Welsh council to end age-based policy for social housing allocation

Currently, applicants aged under 50 cannot be considered for these properties unless there is no one over 50 on the list.

This has meant that allocations have been made to applicants with low or no housing need, the council’s impact assessment revealed.

“There has been an increase in the number of applicants across all age ranges requiring smaller properties, and the age limits are restricting the ability to house many applicants within this group,” the report said.

Allocations for sheltered housing and bungalows will not be affected, though, and remain restricted to the over-60s.

The executive board’s report said that legal advice had been sought regarding local lettings policies over fears tenants could bring age discrimination cases because of the policy.

While “the legislation allows local authorities to set aside some of its housing stock to be allocated to a specific group, there has to be clear evidence for this approach”, it said.

Tracy Hague, head of service (housing) at Wrexham, said the council needed to be mindful of the fact that when it undertook the impact assessment, it emerged that “we could be challenged in terms of discrimination [regarding the over-50s restrictions] in the general needs blocks, and that’s why we’re asking to remove them”.

The changes were first proposed by members of the homes and environment scrutiny committee on 21 February 2024 and were followed by a consultation with sector bodies.

There will now be a 12-month monitoring period to evaluate the impact of the changes.

Last June, Wrexham Council revealed that it had a backlog of more than 4,600 repairs following industrial action and storms.