Calls for more affordable homes as housing crisis deepens

Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

More affordable and social housing to rent is needed in a Welsh county, a senior councillor has said.

At a special meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council on Wednesday, October 28, councillors discussed the state of housing in the area while receiving the annual report on the performance of the Local Development Plan (LDP).

Despite being out of date since the end of 2021, Blaenau Gwent planners are still required by law to produce an annual monitoring report (AMR) on the performance of the LDP.

This report needed to be submitted to the Welsh Government by the end of October.

Between 2012 and the end of 2021, the LDP target was for 3,500 dwellings to be built in Blaenau Gwent.

But by the end of March 2026, only 2,074 dwellings had been built – meaning delivery is still 1,426 dwellings short of the target.

Last year, 124 dwellings were built, including 49 affordable homes, against an annual target of 233.

Blaenau Gwent planners have been working on a new LDP for several years, but this work was hampered by delays, including the Covid-19 pandemic.

LDP scrapped

In March, Blaenau Gwent councillors agreed to scrap their own replacement LDP in favour of forging a new joint LDP with Torfaen.

Independent opposition group leader Cllr Wayne Hodgins said: “The housing market has always been problematic; we have vast sites to open up.

“Hopefully, with this new development partner, we can bring some of those sites to fruition.

“There are a number of sites that have sat there for a long time. A number are ready to go and it’s a matter of getting spades in the ground.”

One of the sites he mentioned was the “old civic centre”, the council’s former headquarters in Ebbw Vale, which was demolished in 2022 with the expectation that houses would be built there.

Cllr Helen Cunningham (non-aligned – Llanhilleth) pointed out that a lot of work had been done to provide a new housing strategy for Blaenau Gwent, which was agreed by councillors in December 2025 and was relevant to the LDP.

Cllr Cunningham said: “We’re still in a housing crisis and I think it’s getting worse.”

She told the council that a resident in her ward had seen their rent go up from £550 to an unaffordable £900 a month.

Length of list

Cllr Cunningham said the advice councillors were expected to give was to direct people towards the private rented sector because the council’s housing list “is so long”.

She said the length of the housing waiting list “tells us we need a mass movement of affordable and social housing to be built”.

“That’s what we need to get back to,” stressed Cllr Cunningham.

Joint director of adults and communities David Leach said information from the housing strategy was being fed into the “thinking” around the new LDP, as well as being passed on to Wilmott Dixon.

Mr Leach said: “A lot of this will come down to land availability and getting the right housing products on the right land at the right time.”

Councillors then approved the report.