Homelessness and Rough Sleeping

Debate between Karen Buck and Lilian Greenwood

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) on securing the debate and on making a very powerful case. As she and others have said, in recent years, we have seen homelessness up overall. We have seen rough sleeping up by 60% in London in just two years alone, and we have seen homelessness in London rise by more than a third in just three years. All that was entirely predictable and it was predicted, because it has arisen not entirely by accident, but by a foreseeable combination of circumstances. There is the continuing squeeze on house building and particularly affordable house building—last year we saw the lowest level of housing completions since the 1920s—and the failure, which many of us have been flagging up for several years, of the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions to have even the most basic conversation about how their policies interact.

What is most striking in London and the south-east is the extent to which the Government’s policies on social security, especially the housing support safety net cuts, have led directly to the rise in homelessness, particularly in London. A staggering figure was flagged up by the estimable Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in their 2013 homelessness report: there has been a 316% rise in homelessness due to the end of assured shorthold tenancies in London—that is private sector tenancies. Overwhelmingly, the end of those assured shorthold tenancies is either because the tenant can no longer afford the rent—they were relying on the assistance of housing benefit—or because landlords, in an increasingly competitive market, are withdrawing those properties from the sector, which is a point that I will briefly return to in a minute.

London is not the only area affected, although with that 316% rise it is at the sharp end. We saw a 128% increase in homelessness due to the end of assured shorthold tenancies in the south, and even in the north of England, which does not have the same housing pressures, there was a 73% rise. The Government’s welfare policy is without doubt driving homelessness, especially for families.

The problem is by no means over. The Money Advice Service told us just this week that rent arrears are the fastest growing debt problem. We have seen an average of 60%—nearly two thirds—of household income in the private rented sector being taken up by rent. That is clearly unsustainable. People are struggling to keep the roof over their heads. They are relying on a safety net that is increasingly being stripped away from them, and it is driving homelessness.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. Does she share my concern that things are only going to get worse, with council tax support being further withdrawn, and particularly with the loss of transitional relief, which provided a little bit of leeway this year? Next year, it will be far more difficult for low-income families to get by.

[Ms Buck]

Of course. That is absolutely true. As my hon. Friend says, many families are facing a multiple attack on their living standards. The same families who are affected by cuts in housing support are also being affected by cuts in council tax support, and it is adding to their crisis.

At first, homelessness led to a surge in the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation, as hon. Members have said, which is ridiculously expensive and wholly unsuitable. The Labour Government were absolutely right, more than a decade ago, to make it illegal for local authorities to keep families with children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation for more than six weeks. The growing pressure of homelessness meant that local authorities, including Westminster, were breaching that six-week standard, which cost an absolute fortune—millions and millions of pounds. Local authorities had to place people in the Premier Inn hotel and the Jurys Inn hotel in Chelsea, because they could not find accommodation. Of course, they were breaking the law and were roundly told off by Ministers for doing so.

I am delighted that Westminster, in particular, is no longer using bed-and-breakfast accommodation for more than six weeks. That has been a significant change in the past few months. But what has happened? It is like squeezing a balloon: unless the circumstances change, the pressure simply builds somewhere else. What has happened is that local authorities are beginning to use something called annexe accommodation which, in some cases, is merely bed-and-breakfast accommodation with a gas ring. It is not always; sometimes it is different kinds of accommodation. It is basically self-contained, but it is booked nightly and has no time limit on its use. Local authorities—in particular, inner London authorities under pressure—are now using that nightly booked accommodation, which means that families, including many of those I am dealing with, literally do not know from one day to the next where they will be going for their accommodation. Many of the annexes are out of borough, so families have to commute their children in from the outskirts of London to maintain their school places. They cannot move their child’s school to the local authority area in which they are now placed—it may be Hounslow; it may be Enfield; it is many miles away—because they do not know whether they will still be in the same local authority area tomorrow.

Families tell me that they are getting up at half-past five in the morning to get their children, who are sometimes five or six years old, ready for school, because it takes them two hours to get there. They have to go by bus because they cannot afford the train. Those families are commuting their children two hours to school and two hours home at night. Understandably, the schools then come to me and say that children are falling asleep at their desks because they are being put under that pressure. Even children with special needs were being placed in this accommodation, despite the local authority telling me that that was not the case. We hope that is now being addressed, but unfortunately we are now seeing more and more such loopholes being used.

We were told by Ministers that other than in very exceptional circumstances local authorities should not place homeless families from their areas well away from their communities, in out-of-borough placements. In fact, out-of-borough placements have risen in every quarter bar one since 2011 to more than 4,000. Out-of-borough bookings rose to 14,535. This is according to London Councils’ monitoring of the issue last year. Local authorities made 11,262 out-of-borough nightly bookings, which is a total scandal. I do not believe, and I hope that the Minister will tell us that he does not believe, that people should be treated in that way. These are families and children. They are often very vulnerable families. They are often families facing multiple pressures and difficulties.

The Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), told us that local authorities had been using “unacceptable and avoidable” measures and that they should offer accommodation locally as far as possible. Indeed, speaking in response to a press story in December 2012, a Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman said:

“Councils can meet housing need through social housing or high-quality private rented housing in their area. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, there is no excuse for moving homeless families to other areas, and they must absolutely not apply a blanket policy of relocating families out of the capital.”

What we are seeing in London and in the south-east more generally is a surge in placements out of borough, completely in breach of that assurance that we were given. We are seeing more and more pressure building up; it is a pressure-cooker situation. Many local authorities are competing for increasingly scarce accommodation for these placements and the situation is unsustainable.

I hope that the Minister will today tell us that he will ensure that local authorities do not place families well away from their children’s schools, their communities, their support networks and the elderly relatives for whom they provide care; ensure that local authorities can access temporary and emergency accommodation for families; deal with the scandal of long-term nightly booked accommodation; and provide the framework for a sustainable policy to help those vulnerable families who are facing this terrible crisis of homelessness.