Homelessness Reduction Bill (Fifth sitting)

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

I am pleased to support the clause, which will require public authorities to notify a local housing authority of people they think are or may be homeless or at risk of becoming so. Many vulnerable people do not know where to turn to. The clause makes it clear that there is a duty to refer on all public services, and it allows local authorities to innovate and create a workable solution.

In Portsmouth, the local council works closely with local charities such as the Roberts Centre, which works closely with vulnerable families to put them on the right track by helping them to budget, to learn how to keep a home and to pay rent. I want to raise awareness also of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Rehabilitation Company, which identifies service personnel in the court system and assigns them a caseworker. The caseworker follows them through the process and through prison and is there at the gate when they come out to look after them, including by organising accommodation, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, is a big issue for offenders. Perhaps the Prison Service can learn from that project. We hope to see it throughout the country, because it is working incredibly well in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Those are examples of why we should not over-prescribe. I hope good practice such as that will be shared throughout the country.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Chope. May I extend my best wishes to you and to the rest of the Committee for 2017?

I welcome the clause and the duty that it places on anyone working at the frontline in the public sector to take account of the risk of homelessness and to behave responsibly in order that people who are at risk of homelessness can get access to the support that they need. However, I want to flag some complexity in relation to the implementation of parts of the clause, and to make a plea for the Minister to consider additional guidance when the Bill becomes an Act.

The complexity arises in particular in relation to proposed new section 213B of the Housing Act 1996. Subsection (3)(b) states:

“If the person…identifies a local housing authority in England to which the person would like the notification to be made”.

In my experience, there is a lot of complexity around the question of which housing authority should pick up the responsibility for people who are at risk of homelessness. I want to flag just three examples of where I have known that to be the case and where there is some concern.

The first example involves people of no fixed abode who have a mental health crisis and find themselves being held under the Mental Health Act 1983, and who are taken to a place of safety. In my area of London, the place-of-safety provision for five boroughs is being consolidated on to a single premises in the London Borough of Southwark. The health authority involved has worked with the local authorities on protocols for discharge, but there is great concern that, under the clause, someone who has reached crisis point and been admitted to hospital but who has no local authority that has clear housing responsibility for them may be discharged again and again into the same local authority. That local authority already has very significant housing pressure on it. Guidance and protocols need to be put in place so that the additional burden of people with very high levels of need does not fall automatically on one local authority. There should be a firm responsibility on other local authorities to help out in those circumstances. That is worthy of further consideration.

The second issue relates to ex-offenders, who have been discussed. People in prison often lose their tenancy or home. They may also lose connection with friends and family as a consequence of their incarceration. People who are released from prison often use their £40 to buy a train ticket—that train ticket is often to a place a long way from London. I know from work that I have done in the past that coastal towns, for example, often have very high concentrations of ex-offenders living in a very small area. There is no necessary reason why an area should have to pick up responsibility for high numbers of ex-offenders simply because the cost of private housing there is low.

My main concern is that that outcome is not necessarily in the interest of getting those ex-offenders back on track and enabling them to make a fresh start. Advice on the protocols that should apply to the housing authorities that should pick up responsibility for ex-offenders on release from prison would be welcome and helpful. It would help to achieve the kind of outcomes that we want as a consequence of introducing the clause.

My final point concerns a situation I have seen time and again as a local councillor and Member of Parliament: a dispute between local authorities over which should take responsibility for somebody—it might be somebody whose last permanent address was in one local authority but they have been sofa-surfing with family members for a time in another. The family might have broken up. The resident might be arguing that they need to be a distance from where they used to live due to domestic violence or other reasons.

Whatever the reason, there is a dispute between local authorities over which should take responsibility and it is the individual who ends up suffering and falling between the cracks. The clause would provide too much scope for those poor outcomes that either place undue pressure on local authorities that are already under great pressure, or it could mean that individuals are not easily able to access the support they need. There is too much scope for that if the clause is left as it is without further additional guidance on the protocols that need to apply in practice. I ask the Minister to take that into account in his response and to pick it up as the Bill progresses.

[Michael Tomlinson]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Chope, for the first time in 2017. I welcome the clause and support it as drafted. I believe there is an opportunity to rise to the good practice that appears in Westminster and elsewhere and raise the standard across the whole country. We all like to think there is good practice in our areas. I have three local authorities in my constituency: Purbeck East, Dorset and Poole, and Dorset County Council. I strongly believe the duty to refer will encourage other authorities to follow suit.

I agree with the hon. Member for Westminster North that the duty to refer is not the complete answer. That is absolutely right. It is not the complete answer but it is a good step along the way and will help to show what proper good practice should be.

Every hon. Member who has spoken so far has mentioned prisons. Perhaps that shows the important link between release from prison and the streets. It is no different on the streets of Poole, Bournemouth and Dorset from in Westminster, London and elsewhere.

My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South mentioned what is happening in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The Footprints Project operates in Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset. It is a charitable organisation that helps ex-offenders in a through-the-gate service, offering mentoring and help to get into work.

I believe the clause provides an opportunity to work with local authorities and charitable organisations. Charities are already performing good works in preventing reoffending and trying to get people on the straight and narrow. There is a great opportunity for local authorities to work more closely together. I was heartened to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East speak of local authorities choosing to outsource some of those services and work closely alongside charitable organisations that are doing a good job, which can only be a good thing.

Hospitals have not been mentioned as much as prisons. I will return to what will be in the regulations in due course, but we all hate the term “bed blocking”. It is a completely inappropriate term for unfortunate people who find themselves in hospital through no fault of their own and have nowhere to go. I strongly believe that the duty to refer will help in that regard. Perhaps the Committee could come up with a better phrase for “bed blocking” because it is very distasteful indeed. I strongly believe that the clause, with a duty to refer and co-operate with hospitals, other organisations and local authorities, will help in that regard.

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[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

I rise to support clause 11. As discussed, it seeks to create a basic standard in the form of a code of practice. That will ensure that local housing authorities have guidance on how to deliver homelessness prevention functions. The guidance will offer councils a reference to check against, to ensure that the level of service offered is equal to the best currently seen in the UK.

The clause speaks to the essence of what we have been talking about over the last few weeks. Up and down the country, services are being provided at a different level. Those people who are deemed vulnerable but not in priority need are often those who fall between the gaps and do not receive the service that they should. We have all agreed on that, which is why the clause is so important: it seeks to ensure that those people receive the best service throughout the UK, and indeed, to end the existing postcode lottery.

In many ways, the clause is not only about improving and equalising services, but about giving local housing authorities more guidance and steering—although it will not replace the existing code of guidance. It will enable the Secretary of State and all of us to raise the standards of homelessness support services across the country, so that the minimum level of service—equal to what is currently the best—is delivered. That minimum level will be one of the Bill’s supreme achievements.

[Helen Hayes]

I, too, support the introduction of a code of practice. Does the hon. Lady agree that the capacity of local authorities to implement good practice depends not only on a code of practice, but on the resourcing they need to deliver a meaningful service? If so, does she therefore, with me, await with eager anticipation the Government’s committing to properly resourcing local authorities to implement meaningful support for homeless people?

[Michelle Donelan]

The entirety of the Bill depends on resource, which is why it is crucial that the Government have already dedicated and allocated funds to it. It is important to remember that some councils are currently offering this level of service; if one council can do it, surely it is only right that every council should do it. It is also wrong that a postcode lottery exists in the UK, and that taxpayers paying the same tax throughout the country experience a different level of service from one another.

It is also crucial to consult and work with stakeholders to develop the code of practice. The clause seeks to equalise standards, as well as to ensure joined-up and collaborative working, and I therefore support it.