The background to the pilots

  1. Many hard working and genuine providers may have been relieved at the recent exposure of rogue landlords. Perhaps, for some, it was about time such providers were exposed for who they are and for their seemingly blatant abuse of a system designed to help vulnerable adults, not neglect them or subject them to further hardship.

  2. The purpose of this blog is to consider one particular result of this abuse coming to light - the use of pilot schemes to test enforcement measures to improve the quality and value for money in supported housing.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (“DLUHC”)

  1. In Westminster Hall on 9th February 2022, Shabana Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham, Ladywood, raised a debate to discuss a significant problem which had arisen in her constituency in the provision of supported housing. As a result of a series of concerns that had been brought to her attention by her constituents, Ms Mahmood, like a number of other MPs before and since, highlighted the need for steps to be taken to oust out landlords who had set up supported housing schemes principally to make money and who were running schemes that failed to provide adequate accommodation and support:

I stress that there are some good, legitimate providers of this type of housing, who do important work with people in desperate need of housing and help. There are still those who are committed to a social and indeed moral mission to help people to get back on an even keel, recover from addiction, turn their lives around and play a full part in society once again. However, there are too many rogue—I describe them as cowboy—providers who have clocked that this is a lucrative money-spinning opportunity and who take full advantage. They get access to larger sums of money to house Housing Benefit claimants who need care, support or supervision, and then they do not provide it.

  1. Shockingly in the Labour MP Kerry McCarthy’s Bristol East constituency, it took one particular provider two days to discover someone’s body after he had died in 2020. This is a clear example of a total failure of support and supervision, two key aspects of the provision of supported housing. This type of neglect and absence of care tends to suggest that the landlord in question was not providing good quality support and accommodation.

  2. The DLUHC had already become aware of this problem in the short term (or “transitional”) accommodation and recognised the importance of working closely with the Department for Work and Pensions (“DWP”) to better understand and address these concerns. They decided to set up a number of pilot schemes in several local authority areas with the aim of:

(a) Improving the standard of support and accommodation; (b) Improving the value for money of supported housing; (c) Improving oversight of supported housing; (d) Identifying best practice that could be applied across the country; and (e) Exploring to what extent supported housing provision can be improved without any changes in regulation or legislation.

The pilot schemes

  1. Between September 2020 and October 2021, DLUHC provided funding of £5.4 million to the local authorities in Birmingham, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Bristol and Hull to test enforcement measures to improve quality and value for money in supported housing. The local authorities were asked to work in a relatively short timeframe of a year - presumably in recognition of the urgency of the situation.
  2. During the course of the pilot schemes, all local authorities were expected to conduct property inspections, enforce property standards, review support provided to residents, enhance their scrutiny of new and existing Housing Benefit (“HB”) claims and carry out strategic planning to better understand the local market. Other supplementary activities were then developed e.g. launching local quality standards for supported housing, working with specific groups of young people and victims of domestic abuse, addressing anti-social behaviour etc.

The outcome of the pilot schemes

  1. In part 2 of this series, we will consider the key findings from the pilot schemes and how these will assist local authorities in the future as they monitor and oversee funding for supported housing for our vulnerable adults in society.

MR Associates - December 2022