Sixteen calamitous decisions by Cardiff Council

Excluding low income households from city centre developments

Image of a luxury appartment

March 2022

Time after time in the last five years, Cardiff’s ruling group have prevented ordinary working people from living in new city centre housing schemes, by allowing powerful developers to get away with not providing any affordable accommodation - despite this being council policy.

For example in April 2021, Cardiff Council planning committee followed the recommendations of council officers, to grant planning permission for hundreds of new flats on Dumballs Road in Butetown.  Despite the huge demand for affordable homes in one of the most deprived wards in the country, they sat back as the developer claimed they couldn’t afford to provide housing for ordinary local working class families.  This despite the fact that the development was backed by the multi-billion dollar Angelo Gordon Wall Street fund.  

The chair of the committee, appointed by the council’s ruling group, added insult to injury to local families looking for somewhere live.  He disdainfully referred to the council’s policy of securing affordable homes in new developments as nothing more than “aspirational and abstract”.  In our view, the ruling group’s promise to house local working families in new private developments isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. 

In Our Vision for Cardiff, the Civic Society calls on the council to: 

• End the practice whereby developers can decrease the amount of planning obligation funding it contributes, after submitting a planning application, but before planning permission is granted, on the grounds of financial unviability.

• Provide a clear definition of ‘affordable housing’ [in local planning guidance] and set a minimum proportion that must be achieved, including homes for larger families and people with disabilities. Developers must be made to adhere to these requirements.