Women’s Refuges: Funding

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble and learned Baroness is right about the complex needs of victims of forced marriage. They are catered for in those 63 projects, as are other groups with complex needs. The noble and learned Baroness is absolutely right.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that any plans to fund accommodation-based services will focus not only on emergency provision, such as in a refuge, but on move-on accommodation? There are too many women, particularly in London, who cannot move on from a refuge because of a lack of move-on accommodation, and therefore women who need refuge urgently cannot access it.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, my noble friend, who has done much work in this area, particularly with SafeLives, is right about the importance of the range of different ways, which I just referred to, of providing refuge services. She is right about the particular needs that need to be catered for, and we have sought to do that in the current funding round. For example, we are funding a three-borough initiative—Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham—which is providing a range of different ways of providing protection for victims of domestic abuse. My noble friend is absolutely right.

Tenant Fees Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

12: Clause 25, page 17, line 12, at end insert—
“(3A) A person is not a letting agent for the purposes of this Act if—(a) that person only accepts instructions from a landlord who occupies the housing as their only or principal home; and(b) the tenant pays no rent or occupation charge to the landlord save that the tenant pays a contribution to the utility costs of the housing; and(c) the landlord receives no rent or payment related to the letting from the letting agent or any other party; and(d) the purpose of the letting is to promote the landlord’s well-being.(3B) In subsection (3A)—(a) “only or principal home” has the same meaning as in section 1 of the Housing Act 1988;(b) “utility costs” includes the residential costs of gas, electricity, water, telecommunications and internet;(c) “well-being” has the same meaning as in section 1(2) of the Care Act 2014.”

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment builds on the points raised by my noble friend Lady Jenkin in her speech at Second Reading relating to home share schemes. I am aware that in his summing up of that debate, my noble friend the Minister noted that this is an issue he is keen to resolve. I hope that this amendment will go some way to achieving that.

Clause 25 sets out the meaning of the term “letting agent”. However, as currently drafted the Bill is likely to define home share organisations as letting agencies and to ban them from charging young people who currently pay a contribution towards those organisations’ costs. Although home share is relatively small in this country it helps several hundred older and younger people. It is an approach that I believe has great potential. Indeed, before I joined your Lordships’ House, as the chief executive of SafeLives we developed a partnership with Homeshare, looking to use the scheme to support the victims and the perpetrators of domestic abuse.

My amendment seeks to ensure that home share schemes are explicitly excluded from the definition as it stands. As drafted, it seeks to capture the essence of home share arrangements and to distinguish them from those of commercial letting agents. I have tried to put in the technical aspects of the arrangement; namely, the nature of the instructions from the landlord, the absence of any rent or occupation charge from either the tenant or the home share organisation and the potential contribution by the tenant towards utility costs, as well as, crucially, the purpose of the scheme. The purpose must be quite clear: it is to promote the landlord’s well-being. The amendment also clarifies the meaning of the term “principal home” in line with Section 1 of the Housing Act 1988; “utility costs” which could also potentially include additional council tax; and “well-being” in line with Section 1(2) of the Care Act 2014.

The amendment is needed to ensure that home share can continue to grow in the UK. It helps hundreds of isolated and lonely older people. I have spoken to a number of family members whose parents are supported through home share schemes and they could not praise them enough for the support their parents receive. It also has the potential to help thousands in the future. This is clearly timely given the epidemic of loneliness that we hear so much about facing not only older people. There is increasing evidence that it is an issue for younger people as well. Indeed, without addressing the definition of a letting agent to explicitly exclude home share schemes, their sustainability will be put at risk.

In her speech, my noble friend Lady Jenkin articulated powerfully the scheme’s strengths, highlighting the human benefits to both the landlord and the home sharer, the contribution to the duties of the local authority under the Care Act 2014 and, importantly, the potential for these schemes to be financially sustainable. The quality of the relationship between the two individuals in the home share scheme is crucial to its success. It is specifically for people whose primary motivation is not commercial but who each want to contribute to the other’s life. It is vital to frame an exemption for genuine home share agencies from the prohibition on charging tenants, without creating a loophole for commercial letting agents.

To reiterate, the amendment seeks to exempt from the fees prohibition house-sharing arrangements that meet four tests. The first test is that they have been arranged by an organisation that recruits, vets, supports and, where appropriate, trains people for the purposes of providing support in a shared home environment. The second test is that the individual with the licence to occupy pays no rent. The third test is that they contribute to an agreed level of companionship, care or support. The fourth test is that it happens in the home of an individual who requires that support. To be absolutely clear, in this arrangement the homeowner receives no rent or any payment from the agency.

As I mentioned at the beginning, home share helps hundreds of young and old people in the UK, but if we look at home share as it works in Europe, we see that it has the potential to help thousands more. I hope that this amendment is a step towards making sure that that becomes reality. With that, I beg to move.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, very briefly, I spoke at Second Reading on the importance of exempting home-share schemes from the impact of the Bill. It seems to me that the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, addresses the problem. I hope very much that the Minister is in a receptive mood.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I hope to engage with noble Lords ahead of that to discuss the way forward, but I am keen that we should deal with this. I have indicated that it is not appropriate to deal with it by private arrangements with the organisation because I do not think that that would satisfy its legitimate desire to ensure that this is not a tenancy-type agreement.

[Baroness Barran]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his reassuring comments and warm reflections on the work of Homeshare. I believe that he said that it is a good thing, in the spirit of 1066 And All That. In that spirit, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.

Homelessness

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, for securing this debate. I will focus on women’s homelessness and the role that domestic abuse plays in it. About 700 women are sleeping rough at any one time, while 13,000 annually go to a refuge and 36,000 single women with children are in temporary accommodation—almost half of all those who are housed in that way. I also thank the women who over many years have shared their stories with me. It will not surprise noble Lords to learn that those stories are dominated by women’s experience of trauma and abuse. It is trauma from childhood and domestic abuse which has left some women with mental health and substance misuse problems, which then leads to their homelessness. Meeting those needs requires a great deal of multiagency work.

For example, the Green Room, a specialist women’s housing project here in London, last year worked with 18 different agencies to meet the needs of the women they support. Homeless women need good provision, good policies and good attitudes from those they encounter. Good provision starts with choice—giving homeless women options that support all their needs. The Mapping the Maze report from the charities AVA and Agenda showed that only one-third of areas in England offer more than refuge accommodation as a form of specialist accommodation for women. Good provision would be simple to access and sensitive to the trauma that women experience. It would combine dedicated support and co-ordination of the multiagency partners. With that in mind, I warmly welcome the introduction of the navigators in the rough sleeping strategy and the intention to pilot new approaches for homeless women. I hope very much that that will include housing provision first for women. Noble Lords will have seen the results of the Threshold housing project in Manchester, which works with women with histories of offending, 80% of whom still had a secured tenancy at the end of two years.

Good policy would mean alignment between this policy area and others, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, mentioned. Recently I spoke to a practitioner who works for the charity Pause, which works with women who have had multiple children removed from them into care. She told me the story of a woman whose child was removed. She then suffered the bedroom tax because of the extra room. Her benefits were reduced and she ended up homeless. That is far from the spirit of the policy that my noble friend the Minister has worked so hard to deliver. Good attitudes would see staff across all agencies recognising and responding to domestic abuse at an early stage to avoid homelessness. This is set out clearly in the standards set out by the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance. A recent report from Women’s Aid, Nowhere to Turn, highlighted that more than 50% of women in its survey who approached a local housing team were prevented from making a valid homelessness application.

I finish by saying that if we really want to move the dial on the number of women who are homeless—and my sense is that in your Lordships’ House that is very much the case—we have to challenge the assumption that it is always the woman with her children who need to move for their safety. Research from SafeLives, where I was chief executive, shows that almost 40% of women needing housing support had to move, compared with 3% of their partners, who were evicted. That is more than 10 times as many women who had to move, with all the disruption that brings to them and their children. This is 2018, not 1975. I hope my noble friend the Minister will consider these points, both as this policy develops and in the upcoming domestic violence Bill.