Supported Housing

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Alison Thewliss

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

Absolutely. One of the great pleasures of being a constituency MP is that we get to visit some of these excellent supported housing schemes—these extra care centres—with Friary Court and the Pavilions being two that Axiom Housing Association has in the urban area of Peterborough.

May I allude briefly to the specific concerns that Mr Lewin raised about the impact of these changes in the Peterborough area? He said:

“Axiom has already felt one of the consequences of the proposed LHA policy—a flagship extra care scheme for 60 vulnerable people at Whittlesey is now on hold as we cannot commit to building these new projects when there is uncertainty surrounding the future revenue funding streams.”

Whittlesey is actually in North East Cambridgeshire, but the point is very reasonable. The policy has a particular impact when low-value land is involved, as is the case in our neighbouring authority of Fenland, although that also applies to other parts of the east of England.

Mr Lewin also mentions the services that are affected, which include young persons’ foyers, homeless hostels, specialist supported housing, extra care housing and sheltered housing. He goes on to detail the

“current impact on each of these schemes/projects based on current rents and service charges”.

For instance, the Peterborough Foyer and the Wisbech Foyer, which do a really good job for young people who want to get off benefits, find work, training or internships, and make something of their lives and improve themselves, will face a cumulative loss in annual income of £620,557. He said that our homeless hostels, such as Fairview Court and New Haven, would lose £461,735. The three Peterborough extra care schemes, two of which I have mentioned, will lose £794,704.

Part of the problem is that we do not get a generic service with such specialist housing. We have night porter services for safety and security, which is an enhanced service that has to be paid for. Losses will also vary according to the amount of Supporting People money that funds support costs. When there is little such money, the costs are included in the housing benefit element of the service charge, which will now be capped. Mr Lewin goes on to say that the projected lost revenue to Axiom for supported housing is £2.2 million.

Unless the Government have quite an innovative, forward-looking and visionary approach for how else that money can be made up, many of the registered providers that provide this much-needed housing for vulnerable people will find themselves in great difficulty, and that will clearly impact on work in the community and in general needs housing. A local housing association in my constituency, Cross Keys Homes, runs an apprenticeship school, which is a fantastic scheme. There will be a knock-on effect—a cumulative knock-on effect across the country—in terms of how individuals will have to be taken care of if they cannot be housed in the most appropriate way.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech and I agree with much of what he is saying. Does he agree that if people cannot access services such as Blue Triangle and the ARCH resettlement service in my constituency, they would be out on the streets and in very unsafe situations, because there are literally no other housing providers that will take them?

[Mr Jackson]

Absolutely. The hon. Lady makes a very good point. There will be consequences if we do not step back.

I did not refer to the new Prime Minister because I want a job, as that is highly unlikely to happen. After 11 years, I am resigned to being a humble spear carrier in the drama of British politics—there has been a lot of drama this week. I did so because a new Government will have new priorities, a new vision and new principles. Housing is massively important, especially general needs housing. I am talking about housing our most vulnerable people, looking after them and getting them off the streets. In many respects, I am inordinately proud of what this Government have done on housing, but I am making my remarks because I do not want them to throw that record away through a short-term action of cutting £100 million here or there and therefore making the situation worse down the line.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney for securing this debate. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) for raising this issue previously. I hope that the Minister will reassure me that he will talk to his colleagues in the Treasury and other Departments and that he will come back to us, once the review has concluded in an expeditious fashion in the next few months, so that we can tell our constituents and housing associations that the Government are taking housing seriously and looking after the needs of the most vulnerable people in society. We are compassionate Conservatives, and that should be our watchword.

Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Alison Thewliss

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

Exactly; that is a fairness issue. How can it be fair that working families effectively give a direct payment to other people in social housing, who are often not working? That cannot be fair. We have to deal with the issue of welfare dependency.

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jackson]

No, I will not.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said, these are difficult decisions. In the short term, they will deliver £240 million in savings. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that in the long term, they will save £1.1 billion. We have to do this, given the fiscal inheritance that we took on.

The Government have a responsibility—it was a manifesto commitment, so there is a mandate from the people of this country—to deliver welfare reform. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) is no longer in his place, but if Labour Members really believe, after reading the report by Deborah Mattinson on the BritainThinks focus group, that the Labour party will ever be trusted on the economy, and particularly on welfare, with the policies it is pursuing—the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) knows that this is the case—they are completely wrong. They have to understand that completely opposing everything the Government do on welfare reform, in favour of more spending, more taxing and more debt, will never deliver another majority Labour Government.

I say gently to housing associations that the 1% cut in rents will have a direct impact on all their tenants in general needs housing. There will be a 12% reduction in average rents by the end of the Parliament. We give £13 billion a year to housing associations so that they can discharge their duty to house people. They have to raise their game and meet the challenge. This is not often commented on, but housing associations are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. We need to see that they are as efficient as possible. They are very efficient when it comes to campaigning against the Government, but they are not so efficient in resource allocation to deliver front-line services to the most vulnerable tenants.