Council faces £900m bill to upgrade social housing

About £900m needs to be spent to bring one county's council housing stock up to new living standards, a meeting has heard.

Swansea council needs to spend an average of £65,000 per property to improve energy efficiency levels in line with Welsh government guidelines.

Deputy leader Andrea Lewis said this would be "difficult, if not impossible" to achieve without additional Welsh government funding.

The Welsh government said it had committed £256m last year to improve the quality of social homes.

It is hoped the new standards, which include insulation, solar panels and replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, will cut greenhouse gas emissions by making homes more energy efficient.

A report four years ago estimated decarbonising Swansea's housing stock could cost about £350m, but a year later another report estimated this cost would be £750m.

Lewis said applying the new standards to the county's 13,800 council flats, houses and bungalows was now estimated to cost £900m.

The council previously spent more than £500m to bring its homes up to current Welsh standards.

Lewis told a cabinet meeting on Thursday: "Essentially we support the Welsh government's ambition to improve the quality of our [housing] stock in terms of energy efficiency for the benefit of our tenants, but without additional funding this will be difficult, if not impossible, to carry out."

The cabinet approved a policy setting out how it intended to meet and monitor the new housing standard, which it will submit to the Welsh government.

The council will need to produce energy efficiency reports for its properties by the end of March 2027 and ensure all homes meet new standards by 2030.

Tenants' rents, borrowed money and Welsh government grants are used to upgrade housing stock, rather than council tax.

The Welsh government said Swansea council was allocated £14m last year to help repair, upgrade, and retrofit its properties.

"Last year we committed a record £256m on improving the quality of social homes in Wales, including their energy efficiency, through a mixture of grants and low-interest loans available to local authorities and social landlords," it said.

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