Eight new family homes, ready to provide a temporary housing solution for homeless families, have been developed in the west of the city.

As part of Cardiff Council's innovative shipping container scheme, the new two-bedroom homes are sited in the grounds of family hostel, Ty Green Farm in Ely, and will soon be welcoming their first residents, as they wait for a more permanent housing solution.

The self-contained, re-purposed units are fully-insulated to create warm, safe accommodation with a full electric heating system and solar PV panels. The homes include two bedrooms, a fully-fitted kitchen with living/dining space and a shower room.  All units have been approved by Building Control and comply with current standards.

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Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities, Cllr Lynda Thorne, said: "The eight new homes at Ty Green Farm will deliver good quality accommodation for people facing homelessness.

"The units are an excellent option for us as theyprovide a housing solution more quickly than a traditionally-built scheme as the units are built in a factory and then delivered to site once all of the groundworks are complete.

"The homes are comfortable and homely and provide the flexibility to respond to changing demand as they can be relocated and reused. Thisscheme is part of our plan to tackling housing pressures in the city and we are committed to delivering 1,000 new council homes by 2022, and 2,000 homes in total in the coming years."

The shipping container scheme was awarded funding fromWelsh Government's Innovative Housing Programme in 2017. The Council is also developingseven two-bedroom flats and six one-bedroom flats with Cadwyn Housing Association on the former PDSA site on Bute Street.

The Innovative housing programme, launched by Welsh Government, challenged the housing sector to find ways of delivering new homes more quickly whilst achieving high standards of design & energy performance. Cardiff Council has been successfully awarded five IHP grants since 2017 totaling over £8.4 million. Schemes include re-purposed shipping containers, 42 new homes achieving a PassivHaus standard, nine 2-bed houses using a modular system and 214 new homes at the former Eastern High school site built to a low-carbon standard.