Rent for council tax residents to rise in Welsh county

Richard Youle, Local Democracy Reporter

Rent for thousands of council house tenants in Welsh county will rise by an average of 4.3% in April.

The new average rent in Carmarthenshire of £113.21p will be £4.67p more per week than currently, but tenants in one-bedroom houses and bungalows will pay the same as they currently do following a rent affordability assessment.

A new system of rent-setting is being introduced in Wales for councils and housing associations and authorities including Swansea are also raising rents by 4.3%.

Half of Wales’s 22 councils have their own housing stock and Cllr Emlyn Schiavone, cabinet member for housing, told a meeting of full council that Carmarthenshire’s was currently the third least expensive.

The Plaid Cymru councillor said he felt the proposed rent levels from April sought to balance the financial pressures facing households with the need to continue with the council’s housing development programme and ensure housing standards were maintained.

Rent yield forecast 

Carmarthenshire Council has just under 9,500 homes and the total rental yield is forecast to be £55.7 million in 2026-27. This money will fund maintenance, repairs, housing management and borrowing costs.

A report before councillors said a one-bedroom Carmarthenshire Council flat cost £85.75p to rent and that a three-bed house cost £115.36p. The equivalent private sector rents as of July last year, it said, were £107.62p and £158.89p.

Cllr Schiavone said a new minor works team would be set up to deal with larger repair jobs reported by tenants and to keep the number of empty council properties as low as possible. The Plaid-Independent-run authority also aims to improve its emergency and urgent repairs service by investing an extra £2 million in it.

Labour councillor Kevin Madge said the authority should be proud it had kept its housing but felt more bungalows and sheltered accommodation were required and more focus needed on managing estates to reduce anti-social behaviour.

He added: “We’ve got a lot of estates that need to be demolished or regenerated.”

Council house tenants survey

A survey of council house tenants last summer found 64% of respondents were satisfied with the overall housing service including the quality of their property. But only 49% were satisfied with the way the authority dealt with anti-social behaviour.

Meanwhile, full council also agreed to allocate £42.2 million to build and acquire new homes in 2026-27 and upgrade existing ones. This will be funded mainly by borrowing and by grants.

The report said 2,824 affordable homes had been built, acquired or brought back into use in Carmarthenshire since 2016. A relatively small amount of these – 199 – were houses built by the council itself.

The report said there was a “current pipeline” of 1,469 new affordable homes to be built by housing associations and the council.

It added that more than 160 households were in temporary accommodation at any one time in Carmarthenshire, and that on average 32 households presented as homeless every week compared to 15 homes for social rent being allocated.

The report said: “The demand for affordable housing in the county, however, continues to outstrip supply, and more needs to be done. Our priority over the next three years is to bring forward larger sites that create scale and pace. We must continue to increase the supply of one-bedroom homes.”