Supported Housing

Neil Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will keep my comments as brief as possible. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in yet another important Opposition day debate—important, but unfortunate. Just like the debates on universal credit and many other topics, it has had to be called due to potentially damaging and ill-thought-out proposed social security cuts and changes by the UK Government.

It appeared as though the debate would be characterised by the many features that have unfortunately become a recurring theme in the past few years: changes being proposed in the name of austerity and deficit reduction at all costs, a lack of consultation with the relevant bodies and those who will be directly impacted, and no thought given to what some of the possible consequences may be. However, the Prime Minister’s answer today to the question from the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster)—not to take away from his creativity or independence of thought, I suspect that he may have had some inspiration from somewhere for that question—stated that the UK Government will not apply the local housing allowance cap to supported housing, nor implement it in the wider social rented sector. That suggests that the UK Government finally listened to the concerns raised by Parliament, the relevant Select Committees and the important voices within the sector who have done fantastic work campaigning against the cut, and they finally realised the alarm and concern that the uncertainty and potential consequences of this policy announcement were causing. It is a welcome step, but as the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), the shadow Minister, said, the devil will of course be in the detail, and we will be keeping a close eye on the consultation response when it is published next week.

I hope that the reversal is not a one-off and that the Government will continue to review other policies that have been causing similar apprehension in Parliament and among constituents and relevant organisations—I am of course thinking of universal credit—but it is still worrying that the announcement was made only as a result of the Minister being forced to answer to the House in this way, thus prolonging the agony for a sector that has faced potential disinvestment as a result of the uncertainty caused by the proposals.

Such discussions should have taken place before the previous Chancellor’s announcement in the 2015 autumn statement that he planned to cap the amount of rent that housing benefit will cover in the social rented sector to the relevant local housing allowance rate. That announcement raised many concerns about the impact on the whole sector, and as we are here to discuss today, it was particularly worrying for tenants and providers of supported accommodation due to the higher rents that understandably typify this sector. I hope that today’s announcement has thankfully nullified some of the key reasons why this debate was called, but the debate still provides a useful opportunity to remind ourselves of what is meant by supported accommodation and why it plays such a vital role throughout all our constituencies and communities.

Supported accommodation encompasses a wide range of different housing types, including hostels, refuges and sheltered housing. It exists to provide a lifeline to some of the most vulnerable within society: women fleeing domestic violence who are in need of protection, those with disabilities who require support in their day-to-day living and elderly people who require assistance to maintain their independence. In my constituency, one of the best examples of that is Monklands Women’s Aid, which is run by Sharon Aitchison and does fantastic work providing responsive domestic abuse services to women, children and young people.

Women’s Aid’s response to the UK Government’s original proposals emphasised the fact that benefit entitlement provides some sustainability and financial security to refuges in an otherwise challenging funding environment and is a vital interim protection until a sustainable funding solution for refuge is secured. Women’s Aid went on to call for the maintenance of the current funding system until a sustainable model for funding both the housing and support costs that refuges face is fully developed, piloted and secured.

It is crucial to preserve the stability on housing costs that housing benefit provides until the UK Government fulfil the commitment to a sustainable solution for both elements of refuge funding. Women’s Aid also highlighted the important point, of which the UK Government now appear to have taken cognisance, that:

“Designed to control housing benefit costs in the private sector, LHA rates bear no relation to the actual costs of providing supported accommodation such as refuges.”

Such places not only benefit those individuals and groups who rely on their services but provide a wider societal positive economic externality.

According to the National Housing Federation, the annual saving to the taxpayer through the reduced reliance of older tenants on health and social care services —that is also topical today—is estimated to be £3,000 per person. For people living with learning difficulties and mental health issues, the saving is between £12,500 and £15,500. The saving that the sector provides to the UK Government from lower costs for the NHS, social care and the criminal justice system is estimated to be in the region of £3.5 billion.

The reasons why supported accommodation carries higher rent costs than mainstream social housing are well known, and the previous Chancellor should have been more aware of them before he made this alarming policy announcement in 2015. Zhan McIntyre of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations has said that the extra costs include 24-hour staffing of some facilities, the installation and monitoring of CCTV, high turnover rates in the accommodation, repair costs and enhanced fire monitoring and safety equipment.

Although this reversal is welcome, further clarity is still required on what the long-term policy and funding model will be and on whether the proposed replacement will be adequate for the future security of the sector, as the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne said.

A survey by the National Housing Federation in May 2017 suggests that some of the damage of the 2015 policy announcement has already been done, as it found that plans to develop new supported housing units have been reduced from 8,800 to 1,350 in the face of ongoing uncertainty about future funding streams, representing a decrease of 85%. That is particularly worrying given the growing demand for specialist and supported housing, and as with mainstream housing, it is essential that we find ways to incentivise, not to deter, further investment. It will be interesting to see how the Government aim to fill that rather large gap.

Shelter has raised concerns that the proposal essentially

“completely upends the financing of supported housing and introduces a huge amount of uncertainty to the sector.”

It is also particularly worried that, with local authority finances already squeezed,

“funding identified for housing costs could be used for other services.”

On 15 December 2016, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions and the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government announced a joint inquiry into supported housing funding, the report of which was published before the general election. The report, which my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) worked on, welcomed efforts to find a long-term sustainable funding mechanism for the sector but said:

“we share the concerns expressed across the sector that the funding proposals, as they stand, are unlikely to achieve these objectives.”

Now the Government have stated that they intend to abandon this route, we hope they will also announce a robust and sustainable plan and will protect the sector from any further announcements of cuts.

The American poet Robert Frost once defined a home as

“the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

For many people, the only suitable homes available are offered by the providers of supported accommodation. The Government’s reversal today is welcome, but concerns about the need for a system that safeguards the long-term future and funding of supported accommodation still need to be addressed to ensure that the most vulnerable people in our society always have a place that will take them in.