The Homelessness and Social Housing Allocation (Wales) Bill was unanimously voted into law on 10 February 2026 at The Senedd.
We were really pleased to see the cross-party support for these important reforms.
This new legislation is really welcome and it’s the result of many years of united efforts across the sector to make a big shift towards preventing homelessness.
What will change?
- The ‘prevention duty’ will increase from 56 days to six months. This gives local authorities much more time to support anyone at risk of homelessness.
- A wide range of public services will have a duty to ‘Ask and Act’ if they meet someone experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
- The priority need test and intentionality test – which have excluded people from life-saving support for far too long – will be abolished.
- The local connection test will remain (despite our calls to scrap it altogether) – but new safeguards will protect people who move to a new area to escape abuse.
The Wallich’s Policy & Public Affairs Coordinator Thomas Lavery said:
“We’re grateful to everyone who has worked on getting this legislation over the line.
It is a really significant achievement, and has great potential to really bring change for the people we support.”
