HOUSING association and local authority tenants in some parts of Wales have until January 26 to use the Right to Buy and associated Schemes after which they will be abolished in Wales.

People who are eligible and wish to buy their own home must have completed an application form available from their landlord or the Welsh Government website and submitted it to their landlord before the upcoming deadline of 26 January 2019.

Housing and Local Government Minister Julie James said: “We passed the Abolition of the Right to Buy and Associated Rights Act to protect the stock of social housing in Wales from further reduction, so it is available to provide affordable housing for people who need it. This legislation is one of a range of actions we are taking to increase the supply of housing in Wales.

“Between 1981 and 2016, over 139,000 local authority and housing association homes were sold under the Right to Buy. This has led to many people, many of whom are vulnerable, waiting longer to access a home they can afford. Abolishing the Right to Buy is also giving social landlords more confidence to invest in building new social housing by removing the risk of these homes being sold after only a few years.

“We are committed to creating 20,000 more affordable homes by 2021 and we are supporting social landlords to help us to achieve this.”

Right to Buy has already been suspended in Anglesey, Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Powys, Swansea and Cardiff. Following the one year allowed under the Act to exercise their rights, the Right to Buy and associated rights will finally be abolished throughout Wales on the 26 January 2019.

Further information is available from housing associations and local authority housing teams. Information on the legislation and how it will affect tenants is available on the Welsh Government website

A RESEARCH collaboration from academics at Swansea University and the University of California, Berkeley suggests that information automated software agents or ‘bots’ were used to spread either ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ social media stories during and after the Brexit referendum which drove the two sides of the debate further apart.

Research by Professor Talavera Professor, and PhD student Tho Pham from the School of Management, in collaboration with Professor Yuriy Gorodnichenko, at University of California, Berkeley, focused on information diffusion on Twitter in the run-up to the EU Referendum.

Professor Talavera said: “With the development of technology, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are often used as tools to express and spread feelings and opinions. During high-impact events like Brexit, public engagement through social media platforms quickly becomes overwhelming. However, not all social media users are real. Some, if not many, are actually automated agents, so-called bots. And more often, real users, or humans, are deceived by bots.

TWITTER ANALYSIS
Using a sample of 28.6 million #Brexit-related tweets collected from 24 May 2016 to 17 August 2016, researchers observed the presence of Twitter bots that accounted for approximately 20 per cent of total users in the sample. Given the preponderance of re-tweets from bots by humans, a key question is whether human users’ opinions about Brexit were manipulated by bots.

Empirical analysis shows that information about Brexit is spread quickly among users. Most of the reaction happened within 10 minutes, suggesting that for issues critically important to people or issues widely covered in the media, informational rigidity is very small. Beyond information spread, an important finding is that bots seem to affect humans.

However, the degree of influence depends on whether a bot provides information consistent with that provided by a human. More specifically, a bot supporting leaving the EU has a stronger effect on a “leaver” human than a “remain” human.

‘ECHO CHAMBER’
Further investigation shows that “leavers” were more likely to be influenced by bots compared to “remainers”. These results suggest that dissemination of information is consistent with what is frequently referred to as an ‘echo chamber’ – a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a defined system, revealing that the outcome is that information is more fragmented rather than uniform across people.”

Professor Talavera said: “Social bots spread and amplify the misinformation, thus influencing what humans think about a given issue. Moreover, social media users are more likely to believe (or even embrace) fake news that is in line their opinions. At the same time, these users distance themselves from reliable information sources reporting news that contradicts their beliefs. As a result, information polarisation is increased, which makes reaching consensus on important public issues more difficult.”

“It is now vital that policymakers and social media should seriously consider mechanisms to discourage the use of social bots to manipulate public opinion.”

PEMBROKESHIRE County Council were ‘kept in the dark’ over the police’s response to a complaint that was sent to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
At its meeting on March 8, 2018, council resolved to submit a complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission regarding delays by Dyfed Powys Police in concluding its investigation into alleged irregular grant payments in respect of Pembroke and Pembroke Dock Commercial Property Grant Scheme.
However, there was a five-week delay in that letter being sent and it has only now been brought to the attention of Council because of questions raised by Cllr Mike Stoddart.
The Leader Cllr David Simpson stated he was unaware of the delay and apologised but Cllr Stoddart said they had been ‘kept in the dark’ and denied the right to appeal.
Cllr Stoddart’s questions were submitted to Thursday’s (Oct 11) Full Council meeting. He asked: “Can the leader explain why it took almost five weeks for this resolution to be actioned?
“What response, if any, has the council received from the Independent office for Police Conduct?”
Cllr Simpson said: “I was not aware of this delay until I saw the question. I did not have any idea it took this long for a letter to be written.
“I have spoken with the Chief Executive and we agree that it should never ever have taken five weeks to write a letter from this council to anyone. It will never ever take five weeks again, it shouldn’t have happened and I apologise.
“A formal response was received on May 2, the contents of which have been sent to Cllr Stoddart. In a meeting on April 12, 2018, there was a meeting between the Police and the CPS and a charging decision was to follow.
“Following discussion, the force is still awaiting the charging decision from the CPS and when it is received Pembrokeshire County Council will be made aware.”
Cllr Stoddart responded saying: “This letter from the police was sent on May 2 but it was written on that day and emailed to the council on May 10. It didn’t arrive in time for it to be put to full council.
“Why wasn’t an announcement made the following day to the Annual Council meeting. We should have decided if we were satisfied with the police response and could have appealed but we have been kept in the dark.
“We have been denied the right to appeal, council officers have sat on the report in a deliberate attempt to hide the response and prevent us from making a decision on whether or not we should have appealed.”
Cllr Simpson said they should have had the letter sooner and that they should have had the opportunity to consider appealing.
He was asked what steps would be undertaken to ensure this doesn’t happen again and Cllr Simpson added he wanted openness and transparency and assured that it would never happen again.
Cllr Jacob Williams did attempt to refer the matter to the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee for a look into why there was a five-week delay but this was not allowed by the Chair.