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Homes for Wales

21 August 2012

Homes for Wales

Homes for Wales - a White Paper for Better Lives and Communities

Homes for Wales: response to Welsh Government consultation (Adobe Acrobat Document 66kb)

Citizens Advice Cymru welcomes the opportunity to respond to this consultation. We feel the paper is a valuable step towards providing the foundation of a consensus in the sector. In particular we welcome the emphasis on the key themes of affordability, supply, quality and preventing homelessness - these are themes that we already embrace in our services and campaigning, and that we believe the rest of the housing sector can also wholeheartedly support.

Citizens Advice Cymru strongly support the Welsh Government's ambition that everyone has a home they can afford and that homelessness does not exist. We particularly welcome the recurring comments throughout the paper on what an important and central role advice services play in housing policy.

We particularly support 'Promoting equality and inclusion' (7.67), something that is at the heart of our aims. We support the equality objectives on strengthening advice, information and advocacy services to help people understand and exercise their rights and make informed choices'.

The intentional homelessness test hits families with children hard. We are pleased that the Welsh Government intends to protect children from the damaging impacts of this piece of legislation.

The Welsh Government demonstrates a 'whole system' approach and commits to working with the all organisations associated with the housing field and we welcome this commitment and look forward to seeing the improvements this will bring.