COMPANIES from Powys will be able to work on Powys County Council’s (PCC) major housing stock refurbishment schemes for decades to come.

A major strand of boosting the economy in the county by the current Independent/Conservative ruling regime is spending the “Powys pound” in Powys.

As part of a cabinet discussion on noting that PCC had hit their Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS) target across its housing stock early cabinet members asked if contracts for future projects would be “small enough” for Powys companies to benefit.

PCC plans to build 250 homes by 2022.

And over the next 30 years Simon Inkson, head of housing investment, said this could be as much as £370 million to improve the fabric of the stock.

Cabinet member for the Economy and Planning, Cllr Martin Weale (Independent – Llanbadarn Fawr), wanted to confirm that contracts to provide kitchens would be small enough for local companies.

Cllr Weale said: “How much money of the £300 million, percentage wise is going to be used locally?

“As we do need to step up or we’ll start losing our local businesses.”

Mr Inkson replied: “The way we have designed the programme is to ensure that we maximised the local spend rather than one requiring us to focus exclusively on the whole property and do all the elements at the same time.

“We went down the road of letting contracts by individual elements for example kitchens, bathrooms etc to give the local supply chain to compete against national contractors.”

Mr Inkson said that this approach had been “relatively successful” and he hoped that more businesses would successfully win contracts with PCC.

Cllr Weale asked for more detail: “This does not mean 500 bathrooms 500 kitchens but a doing an estate, 20 bathrooms, 20 kitchens?

“That’s the idea that will get local people involved.

“If we said 500 bathrooms across Powys there’s not many contractors in that are going to go for that.

“But if say we were talking about 20 bathrooms in Newtown I’m sure companies would be banging the doors down.”

Cllr Myfanwy Alexander, cabinet member for education and Welsh language, (Independent – Banwy) said that using home grown companies would also put residents more at ease.

Cllr Alexander said: “They can speak to who’s working in their house in their own language.

“The chance of you getting someone from Northamptonshire to change your bathroom who can speak Welsh is minimal.

“If you have a contractor who comes from the Banwy Valley or Carreghofa there’s a fair chance. It’s a small point but worth making.”

Over the last seven years  £71 million have been spent on improving council houses.

The investment by the council’s Housing Service has seen just under 14,000 building components replaced so that council houses meet the WHQS.

As part of the investment, 2,960 bathrooms and 2,946 kitchens were installed while energy efficient works were carried out on 3,736 properties in the county.

The Housing (Wales) Act 2014 requires all social landlords to improve their housing stock to an acceptable level and achieve the WHQS by 2020.