Lord Dubs
My Lords, there is a very serious housing crisis in this country. Too many families are homeless, badly housed or in temporary accommodation. The situation has got worse largely as a result of coalition policies: first, too little housebuilding, especially for the poorest members of our society; and, secondly, the results of government policies on welfare. The more I have looked into this situation, in preparation for this debate and even before that, the more I feel that one cannot look at housing in isolation; one has to look at the whole social welfare system in order to understand the effect of changing the social welfare on housing. Part of what I want to say will be to do with that.
One has to ask: why is there such a housing crisis? No peacetime Government since the 1920s have presided over fewer housing completions than this Government of the past two years. It is actually getting worse. In 2012, housing starts were 11% lower and dropped below 100,000. Housebuilding in Britain has now hit new lows. The actual figure of housing starts last year was 98,280. New home starts have been lower in every single quarter than when Labour left power in 2010.
We have a definition of statutory homelessness—I do not believe it covers all homelessness but it is a working definition—and that has risen by more than a third since the election that brought the coalition to power. At the end of the second quarter of 2010, the number of homeless people stood at 10,100 and hit 13,890 in the last quarter. In practical terms, homelessness may be higher than that because the statutory definition is somewhat limited.
The Government have introduced the benefit cap, which I believe will make more people homeless. In London alone 7,000 families stand to lose more than £100 a week. Mr Leslie Morphy, the chief executive of Crisis, the homelessness charity, said:
“For the sake of cutting just a few pounds a week from their benefits, families and individuals are being forced out of their homes, to be put up in B&Bs or temporary accommodation that costs us all far more”.
The Labour Party’s contention is that there are regional variations and the Government’s benefit-cap approach has not taken account of that fact—it is not a matter of one size fits all. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said that the benefits cap should take into account housing costs in each region. He said:
“We've said we're in favour of a benefit cap but it has got to be adjusted regionally depending on housing costs in each region. The danger of the way the government is doing the cap is that it forces people into temporary accommodation, bed and breakfasts, which drives up costs not reduces them. And actually what we're seeing with the welfare bill is, despite the cuts the government is making, the welfare bill rising and not falling”.
That is a real condemnation that the Government are putting people through a lot of pain, allegedly to save money, and they are not even saving the money.
What we all call the bedroom tax is going to have a very important effect on housing. Frankly, it is hard to find anybody who has a good word to say about this policy. It is likely to cost far more than it saves. It has been estimated that 31% of working-age housing benefit claimants in the social rented sector—that is, 660,000 claimants—are likely to be affected by this measure. The problem is that there simply is not the smaller accommodation for people to move into. If there were, it might just about be a viable policy. For example, in the Hull City Council area, 4,700 tenants are likely to be affected by the policy but the council has only 73 one- or two-bedroom properties to let. It does not make any sense. How can it be possible to force, drive or coerce—whatever word one wants to use—tenants out of accommodation in which they are alleged to have an extra bedroom when there is nowhere else for them to go?
The other killer is that two-thirds of the households being hit contain within the home someone who is disabled. The Government have tried to meet the needs of disabled people in such circumstances, but it is going to be very cumbersome to measure those needs. Indeed, we know that disability is not a constant. People with disabilities often find that they have a developing condition, so that someone who is a bit disabled one day may be more disabled in the future. If they are forced out of their home, the situation can become particularly difficult for that family.
It has been estimated that, over the past four years, the cost to councils of bed and breakfast hostels and shelters has been £2 billion. The problem is that the figure is increasing, which makes any savings to be made on the welfare bill look even more remote. There is now a clear pressure on families to move out of central London simply because they cannot be rehoused in their own local area; that is to say, never mind that they cannot afford the rent because of the benefits cap because there is also the bedroom tax. London boroughs in particular are rapidly accelerating the rehousing of homeless households outside their home boroughs. During the year up to this April, almost 11,000 households were rehoused in this way, a rise of 16% on the previous 12 months. Most of those households left inner London for the cheaper outer suburbs, but some were moved to towns completely outside the capital, such as Dartford in Kent and Slough in Berkshire, or to the borough of Spelthorne in Surrey. Inevitably this has put a strain on local services and many council leaders outside London are now complaining about it. For example, Mr Edward Smith, a Conservative councillor in Enfield, has said:
“The pressure will not abate … Before long, we will have to build more secondary schools”.
That will be one of the consequences of the Government’s policy on welfare. The leader of Slough borough council has said:
“You can’t just pitch up halfway through a year and expect to get a school place. It’s not McDonald’s”.
The housing Minister, Mark Prisk, insists that councils should be careful about placing families in B&Bs that are far from their home boroughs:
“There is absolutely no excuse for families to be sent miles away without proper regard for their circumstances, or to be placed in unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation for long periods of time”.
That is fine, but the trouble is that the policy is not happening. He may be insisting on it, but it is simply not the way it is working. I should mention in passing that rough sleeping rose by 23% two years ago and by 6% last year, which represents a rise of a third since 2010. Rough sleeping is, of course, one of the most serious aspects of housing difficulties.
I turn briefly to the issue of temporary accommodation. The latest Government figures show that 53,130 households were living in temporary accommodation at the end of 2012, a rise of 9% on the previous year. The statutory limit for families living in bed and breakfast accommodation is six weeks. However, estimates suggest that a third of British local authorities are in breach of this limit, largely because of the shortage of suitable temporary accommodation. Last year, 12 of Britain’s biggest cities spent £464 million on temporary accommodation, an increase of almost 6%, while the London boroughs are budgeting for significant further increases this year.
Before I conclude, I want to say a word about overcrowding. There is a definition of overcrowding, but even accepting that definition, it varies according to the type of accommodation in which the household or family is living. Under the definition, almost 7% of social renters and 6% of private renters are overcrowded in their accommodation. I appreciate that the Government’s answer is that the bedroom tax will deal with overcrowding and that the Minister will quote figures to show how many people have spare accommodation. I have already talked about why the policy is not working. If one could simply switch people from one to the other property within the same neighbourhood, it might be easier, but housing does not work that way and the Government must surely know that. The problem is that the policy is causing enormous dislocation to households and families. If people have to move a long way away from where they have been settled, that is upsetting for them, it is not desirable and it is yet another sign that the Government’s policies are not working. There is a real crisis here and everyone who is looking at it says that it is getting worse. I hope that the Government will do something about it because the next Labour Government will certainly have to.
Baroness Maddock
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for introducing a housing debate, which we have far too infrequently in the House of Lords. Twenty years ago when I entered the House of Commons, I devoted considerable time in my first or second year there—I am not sure which it was—to the Housing Bill which was then proceeding through Parliament. We focused a lot on the duties of local councils to the homeless. Not long before that, one of my colleagues who was at that time the MP for the Isle of Wight, had, successfully introduced a Private Member’s Bill to establish some of the first duties to be imposed on local authorities with regard to homeless people. But here we are, 20 years later, still facing a situation in which we are unable to provide sufficient housing for people in our country. I find it even more amazing that for many of those years our economy was doing very well, yet we did not address the need for more affordable homes. We were raking in huge amounts of stamp duty. At the beginning of the previous Labour Government’s term of office, less than £1 billion was received in stamp duty; by the end, it was many billions of pounds. I said at the time that we should have used some of that money to address the shortage of social housing. If a fraction of that money had been spent on social housing, we would be in a much happier situation today.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, described the housing crisis. I agree that when the coalition came to power in May 2010, we inherited a housing crisis. Some 1.5 million homes had been lost from the stock under previous Governments since 1979. Those Governments continually failed to build enough homes to cover the social housing that was sold off. We saw social housing waiting lists soar from 1 million in 1997 to 1.8 million in 2010. Housing targets were routinely missed. Even the top-down regional spatial strategies of the previous Labour Government consistently failed to meet that Government’s targets and, in the last year of that Government, they fell short by 78,000. We find ourselves with not enough affordable homes to go round and a difficult task for the coalition to address when we are also trying to address the effects of the economic crisis we are still going through. The coalition announced in the comprehensive spending review that it would build 150,000 new social homes during this Parliament, and it now expects to exceed that. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will give us a little more detail on that when he replies to the debate. The coalition has also committed more than £160 million to bringing empty homes back into use as social and private housing—another issue on which I have campaigned for the past 20 or so years. A total of 11,200 homes will be brought back into use as part of this fund. This comfortably exceeds the target that was set of 3,300. However, another 5,000 homes will be brought back into use as part of the £300 million capital programme, taking the total to over 16,000.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, rightly discussed how we deal with families living in temporary homes and in bed and breakfast for rather longer periods than anybody would want, and asked what the Government were going to do about that. Local authorities have a duty to provide temporary accommodation and it is up to them how they meet that duty, although it is, of course, subject to central government guidance. There are two main reasons why we need to deal with this. One, of course, is the human cost, which has already been mentioned. It is not only the awfulness of not having a home of your own to imagine living in for a period but the effect on children’s education and so on. We would all agree that human misery is one of the most important reasons why we have to deal with this.
At the same time as trying to alleviate human misery, one spends money, and therefore the financial cost of putting people in temporary accommodation is huge, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said. A recent report stated that the 12 largest cities spent nearly £2 billion on temporary accommodation in the past four years. That is enough to build 72,000 homes. In the past year, the cost of bed and breakfast has risen by more than 25%. If you look at the financial benefits of building more homes, it is clear that the money should be focused on this because we get a benefit of around £2.84 for every £1 spent.
As I intimated earlier, part of the action and a lot of the solutions have to be local. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, and I am grateful to it for some of the information that I will mention about how local authorities are dealing with this. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, it is clear that the way local authorities deal with those in bed and breakfast and temporary accommodation varies hugely. In December last year, the worst offender was, amazingly, Conservative-run Croydon which had 156 households in bed and breakfast for more than six weeks, followed by Labour-run Barking and Dagenham which had 69 households. Some of the councils run by Liberal Democrats have very low numbers, but I shall not labour that point.
The picture is emerging for a variety of reasons. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, pointed out the changes to benefits and so on, and there are new pressures on councils. Even councils that have a very good record on dealing with people in this situation are finding it very difficult. I asked the Local Government Association for some information about what the best local authorities are doing in this respect. One thing is very clear: if local authorities maintain a balanced portfolio of accommodation, they are in a much better position to spread the risk and to respond when markets and funding change. The other key thing is having an efficient housing benefit service that landlords who are taking people can rely on. Councils that work very hard to maintain good relationships with providers by not messing them around and being very responsive do better at keeping people out of bed and breakfast.
There are two particular things I would like to highlight about the London Borough of Sutton which, as noble Lords will know, is run by the Liberal Democrats. My noble friend Lord Tope was the leader of the council for many years. It was considering closing a local authority-owned care home, not an easy thing to do, because of the way care was changing. It decided to use the building for temporary accommodation. The path was quite tricky because it was closing a care home and the stereotypes that people discuss when homeless families are coming to live in their area had to be overcome. It has been a long process, but the council envisages that the converted property will provide accommodation for between 40 and 43 families that would otherwise face the dislocation of living outside the borough for several months. That backs up the other point that I made about the importance of councils working with private sector providers to find tenancies for families. They have worked very hard to attract landlords, keep them and deal with them. I particularly noticed that they prepare a helpful and innovative welcome pack for landlords, and they have been advised that they value this very much. That way, they have been able to keep a pool of landlords that help them to meet their statutory responsibilities.
I hope that my noble friend will be able to enlarge on some of the issues that I have talked about. It is important that we deal with this, because, as I say, the most important thing is the human misery for families who have to live in these conditions. My mother left my father when I was 11, and we went to live in a small town on the south coast. We lived in private rented accommodation and never stayed more than nine months in any place. I am pleased to say that, in my grown-up life, I have not had to do that—so I can say from first-hand experience that this is not satisfactory. We are a wealthy nation, we have known about this for 20 years, and we still have not managed to do anything about it. We all need to work to try to spread best practice. We are where we are with the money and benefits and so on, and I hope that the Government will work with local authorities to help to spread best practice to try to reduce the misery for families in these conditions.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for initiating this debate. I am delighted to be back on the same stamping ground with the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock. For quite a long time, she and I shared many debates and exchanges on social housing, and she is a great stalwart of it. Indeed, she has worked for a long time in it, so I am delighted to see her name on the speakers list.
My noble friend has dealt with the subject of the housing shortage. It might seem quite a crass statement to make, but I believe that the people out there could not care less about political policy or about who is dealing with it and who is right or wrong. They care about having a home, which provides so much to the rest of their lives. It brings stability, a feeling of well-being, security, and the opportunity for them to bring their children up in the family environment that they want. At the other end of life, for older people who may be occupying accommodation that we may agree is rather larger than they need, it is nevertheless where they have been for years and years—and it provides the opportunity for their daughter or son, or another member of their family, or even a carer that they may need from time to time, to stay with them. So the housing shortage is not just about housing; it is about the whole of our lives.
The bedroom tax, as it has been christened, is not a new idea. It was something that was discussed and sought to be applied—and was applied, in some respects—many years ago. But then it was concentrated on students going off to university and the family having affordable rented accommodation from a housing association or local authority, when it was said that the bedroom was no longer needed. So I do not want this to be a party-political debate, but let us put one or two things straight. With the new affordable homes budget, the money available from central government to the provision of affordable housing has been cut by 60%. The previous Government allocated £8.4 billion for the three-year period from 2008 to 2011, under the last comprehensive spending review that they applied. The current Government have allocated just over half of that, at £4.5 billion for the four-year period 2011 to 2015. The Homes and Communities Agency has announced—and the agency knows, because they are the people who allocate the funding for affordable homes—that it is down 68% year on year. That figure meant that in 2010-11 just under 50,000 new-build, affordable homes were started. It was the first year of the new coalition but the last year of the previous Government’s comprehensive spending review. That was the number of new homes in the first year of this Government but in 2011-12 it dropped substantially to 15,700 homes. So here we are with a housing shortage, and it is going to get worse rather than better.
The Minister, Grant Shapps, announced that the Government claim that by 2015 170,000 new homes will have been provided under government funding. However, what he did not say was that 70,000 of that 170,000 were started by the previous Government. So let us get the facts straight: the previous Government were not an utter failure. They did not build as many homes as I would have liked and I would have been critical of the policy, but it is not all down to the previous Government. In any case, even if there is a part of you that feels it was and you want to rectify the situation, you do not do it by cutting the budget by half or, indeed, by claiming that you are building houses that you did not actually commence.
Many of us are old enough to remember the television film “Cathy Come Home”. Not only was it searing for people who were homeless and interested in the subject; it really shocked the country. The day after the programme was shown, everybody was saying, “We didn’t know it was as bad as this and we need to do something about it”. Something did then start to be done by the then Conservative Government. If you talk to Shelter and housing providers who deal with homelessness, they will say that it is now time for another “Cathy Come Home” film to be made because we are going backwards as a nation—we are not making any progress.
I started by saying that housing affects whole lives and that it is not just a matter of where people stay. That is true. It was certainly brought home to me when, as chairman of the Housing Corporation, I went to a lot of areas. It was the simple statements that brought home to me the difference that housing could make. I remember one mother standing up at a local conference that we had organised. She said, “Since we’ve moved into this council flat, it has made two key differences to my kids. One is that one of my children was always off school with colds and being unwell. Now we are in a decent home, I’ve suddenly realised that they’re going to school regularly. Their health has improved substantially. But also their attention at school has improved because they have somewhere to sit and do their homework. Yes, they do it in the kitchen—we don’t have a spare room—but there’s a homeliness there and there’s peace and quiet for them, and it’s made a substantial difference to our family’s quality of life”.
I agree that with the bedroom tax and housing shortage we concentrate on areas of biggest need—London and the periphery of London—but we should not forget the provincial cities, which increasingly also have problems with homelessness. Nor should we forget the rural areas, as many people tend to do. They think that they are sublime areas in which to live, but some of the greatest housing poverty in this country is in those areas and we must not forget that.
Housing is at the centre of our lives and impacts on our lives, and where it impacts negatively, society picks up the bill further down the line, whether it is a bill relating to health problems or children not concentrating or getting the attention they need at school. Therefore, it has an enormous impact on their life chances, as I think we all recognise.
There is one other factor, which is the overall medium and long-term impact on registered social landlords. If they are not getting the money to build, obviously they will not build, so what are the long-term prospects for the prosperity of these organisations? If the registered housebuilding sector, such as housing associations, is diminishing, what does the future hold? What will happen if we start to dilute or reduce their ability? Remember that, although they are called housing associations, one great asset they bring to housing is that they do not just build houses. Until recently, I was a non-executive director of Taylor Wimpey. We were not in the regeneration game; we were in the game of building houses. Housing associations are great regeneration agencies. They look at the whole community and provide services that other organisations cannot or do not provide. If because of their balance sheet they are restricted on their investment, and therefore on their overall strategic policy and have to draw back—and remember that they are also substantially funded by the private sector through bonds and other means—when we come through the Government’s austerity measures, we will not have the facilities to pump-prime the massive housebuilding programme that we need.
I am not saying that this Government are responsible for the serious housing shortage, but they are actually ensuring that we do not get out of the housing problem. Their policies are regressive rather than progressive in this whole area. I ask the Minister to address how the Government are going to deal with this growing problem—the social scars and the homelessness that we see, with people begging on our streets. We need to have an incremental policy that will reduce those problems in our society.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for initiating this debate. As he said, even using the limited definition of “statutory homelessness”, that went from 10,100 at the end of 2010 to 13,570 at the end of 2012. As a result, local authorities are placing a worrying number of families in temporary accommodation. There were 53,130 households living in temporary accommodation at the end of 2012, 9% higher than the previous year. The failure to tackle this problem, as highlighted by my noble friend Lady Dean, is devastating for many families and, according to new research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, referred to by my noble friend, is proving incredibly costly.
The UK has spent almost £2 billion over the past four years housing vulnerable homeless families in short-term, temporary accommodation. In that time, £1.88 billion has gone on temporary accommodation in 12 of Britain’s biggest cities—enough to build 72,000 homes in London and house all 53,000 or so households which are currently homeless, as the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, said. As my noble friend Lord Dubs highlighted, London Councils are rapidly accelerating the rehousing of homeless households outside their home boroughs; 32,643 homeless households have been rehoused out of their borough since 2009. In the year to April, 10,832 households were rehoused in this way, a 15.86% rise on the previous 12 months, and 44,860 households in temporary accommodation—84%—were in self-contained accommodation. Moreover, 40,860 of those in temporary accommodation included dependent children and/or pregnant women, in which households there were 76,790 children or expected children. Of these, the number placed in bed-and-breakfast accommodation increased from 630 at the end of March 2010 to 1,690 at the end of December.
Official guidance says that bed-and-breakfast accommodation should be avoided wherever possible and is not suitable for families with children or pregnant women,
“unless there is no alternative accommodation available and then only for a maximum of six weeks”.
However, a recent freedom of information request showed that the number of families with children and/or a pregnant woman housed in bed and breakfast for six weeks or more has risen more than eightfold since the coalition came to power.
As my noble friend Lord Dubs said in opening this debate, we face the biggest housing crisis in a generation, and the Government’s housing and economic policies are not helping. The first priority must be to address, by building more homes, the housing shortage that is the underlying cause of homelessness, overcrowding, high rents and low standards of accommodation. House-building is crucial to the economic recovery and in helping to get families on the housing ladder. The Government have launched four major housing schemes in three years and made more than 300 announcements on housing, yet all these schemes have so far completely failed to tackle the housing crisis. By simply stimulating demand through plans for help-to-buy mortgage guarantees and equity loans rather than directly boosting supply, there is a danger that they will simply push up prices. Although we had some positive news this morning from the Nationwide Building Society that first-time buyers are beginning to get into the housing market, it is still too little and, perhaps, a little too late.
As we have heard in this debate, we also need subsidised housing for those who cannot afford to purchase or to pay full market rents. Action on affordable homes is needed, and the announcement that an extra £225 million will be available is welcome news, but only £125 million will be spent before 2015 according to the OBR and, as my noble friend Lady Dean said, that is dwarfed by the £4 billion cut in funding for affordable housing that the Chancellor made in his first budget.
While one government department introduces measures to support housing, another exacerbates the problem, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Dubs. The bedroom tax, the levy on housing association and council tenants deemed to have a spare room, penalises those in work as well as those who must find the money from their other benefits by cutting back on essentials. While scrapping this measure would be best, when the Government are reviewing its impact, will they consider the current discretionary housing payments, which local authorities need to deploy in the many cases of hardship where tenants cannot be offered a suitable smaller property?
As chair of a credit union, I am only too aware of the issues that my noble friend Lady Dean raised. Many housing associations have tenants who are going to be hit by the welfare changes and are anticipating major problems of rent arrears. This not only means they must cut back on spending on new housing investment just when the Government need them to do more but, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, highlighted in his contribution on the gracious Speech, they will be less able to undertake broader community work, such as addressing those with special needs, tackling anti-social behaviour and supporting young people into training and jobs.
At the root of the temporary housing problem is the failure to build enough affordable housing. With the huge squeeze in living standards and a faltering economy, the Government’s failure to provide affordable housing means that millions of families are priced out of living in a decent home. As my noble friend Lady Dean pointed out, official statistics from the Homes and Communities Agency show that affordable housing starts collapsed in the last financial year by 68%, dropping from 49,363 in 2010-11 to only 15,698 in 2011-12. Furthermore, at 80% of market rent, many of the homes under the Government’s affordable homes programme are not affordable in many parts of the country.
The Labour Party has previously called on the Chancellor to use the money raised from the 4G mobile spectrum auction to build 100,000 affordable homes, and the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, has also called for an immediate tax on bankers’ bonuses to fund 25,000 affordable homes.
As we have heard in contributions from all sides in today’s debate, and as my noble friends pointed out, for people in our communities this is not a party-political issue but one that affects them and needs urgent action. I ask the Minister to respond in detailing what urgent action is to be taken.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in commending the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for initiating this debate. In doing so, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in debating what is, undoubtedly, an important issue. In responding, I should say from the outset that the Government see—and certainly I saw this at first hand during my tenure in local government—that the best way in which to tackle homelessness is not by politicising it, as the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said. This is about people’s future and their lives, and often their families, who are desperately in need of support to get themselves on their feet. I totally share the sentiments, as expressed by the noble Baroness, about ensuring that what we do is to put the people at the centre of any reforms or changes that we seek to make.
I also recognise that the issues raised by noble Lords in the debate reflect the growing importance of housing, acknowledged by all sides. This is not something new; the housing crisis is a reality that has been faced by successive Governments, and which this Government are certainly facing up to today.
I turn to a few facts. I acknowledge that, if one casts one’s mind back to about 2003, there were then about 135,000 households in England that were accepted as being homeless by local authorities. At the end of last year, this figure was just in excess of 53,000. I would like to clarify one point. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, raised the issue of 53,000 in terms of temporary bed and breakfast accommodation, which is currently 4,000. Overall numbers in temporary accommodation are much smaller than they reached in 2004, when it was closer to 100,000. That said—and we can talk about statistics—I acknowledge the fact that, after 2004 the previous Government took some stringent steps to address that particular need, and also to bring it to the attention of local authorities, which are at the forefront of tackling this particular issue.
The Government are committed to tackling and preventing homelessness and reducing the use of bed and breakfast accommodation. This is reflected in the increased level of funding that we have provided for homelessness work at what are, as my noble friend Lady Maddock acknowledged, very challenging times for the Government. The Government have invested £470 million over the spending review period in prevention of homelessness, including the reduced use of temporary accommodation. There has been an additional £70 million this year, including £18.5 million to tackle rough sleeping, targeted at local authorities and £20 million for a transition fund.
I share the sentiments that have been expressed by several noble Lords. The Government are keen to ensure that local authorities support homeless households into stable, secure and suitable long-term accommodation as soon as possible. In my time as a local councillor, I saw for myself the importance of this issue, particularly where children have spent long periods in temporary accommodation. It can be very damaging. That is why we have retained the order introduced by the previous Government in 2004 to limit the use of bed and breakfast accommodation, and I will return to this in a moment. The order makes it illegal to place families in this type of accommodation for any longer than six weeks.
I fully acknowledge that despite the order, during the first half of last year we did see an increase in the use of bed and breakfast accommodation, but I am pleased to say that when the latest figures were released in March, the numbers had dropped in comparison with the preceding quarter. However, I reiterate that the Government are in no way complacent about this. Where authorities are placing families in bed and breakfast accommodation for longer than six weeks, let me make it clear that it is unlawful and unacceptable. I share the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in this regard. Officials at the Department for Communities and Local Government are working closely with those local authorities which have the highest number of families in bed and breakfast accommodation to help them address the issue. We are confident that the numbers being left in this type of accommodation for longer than six weeks can be reduced.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, also mentioned the issue of rough sleeping. We will make sure that we continue to tackle and prevent rough sleeping, and I am greatly encouraged by the success here in London of the mayor’s No Second Night Out pilot project, which has ensured that 87% of new rough sleepers do not spend a second night on the streets of London. We are rolling out the No Second Night Out project nationally, and all local authorities are planning to introduce the scheme. Many key rough sleeping areas like Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Oxford and Northamptonshire are already operating schemes. Again, I am very supportive of this. I focused on a project for my own party which looked in particular at inner cities, and I know how acute the challenge and associated problems of rough sleeping can be.
I want also to address the location of the housing being offered by local authorities. Vulnerable households need protection and it is not acceptable for families to be dumped en masse long distances away from home. This matter has been raised by my honourable friend Mark Prisk, the housing Minister, and it is a point that he has reiterated and made clear to councils. For our part, we introduced new powers in the Localism Act 2011 so that councils can now use good quality private rented sector accommodation to meet the main homelessness duty, thus helping to reduce the need to use temporary accommodation. Where councils do feel the need to move families away from their home borough, they must by law take account of the suitability of the accommodation being offered to each homeless household and consider the impact that the change in location will have, including possible disruption to employment, education and, of course, caring responsibilities. The law is clear, and councils not doing this will be challenged. During the consultation for the suitability order, both the London Development Agency and London Councils welcomed the flexibility afforded to local authorities to discharge their homelessness duty in the private sector.
The issue of the suitability order and outer borough policy was again a concern of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. It will ensure proper accommodation. For the information of noble Lords, it will look at five broad areas: the physical condition of the property, health and safety, matters relating to the property such as electricity and fire safety, licensing for houses in multiple occupation, landlord behaviour and elements of good management.
Several noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and my noble friend Lady Maddock, mentioned overcrowding. As has been acknowledged by various speakers, the Government aim to deliver some 200,000 new affordable homes by 2016-17. This will be achieved through our new Affordable Homes Programme and additional homes under the Housing Guarantee Scheme. With a total investment that includes £19.5 billion from the private sector, our main affordable programme remains on track to deliver 170,000 new affordable homes for rent and ownership by March 2015. I totally acknowledge that this is not just about quoting figures; we need to ensure that we build those houses—a sentiment aired by the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, which I share. Up to a further 30,000 homes will also have been started on site by March 2015, supported by our affordable housing guarantee of £10 billion and a grant of £450 million. Taken together, the reforms to social housing allocations, homelessness and tenure in the Localism Act 2011 will make it easier for social landlords to manage their existing stock generally to reduce homelessness.
I have already alluded to the fact that 200,000 new affordable homes will be delivered, and we are on target to achieve that. Almost 58,000 affordable homes, including first-buy homes, were delivered in 2011-12, which is a third more than the average delivery in the 10 years between 2001 and 2009-10. We are also confident about delivery. In 2011-12, the HCA exceeded its target by more than 13,000. Almost 60,000 completions have been delivered in the first 18 months of the affordable homes programme—that is, 37% of the 170,000 being delivered between 2001 and 2015. The UK Statistics Authority has confirmed that there was a loss of 421,000 social rented homes under the previous Government. The extension to the affordable homes guarantee programme to 2016-17 will, we believe, help providers to develop stronger bids for more homes. In the 2013 spending round, we will be looking at the range of policy options on the supply of affordable housing beyond 2015. This will give providers greater clarity on the policy relating to affordable housing beyond 2015 to inform their long-term business planning.
My noble friend Lady Maddock raised the issue of certain local councils. I know the challenges faced by, for example, Croydon, which she highlighted. It is a borough not too far from where I used to serve as a local councillor. I know for a fact that the Government are working with Croydon to reduce those figures. We are informed that they have come down significantly and, indeed, are set to reduce further. However, I would highlight that, because of new arrivals into the UK, Croydon faces particular acute challenges in housing provision.
My noble friend Lady Maddock raised the issue of best practice among councils, and this is very important. Perhaps I may again quote the noble Baroness, Lady Dean: this is not about politics; it is about ensuring that we get the right result. Where there is good practice, whether it is in a Conservative council, a Lib Dem council, a Labour council or a council of whatever other colour we may conjure up in the years ahead, it is important that that practice is adhered to and shared. I acknowledge the work done by, for example, London Councils in London and by the LGA across the UK in encouraging this.
As noble Lords may be aware, we have also recently announced the gold standard scheme, which is being run by NHAS and Winchester City Council, with nearly £2 million being made available for a peer review and accreditation scheme. Again, we hope that this will allow us to share good practice across the country.
In addressing issues of overcrowding, I also wish to mention HomeSwap Direct, which will make it easier for underoccupying households to help each other. It is too early to say whether the removal of the spare room subsidy will reduce overcrowding, but we are seeing a significant increase in applicants for home swaps and a 28% increase in the swap rate.
At this point, I want to turn to a concern raised by the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Collins of Highbury, and indeed by other noble Lords, not just in this debate but previously, relating to what has been referred to in the media as a bedroom tax but was in fact a subsidy granted by the Government. There are specific exemptions and mitigations that I wish to highlight in this regard. Those mitigations and exemptions apply, for example, to approved foster carers and to the parents of adult children in the Armed Forces who normally live at home but are deployed on operations. People living in supported exempt accommodation are not affected by this measure. DWP guidance is that local authorities may also allow an extra bedroom to address issues of disability, particularly where a disabled child or children are unable to share a room because of their severe disability. As I believe the noble Lord, Lord Collins, acknowledged, a discretionary fund is available. I do not want to go into individual cases but we are encouraging this, and the Government have made £350 million available in discretionary housing payments across the spending period to help the most vulnerable people through this reform. These will be distributed at local authorities’ discretion. If local authorities are very much on the front line in dealing with these issues, it is important that they address them and that money is provided to do so.
The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, talked about the cut in the housing budget. We have increased the supply of affordable housing compared with the average over the years 2001 to 2009 and 2010. The affordable rent product allows us to achieve much better value for money and the average grant is in the region of about £22,000 per unit. However, I acknowledge the point made by the noble Baroness in her usual articulate fashion that it is not just a question of stating what is being built but of ensuring that new houses are built to address local needs. The Government remain committed to fulfilling our promises and targets in this regard.
I believe that I have covered most of the issues that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, referred to bed-and-breakfast accommodation. I acknowledge that some councils are not fulfilling their pledge on the six-week limit. My honourable friend the housing Minister has looked at this and the ministerial working group on homelessness is calling on local housing authorities to deliver on the 10 challenges, which include a commitment not to use B&B accommodation for families. Recently, Mark Prisk, the Minister concerned, held a round table with London boroughs with high homelessness numbers, including families in B&B accommodation, to address these issues and to share good practice across boroughs, to which my noble friend Lady Maddock referred.
I once again reiterate that the Government remain absolutely committed to addressing homelessness. We believe that progress is being made in reducing current homelessness levels across the country. Does more need to be done? Of course, it does. We need to look at the extended use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation beyond six weeks and to ensure that there is greater affordability in the market by increasing the supply of affordable homes. Through the ministerial working group on homelessness we are working across government to tackle the complex drivers of homelessness. Although these remain difficult times for all of us, we are calling on local authorities to play their part in tackling this issue. There is no excuse for housing families in unsuitable accommodation, be that bed-and-breakfast or other unsuitable accommodation. We continue to work with local authorities, organisations such as London Councils and the LGA to ensure that good practice prevails. No council should send tenants en masse to different parts of the country, so we have changed the law to ensure that local authorities properly consider the location of accommodation alongside other matters.
The Government remain committed to tackling this issue, which we are confronting despite the challenges. I know from my own experience that there is nothing better than turning a key, walking through a door and entering a house that meets the family’s needs. We are committed to fulfilling that aspiration for homeless people. That should remain at the centre of our thinking.