{"id":484,"date":"2026-10-09T05:40:57","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T04:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/?p=484"},"modified":"2026-10-09T06:59:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T05:59:34","slug":"eligibility-and-crisis-situations-new-consultation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/eligibility-and-crisis-situations-new-consultation\/","title":{"rendered":"Eligibility and crisis situations: New Consultation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given the politics of Britishness at the moment, the Welsh Government are consulting<\/a> on a relatively minor but potentially brave proposal to amend the eligibility regulations for housing allocation and homelessness assistance.\u00a0 The change is minor in a way \u2013 it wants to make permanent the \u201cgeneral crisis\u201d provision in the The Allocation of Housing and Homelessness (Eligibility) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2026<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 It is due to run its course on 30th<\/sup> March 2027.\u00a0 But, of course it should be permanent, in my view.\u00a0 It\u2019s a no-brainer, surely.<\/p>\n

What is interesting in a way is the contortions taken to explain the current provision in the Consultation Document.\u00a0 It is almost comical \u2013 if it wasn\u2019t so deadly serious \u2013 how complicated eligibility has become.\u00a0 It would take a day’s intensive training to scratch the surface of the rules.\u00a0 In essence, what they want to do is exempt British nationals and others with leave to remain from the habitual residence test when they have to leave a country which the government advises they should leave or arranges an evacuation.\u00a0 Of course, politics means that they have to be careful but consider this description of what they want to make permanent:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018general crisis\u2019 provision allows British nationals, eligible family members, and classes of people with leave to remain who are not subject to no recourse to public funds or an ongoing maintenance undertaking, to access housing allocation and homelessness assistance in Wales when returning from countries subject to UK Government \u2018leave now\u2019 advice or evacuation. This means that such persons are eligible for housing allocation and homelessness assistance from arrival and will receive assistance subject to meeting any other conditions that apply to all eligible persons. The Regulations do not affect immigration status and are only applicable to British nationals and certain persons with leave to remain.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It will be interesting what one or two of the minority parties have to say about this.\u00a0 On the one hand, it can hardly be regarded as objectionable.\u00a0 And, the emphasis is on British nationals, but the care with which it is being introduced, and the necessity for a consultation, seem otherworldly to me (particularly at the moment, as my family are excavating their past).\u00a0 I suppose that the extension beyond British nationals may raise some objections, but, really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Given the politics of Britishness at the moment, the Welsh Government are consulting on a relatively minor but potentially brave proposal to amend the eligibility regulations for housing allocation and […]","protected":false},"author":7123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[45,30,27,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allocation","category-homelessness","category-social-housing","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}