presented fresh issues for teams to overcome.”