Supported Housing

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Lord Brady of Altrincham

Thursday 18th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Sir Graham, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. I join colleagues in welcoming the joint report between the Communities and Local Government Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee on supported housing, and congratulate them on securing this debate.

A safe, secure and supportive home can be the key to improving or repairing lives and to unlocking people’s potential, as has already been acknowledged. Supported housing helps hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable people across the country to live independently or to turn their lives around. That is why it must be a priority for all of us in this House.

I welcome the Government’s change of heart on funding for longer-term supported housing, but I remain extremely concerned, along with many of my colleagues, about the funding and provision of short-term supported accommodation services with a target length of stay of up to two years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said in opening the debate, the Committee’s concerns about funding for emergency accommodation should not apply to that wider provision. Short-term supported accommodation providers across Nottingham are telling me that

“the Government obviously feels it has listened and taken account of what providers have been saying.

Unfortunately though, the problem is not solved for providers like us who offer short-term supported housing. If anything, the new proposals…are worse than the previous one.”

Notwithstanding the reassurances offered by the Government in the consultation, they are leaving this sort of accommodation in a vulnerable position. Local providers do not know how the localised funds will be distributed and there is no guarantee of what will happen to them over time. They are worried that, even within a ring fence, local authorities—whose budgets are of course under extreme pressure as a result of seven years of austerity—will have to reallocate funding to align it better with their statutory obligations.

Nottingham Community Housing Association has told me that, as a landlord that operates across the east midlands region, covering several local authority areas, it is concerned about the proposal for a locally administered pot. It says that the expertise in housing is not held with upper-tier authorities, and it is worried about the correct sizing of the pot. In addition, it says that the locally administered pot is likely to be subject to different requirements in different local areas, so a landlord such as NCHA will have the apprehension of dealing with not one approach to housing costs, as in the current model, but with several different approaches across the region. NCHA is worried that the outcome will be increased costs in the management of such arrangements and potentially differing levels of housing management services procured across the region, resulting in a postcode lottery for residents.

I am sure that the Minister will agree that if unnecessary procurement and commissioning achieved poorer value for money, it would not be good. Of course, housing costs are already subject to scrutiny by housing benefit teams, the local market in respect of self-funders—particularly in the case of sheltered accommodation—and through the value for money standard, which is a significant feature of Homes and Communities Agency regulation. Adding a new level of administration to local government will increase costs without directly benefiting individuals or the public purse.

Currently, providers are able to move quickly to meet unmet housing need without having to go through local government procurement channels. As an example of that, to ease the pressures of homelessness this winter, NCHA reopened a recently closed care home as a much-needed temporary accommodation service for couples and families who are homeless in Nottingham. They did so in consultation with the city council and in a matter of weeks. Under the proposed arrangements, such flexibility could be lost. The service would need to be commissioned and funded from a pot that has potentially had its entire allocation accounted for and is therefore empty.

I will say a little bit more about some of the local services and how they will be impacted. Last year I visited the Stephanie Lodge step-down mental health service in Radford in my constituency, which provides outstanding care and support for up to 10 residents leaving in-patient psychiatric care. Again, that is an NCHA service, and NCHA is concerned that under the current proposals residents at Stephanie Lodge will lose their automatic entitlement to housing benefit or the housing element of universal credit.

Holly Dagnall, director of homes and wellbeing at NCHA, told me that

“whilst rolling up housing costs with care and support costs to be met by a locally administrated ‘pot’ might be helpful for those in our services who wish to work, the reality is that most if not all of our residents are a significant distance from the workplace, having moved to Stephanie Lodge from acute mental health in-patient services. NCHA believe that this is the only potential upside of the current proposals and that in reality this is an upside which will not be relevant to the vast majority of our residents at Stephanie Lodge.”

NCHA is anxious that

“the loss of automatic entitlement to housing costs being met for the individual means that the service is at risk of insufficient funding being made available to fund the important, statutory and legal housing management functions required to ensure that landlord duties are adequately discharged in the provision of safe and secure accommodation”

for tenants who are, as I am sure the Minister will appreciate, very vulnerable.

Short-term supported accommodation providers in Nottingham tell me that they would like to see housing costs remain within the benefits system as the housing element of universal credit, whether that is for services like Stephanie Lodge or others, where residents are likely to live for between six months and a year. They believe that that is possible to administer and provides the best assurances for both landlords and service providers, and people in receipt of the services. It will also provide housing cost assurance for new developments, meaning that providers will be able to proceed with greater confidence in providing much-needed support for vulnerable people in my constituency.

In addition to the concerns expressed to me by providers, I have been contacted by residents across Nottingham South, who have told me how living in supported accommodation has changed their lives. One former service user, Katie, who was supported by Framework—I do not know if the Minister is aware of it, but it specialises in homelessness and homelessness prevention across the east midlands—spoke of the transformation that supported housing has created for her. She said:

“I was homeless before I moved here. It was scary because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I felt powerless. I’ve been here for three or four months and it’s been great… It’s been great to have a roof over my head but it’s also taught me a lot about life.”

She explains how having to pay rent and bills for the first time has been an education and helped her to grow up and realise she could live alone in the future. Short-term supported housing is essential to help people like Katie to move on with their lives, but they also have to have somewhere to move on to within the housing system. Framework has told me that one of the reasons people cannot move on is that hostels are full and there is nowhere for people to move on to, which is creating a backlog of unmet need.

In his final budget, George Osborne announced a £100 million capital fund for the development of move-on accommodation. It later emerged that 50% of the fund was earmarked to be spent in London, leaving only £50 million for the whole of the rest of the country, even though local authorities in the midlands and the north now face greater numbers of people sleeping rough than in London, and the rate of increase is faster. Concerns have been raised with me about that programme, and indeed were raised with the Minister’s predecessor, by Andrew Redfern, the chief executive of Framework.

Andrew Redfern was told by CLG officials that the programme was likely to be launched in the autumn of 2016. While it was launched by the Mayor of London on that date, there has still been no indication of when and how the £50 million for outside London can be accessed. What is the hold-up? Can the Minister tell us today when we can expect to see that much-needed funding made available for local authorities to bid for?

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) and other hon. Members have already spoken about the dangers that the Government’s proposals present to domestic violence refuges, including our own local provision. This is incredibly serious, given the pressures that we know are already in the system. Every year the refuges run by Women’s Aid Integrated Services in Nottinghamshire turn away one in 10 women due to lack of space. That is not a problem localised to Nottingham. Demand for refuge places remains sky high across the country. Nationally, 60% of referrals were declined in 2016-17. Shockingly, on just one day this year, 90 women and 94 children were turned away. Any change in funding that endangers their future is extremely worrying.

Clearly, we should do even more to support the refuges for women fleeing domestic violence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) said, there is the potential for devastating consequences arising from the proposals as Women’s Aid estimates that half of refuges may have to close or reduce their provision. So we have been warned. The move to a local model is deeply flawed. According to the information that I have had from local refuges, two thirds of the women flee to a refuge outside their local area, and that is backed up by what is happening. Nationally, Women’s Aid is issuing an SOS call to the Government—I know the Minister is listening—to secure a sustainable funding solution for what are literally life-saving services, and I stand with Women’s Aid in making that call.

I am pleased that locally there has been a strong commitment from both Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council to fund our refuges. Currently, five out of the nine refuges in the county are commissioned by them. However, one refuge in the city area and three in the county receive direct DCLG funding, which runs out over the next few months. Women’s Aid Integrated Services has told me it is unclear what will happen to those four refuges. Locally, that leaves us facing the loss of 112 bed spaces accommodating 21 families at any one time. One of those four refuges is set to close at the end of March. That particular refuge is one of a small number of refuges in the country that can accommodate women with large families, women with older male children and women with complex needs for whom the usual shared refuge is not suitable. The refuge has six houses with 37 bed spaces, and the largest house can accommodate a family with up to eight children. One more Nottingham refuge that accommodates women with complex needs is also facing a very uncertain future. The loss of any beds and spaces will put intolerable pressure on the rest of the system.

Val Lunn, CEO of Nottingham Women’s Aid Integrated Services, said:

“The Government is planning a new Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill...to protect survivors”—

which we certainly welcome—

“but this is neither use nor ornament if refuges close because of the proposed changes to funding...Refuges save the lives of women and children trying to escape domestic abuse. These plans threaten to take us back to the bad old days of the 1970s.”

I know the Minister will not want us to go back to those days. I urge her to take account of the considerable concerns among providers on the front line and to work with Women’s Aid to find a solution.

The Minister’s predecessor took account of the concerns of providers and of the Select Committees’ views on long-term supported accommodation provision. I, in common with colleagues today, am raising concerns about short-term housing provision. It is time for her to listen to the experts again.

[Sir Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, it might be helpful for me to say that I hope to move on to the winding-up speeches by 10 to 4 at the latest. Three speakers have indicated they would like to take part, so if they can try to keep themselves to around 10 minutes each, I will not need to impose an official time limit.