Street Homelessness

Ben Bradley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

I have scribbled out a lot of my speech, so I will try to crack on, with your best wishes, Mr Gray.

Homelessness is one of my key local campaigns, and something I have worked on consistently since being elected last year. I have visited most of the relevant services in Mansfield and brought both the previous Minister for homelessness, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), and the Home Secretary to meet the public sector charitable organisations and businesses to look at various aspects of things we might do better locally.

It is fair to acknowledge that the Government has taken some important steps to tackle homelessness. The recently introduced Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 is an important move in the right direction and can potentially help to reduce the number of people becoming homeless in the first place. Through my investigations over this year, I know that that prevention aspect of support was previously lacking. The flexible homelessness support grant is also welcome, providing £250,000 to Mansfield over three years.

In Mansfield, we have some brilliant supported housing associations, not least Framework Housing Association, the Nottingham Community Housing Association and others, that help to get people back on their feet after times of crisis. They would love to be able to offer ongoing support to the people who rely on them, but they struggle to access the funding to do so. Those providers are experienced in the issues surrounding homelessness and are often best placed to offer local support and tailored services.

In my constituency it is not the housing itself that is the real challenge, but the complexity of need, including mental health difficulties or addiction. Providing support in managing those things, with financial management, can make all the difference. Too often the way is blocked by bureaucracy or protectionism over different organisations’ priorities and budgets. People cannot get support for a mental health problem if they are on drugs, but they cannot get support for their addiction if they have an obvious mental health problem. The problems are clearly interrelated, but the services are not.

Addressing mental health issues, providing tailored local support and a joined-up approach between housing, health and local social services is key to addressing the issue of homelessness. Most local stakeholders would agree that in Mansfield, our acute services are pretty good. If someone finds themselves homeless, they have a good chance of getting accommodation and support fairly quickly. The numbers of street homeless in Mansfield have fallen over recent years.

We have some amazing local groups and charities such as The Hall, the Beacon Project and the Soup Kitchen that provide excellent care and support, and most importantly link in with key services. What we do not have is a low-level ongoing support or prevention service, to help people to manage their money and maintain a tenancy as they move on, and to stop them ending up back on the streets. For an entrenched population of long-term homeless, that is key.

It is important to note that a significant number of people, as has been mentioned, might not feature in the rough sleeping statistics because they have hostel accommodation or another form of temporary accommodation. While as a first step hostels can provide useful accommodation for homeless people and help to provide shelter, they are not a long-term solution. The use of drugs and alcohol, threats of violence, theft, bullying and other issues can mean they are not the safe space that people deserve.

It is frequently acknowledged that bed-blocking is a significant problem in the NHS. There is also an increasingly problematic form of hostel bed-blocking, where former rough sleepers in hostels are ready to move on but there is no move-on accommodation or support to help them do so. A joined-up effort to look at the ways in which we can continue to make progress in reducing homelessness will need to involve all levels of Government, the NHS and social care, charities and voluntary groups. There is no one-size-fits-all approach; we must take a range of different approaches to deal with the problem.

I have argued over the last year that tackling homelessness must remain a priority and that the funding should reflect its importance. That funding should not just be based on numbers. London obviously gets a lot of cash because the numbers are incredibly high, but I will argue for Mansfield, where the numbers are comparatively small but we have a deeply entrenched population of long-term homeless, who simply will not be able to get back on their feet without some intense long-term support.

Finally, can the Minister tell us when we are likely to have an assessment of the impact of the Act and the success of the various trials of different services, such as Housing First in Manchester, that have been brought forward by Government? Are more proposals are likely to be brought forward to look at those prevention services that I mentioned, with a view to meeting the target of eradicating homelessness by 2027?