Guidance for undertaking Gypsy and Traveller accommodation assessments - Chapter 5: review and update

The 2014 Act requires local authorities to undertake a Gypsy and Traveller accommodation assessment (GTAA) at least once in every 5 year review period. This is because it is difficult to accurately assess Gypsy and Traveller population changes over a period longer than 5 years.

Local authorities have the flexibility to undertake GTAAs at 5-year intervals or any time in between. They may choose to do more frequent assessments if a material change in the level of need in the area has been identified. Local authorities may choose to align the renewal of their GTAAs with the substantial review of the Local Development Plan every 4 years.

After completing a GTAA, local authorities should ensure they have ongoing engagement with communities to share their plans and next steps on addressing the findings of their GTAA, ensuring transparency, accountability and meaningful implementation. Communities have also stressed that engagement with local authorities should continue outside the GTAA process, and local authorities should seek to develop effective working relationships with them and provide visible responses to community needs on a regular basis.

To ensure the local authority are meeting their statutory duties, the Welsh Government will continue to monitor site provision and progress towards meeting identified need in each local authority GTAA on a regular basis.

It is important for local authorities to remember that the duty to meet the identified accommodation needs remains with them, and not the Welsh Government. Where a GTAA has identified unmet Gypsy and Traveller site need, and the Welsh Ministers are satisfied the local authority has failed to comply with their duty to meet that need, the local authority may be directed to do so as set out in section 103 of the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. The Welsh Ministers will consult with the relevant local authority before issuing any direction to understand the full circumstances of any given case before making a final decision.

If community members are unhappy with the progress any local authority is making to meet their identified accommodation needs, they can make a complaint directly to the council in the first instance. Each local authority is advised to include details of its complaints procedure in its published GTAA.

If community members are dissatisfied with the outcome of the local authority’s own complaints process, they can ask the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales to investigate.

The Welsh Government will review this guidance regularly and as a result of learning from GTAA cycles.