Last week, Homeless Link submitted its response to the Government’s consultation on the Supported Housing Regulatory Oversight Act. Our response was developed in consultation with over 100 people from 60 of our member organisations, covering large housing associations with thousands of bedspaces, support providers, medium and small commissioned and non-commissioned services through to very small specialist providers with six units and everything in between. We are extremely grateful to all those who attended and shared their views, completed our survey, and sent us copies of their own responses to the consultation.
Summary
We are supportive of efforts to raise standards in supported accommodation. We recognise the need for national standards, and also recognise licensing as a workable way of achieving and enforcing them, helping to bring up the overall quality of provision, tackle the poor providers and provide more consistency across the country.
However, the Government’s proposals fail to consider that these changes will not be possible without proper funding and resource for the support element of supported accommodation, and investment in the sector more widely. New regulation will create significant financial and administrative burdens for organisations that have been underfunded for years and may struggle to remain viable.
Moreover, several of the proposals are incompatible with the way that homelessness services operate in reality. There are real issues caused by how a ‘scheme’ is defined, who the ‘licensee’ would be in models where the landlord is not the same as the support provider, and the proposal for this to be implemented at local authority level. The proposed changes to how Housing Benefit is administered are unfairly punitive on supported accommodation residents and the services supporting them.
We will need to see Government make substantial changes to the current proposals to ensure the viability of the standards and licensing.
Key positions: The standards
The proposed National Supported Housing Standards are broadly positive and reflective of what good providers do already. Most of the response to the standards related to refining and tweaking what is currently proposed, and questions on expectations around evidencing that a service is meeting the standards.
However the ‘local need’ standard is an area of significant concern. This standard requires services to show how they fit into local authorities’ supported housing strategy, that there is partnership between the LA and provider, and that the provision is in a suitable location. Whilst many members have good relationships with their local authority this is not universal, and there is a distinct power imbalance that we are concerned will be exacerbated by this standard, not least because it may contradict the flexible and responsive way that many VCSE services operate. It also exposes services to risk of councils making cuts due to financial or political pressures. We recommend that the Government rethinks this standard completely and mitigates the particular risks to non-commissioned or regionally/nationally commissioned services.
Key positions: Licensing
Whilst there is general acceptance that a licensing scheme is needed to enforce the standards, and no concern about the concept of licensing in general, there is a lot of diversity of opinion about the means of implementing the scheme and issues raised about potential unintended consequences.
We disagree with the proposed definition of a scheme, which disadvantages dispersed provision. Having to apply and pay for a licence for each scheme would be prohibitively expensive and burdensome for many providers. It should be possible to hold licenses at ‘project’ level – or, we would argue, for the whole regime to be run more similarly to how it currently works with the Ofsted regulation of supported accommodation for young care leavers, where licences are held at organisation level and individual schemes are added and become subject to inspection, overseen by a national body.
There are real issues with who the legislation currently defines as the ‘licensee’ in models where the landlord is not the same as the support provider. Registered providers and private rented sector landlords, who provide housing only, are clear that they don’t want to take on the responsibility for the quality of support where they don’t provide it, and that this risk would cause many to leave the market. This poses a huge risk to the supply of supported accommodation and the Government must address it.
The current proposed passporting for services already regulated by existing regulatory bodies doesn’t go far enough including expanding the proposals around Ofsted passporting to include the whole scheme. We would also strongly advocate for further automatic passporting wherever possible and the automatic transfer of information. The Government should agree areas where existing data on regulation should be used, and work with the Regulator of Social Housing, the Housing Ombudsman, Ofsted, and the Charity Commission on information sharing to avoid reporting duplication. To avoid further duplication and unnecessary and costly administrative burden there should also be a blanket passporting system for all services commissioned by any public body. Ensuring that those services meet the National Support Housing Standards and licensing requirements should be the responsibility of commissioners.
We strongly disagree that local authorities should have the power to add additional discretionary conditions to their licensing schemes – this again puts services that support high needs residents at risk, and creates a more complex regulatory landscape for services operating in multiple places.
With no current proposal of costs there is a lot of anxiety of where, and how much, the cost of a license will land and with the current proposal that these will be set by each local authority real concern that fees will be unaffordable, unworkable and a postcode lottery. We would like to see a standardised fee framework that recognises the diversity of provision in the sector ensuring fees remain affordable for both small provides and providers operating thousands of bedspaces.
Ultimately the challenges caused by the licensing scheme regime being administered by local authorities mean that we think the current proposal is borderline unworkable and we think need fully re-considering. The Government needs to mitigate the complexity caused by services operating in multiple local authorities, or receiving referrals from a different borough to where they’re geographically located, or operating hundreds and thousands of ‘schemes’ across the country, or operating on a border with Scotland or Wales.
Key positions: Housing Benefit
We don’t think Housing Benefit regulations need to be amended to add further detailed definitions or introduce a threshold. The fact that you have to be licensed in order to be eligible to receive Enhanced Housing Benefit should be enough to show that you are delivering adequate support and/or supervision, and that the detail of minimum requirements will already have been set out in the standards and licensing requirements. Rather, the emphasis needs to be on giving clear guidance to local authorities about what evidence they can request from services, and ensuring this is fair and proportionate. If you have gained a license, it should be accepted that your EHB claims are legitimate, and the LA should only be requesting minimal information about individual residents to support these.
There is real concern that the use of a threshold will impact significantly on services particularly low needs provision, or services working in a person-centered way and therefore allowing people to engage to the extent that they are comfortable with at any given time. There is a sense that the proposals set out do not show an understanding of the range and nuances of homelessness support and as such risk penalising services for delivering high quality but misunderstood support.
The current proposals about what happens to someone if a scheme they live in fails to gain a licence are too punitive on vulnerable residents who have done nothing wrong. The Government should consider a grace period where individuals continue to receive EHB while their next accommodation is arranged, and the responsibility to rehouse them should fall on the local authority and other agencies involved in their care, not the individual.
The underlying issue with the Housing Benefit section of the consultation, that is critical that Government address, is that the proposal is to introduce new standards and licensing, and through this access to HB, but the core element being regulated i.e. the standard and quality of support, is not actually funded through HB and for many providers is in fact entirely subsidised by their own fundraising. This of course links to systemic issues with underfunding in the sector but also risks undermining the impact of the standards: if there is no resource available to improve provision then regulation will either see a decrease in provision and/or provision that doesn’t have the capacity to improve quality beyond the current situation. It also raises significant challenges with linking Housing Benefit to the standards that Government must address before the proposals are implemented.
Next steps
The Government have not yet given a timeline for responding to the consultation, but from what we can gather there's a still a long way to go before any concrete changes are made.
In the meantime, Homeless Link will be making the case for the proposals to be amended in line with our positions. Ensuring providers are supported and resourced to be able to adhere to any new standards and licensing regime will be an important part of our response and advocacy over the coming months.
We will also continue to make the case that the Government needs to issue a clear directive to local authorities not to pre-empt the new standards and licensing conditions before national guidance has been published. If this is happening in your area please do let us know.
If you’d like to get in touch about supported accommodation regulation please contact Alexandra Worrell. Contact details below.
