[This is the last post of 2025.\u00a0 It is the first part of a developing set of thoughts about housing standards in Wales, and what we should be doing about them.\u00a0 Both parts argue that we should be considering (at least) what is going on in Westminster around housing standards and their enforcement.\u00a0 In this post, I am asking why we don’t have a general enforcement duty and greater scope for civil penalties.\u00a0 In the next one, which will be the first post in 2026, I will be asking about whether we should incorporate Awaab’s law into Renting Homes – spoiler alert: yes.]<\/p>\n
In this post, I want to return to something which has troubled me, and continues to trouble me.\u00a0 Rightly, I think, in Wales, we consider ourselves to be progressive in terms of housing rights and laws.\u00a0 That was, in part, what Renting Homes was trying to do, and what the changes to homelessness law broadly are seeking to do.\u00a0 We might quibble with whether the legislation achieves those aims but, in principle, most of us are seeking to achieve a proper balance and ensure that housing is decent and occupiers have enforcement rights.\u00a0 However, we can’t deny the statistics:<\/p>\n
The English Renters’ Rights Act places a general duty on local authorities to take enforcement action, and the civil penalty regime has been expanded by that Act in England.\u00a0 What stops us in Wales from doing something similar?\u00a0 What stops us in Wales from having a comprehensive civil penalty regime entitling local authorities to levy a financial penalty on a defaulting landlord instead of bringing a prosecution?\u00a0 If those two elements were brought forward, in addition to the right of tenants to withhold their rent, would that not be “progressive”?\u00a0 As the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health Cymru president, Mark Elliott, said at the annual conference in October (I wasn’t there, but the speech is online<\/a>), “we\u2019ve never shied away from calling out wrongdoing wherever it is found”.<\/p>\n