Progress is being made towards giving Welsh housing tenants similar pet ownership rights to those proposed for their English counterparts, the nation’s former first minister has claimed.

Vaughan Gething was responding after hundreds of people signed a petition calling for a ban on the use of “no pet clauses” in tenancy agreements.

The campaign, which attracted 857 supporters, said there was no equivalent provision in Wales to the Model Tenancy Agreement published by the UK Government four years ago, which barred the practice.

It added: “The benefits of pet ownership should not be exclusive to homeowners. Those who rent should be equally as entitled to keep a pet as those who own.”

Renters bill

Speaking at a Senedd petitions committee meeting earlier in February, Mr Gething argued the Welsh Government’s current proposals mirror those of the Renters Bill for England, which were debated in Westminster last month.

He said: “I think we’ve made a fair amount of progress in this and I think there’s a genuine cross-party desire to see us move on from the current legal position.”

He also expressed hope that work on the issue would be completed ahead of the Senedd elections next year.

Concerns about the impact of tenants not being able to have pets were also raised in a separate Senedd debate last month while a public consultation recently closed on the Welsh Government’s housing white paper.