Supported Housing

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will endeavour to be brief. First, let me thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and the Select Committee members for all their work on this issue.

It was a qualified relief to hear earlier that the Government have, to some extent, listened to sense and will not be going ahead with their original plans to restrict the funding for supported housing to LHA rates only. Many have already talked about the impacts that the original changes would have had on their constituencies. Certainly I calculated that, within Oxford East, we would have seen around a third of supported housing provision wiped out because the LHA rates are around a third below the average private rental cost. That would obviously have had a very negative impact on my constituency.

One point that has not come up so far is the need for any future funding solution to be ring-fenced. There was a difficult situation with another relevant funding stream, Supporting People funding. Some hon. Members have touched on that, although they did not name it per se. Supporting People funding was devolved to an extent, but it was not ring-fenced. Many local authority areas, including my area of Oxford, which is covered by Oxfordshire County Council, have faced the removal of all support for facilities such as homeless shelters. That has resulted in a reduction of about half of all shelter places—that is an accurate headcount—for homeless people in places such as Oxford in a time of record levels of rough sleeping.

We need to ensure that any future funding system is locally responsive, potentially reflecting regional costs, as many have advocated and as the Joint Select Committee report suggested. But we should also ensure that the funding is ring-fenced, because we really do not want it to leach away into other areas when local authorities are under such enormous pressure owing to cuts from central Government.

Many speakers have said that there is no relationship between the local housing allowance and the cost of supported housing. Of course that is the case, but it is also the case that in many areas the LHA bears very little relation to private rented costs per se. In my city of Oxford there are no—none, zero—family homes that are affordable under the current LHA. Home rental websites show that there is not a single one. I hope that the Government’s reflection, albeit a rather tardy one, on supported housing will lead them to think more carefully about the nature of calculation of the LHA for all rented accommodation.