September 2013 - Bron Afon

Most significantly 6 out of the 7 transfers were downsizing moves and 1 was as a result of
a direct match in exceptional circumstances. So a significant number of tenancies “ended”
(in practice the tenants involved remain with Bron Afon) following the introduction of the
bedroom tax as people who moved in before April found they could no longer afford the
rent of the property they were in. This is not unexpected and we have indeed we will see
the general trend around transfers continuing as we support and actively encourage
tenants affected by the bedroom tax to move wherever they can.
We have been more robust in our pre- tenancy process since March to ensure applicants
can prove they can afford the rent on a property if they are under occupying and we have
an Income Officer providing personal budgeting support to applicants as part of the
process.
What is the current position
We have been particularly successful in allocating our retirement properties, especially
some that have been empty a long time. Between April and August we let 51 retirement
properties and 23 of these had been empty 6 weeks or longer. This is the result of
persistent advertising, identifying any reasons for refusals or lack of demand and trying to
address those issues, as well as sign posting applicants to alternative schemes that they
may not have previously considered. Whilst we need to do some research to evidence this
we feel that the improvements made to communal lounges has also had a positive impact,
creating modern inviting areas and helping overcome the institutional vision some people
have of retirement accommodation.
At the end of August, 6 of the 13 retirement properties currently empty are hard to let
properties which have been empty over 6 weeks. The number of decant properties
increased to 6 during Q1 from 4 in Q4. The increase was the result of the need for 1
property to be used for temporary accommodation following a house fire and 1 to allow
major works to be completed. Two of the 6 decant properties have been returned to
general needs use during Q2 bringing the total decant properties back down to 4 at the
time of writing the report.
We are closely monitoring our larger property vacancies to establish what if any impact
the bedroom tax is having. In one of our communities Blaenavon, where we have very few
1 bed properties, there are emerging signs of a shift in demand away from 2 bedroom
properties since April as a result of the bedroom tax making them unaffordable to people.
Last year in Blaenavon the already high demand for our scarce 1 bed vacancies was
evidenced by there being on average 26 people bidding for every vacancy and the
average is now 43 bids. In contrast we did not have to re-advertise any vacancies last
year. So far this year we have had to re-advertise 3 two bed properties – in April when we
had 7 two bed vacancies we received 24 bids on average for each of them yet in August
when we had 6 two bed vacancies bids were down to 15 on average. The fact that we are
still getting relatively high numbers of bids for our 2 beds shows that they are still in
demand but clearly we are now keeping a watchful eye on the situation given the adverse
trend. Our big concern is that there are simply not enough 1 bed homes in Blaenavon for
people hit by the bedroom tax & for newly forming households to move to.
At the time of writing our average relet time for all properties has further improved to 38.30
days. The average for the 299 general needs lets completed stands at 24.03 days (31.56
in 2012/13) and for the 51 retirement housing lettings at 105.55 days (127.05 in 2012/13).
As the data in the chart below shows (for the 313 homes let to 19 August) we relet 70% of
our vacancies within 28 days and obviously if we were to strip out retirement housing from
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