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.”
