Hi, does anyone know how this impacts on Alms house charities in Wales with housing now being devolved to the Welsh assembly govt ?
We have been a registered provider of social housing since the late 1970’s unfortunately the work required and standards we would need to get properties up to with the new Welsh high quality standards (WHQS) mean it is not feasible/affordable to become deregistered (in Wales at least) it also appears we would would have to pay back grant for housing from the 1970’s as part of the deregistration process. There is a detailed pdf on the Welsh govt web site on this.
We fully recognise why social housing is moving in this direction but the larger housing associations/local authorities who this is directed at wont be impacted negatively as they already employed well qualified staff and rightly so.
it does appear this may be the final straw for a charity like ours with 23 properties after over 400 years of continuous operation.
One option we feel we may need to consider is “conscious non compliance” with this new training requirement, it would be an interesting day in court for anyone seeking to prosecute a charity for falling foul of this, maybe a test case would be the way to get the common sense amendments required !!
Does the Alms house association have any legal experts who could consider this across England and Wales ?