Supported Exempt Accommodation

Debate between John Spellar and Shabana Mahmood

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered regulation of supported exempt accommodation.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I am pleased to have secured the debate today to discuss something that is a huge problem in my constituency, in my city, and in many other places across the country.

If someone had asked me a few years ago what supported exempt accommodation was, I would not have been able to tell them. I know it confuses people even now. Given my difficulties in dealing with the issue in my own constituency, I have become quite a world expert. I will set out for all exactly what we mean when we talk about supported exempt accommodation.

Supported accommodation is a broad term that describes a range of housing types: group homes, hostels, refuges, sheltered housing, and so on. An offshoot of supported accommodation is referred to as “exempt”. It is basically a resettlement place or accommodation provided by a council, housing association, charity or voluntary organisation, where a person or organisation provides the claimant with—in theory—care, support or supervision. I say “in theory” because too often that is not the case in reality, and that is what I will discuss in detail in my speech.

Exempt accommodation is supported housing that is exempt from housing benefit regulations. If we provide someone with that type of housing, we get access to enhanced housing benefit and can access more money to house this group of mainly vulnerable tenants who are in need of care, support or supervision. We can see why that has happened. The cost of housing vulnerable people—care leavers, women fleeing domestic violence, ex-offenders, people with addiction issues, and so on—is higher. The costs of helping those individuals are higher, so the exemption from housing benefit regulations—the ability to access higher payments to house such people—was designed to allow providers to access adequate sums of money to help individuals as they seek to turn their lives around. Too often, that is very much not what happens in practice.

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.

In law, it is the case that all a provider has to do is provide care, support and supervision that is, in legal terms, “more than minimal”. Those three words have plagued me as I have navigated the complex world of supported housing while trying to help my constituents—those who live in such properties and those in communities where there is a proliferation of those types of properties.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

That is the nub of it, is it not? The hugely greater rents and support that landlords can get means that families are priced out of streets, and the problem spreads rapidly down these streets. The behaviour of many of those who get no support makes those streets places where people no longer wish to live. My hon. Friend talks about shady landlords, but is there not a real danger that there is so much money to be made now that organised crime is moving in, in a big way?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. I will come to his point about the connection with organised crime, which is becoming a real problem. He is right that the distortion in the housing market in these communities means that working families are being priced out of good, viable family homes. Other social tenants cannot access them either; when a person cannot get enhanced housing benefits, they are subject to the local housing allowance

In fact, this lucrative loophole is causing huge problems not only for the tenants, who often get trapped in unsuitable properties, but for the communities living in those in those areas and those who might wish to live in them, too. It is exactly those nefarious operators moving into the sector who are causing problems in my constituency and across the country.

In practice, “more than minimal” means hardly anything at all. I have heard providers say that installing CCTV in communal areas or having a manager who might visit the property once in a blue moon counts as adequate supervision of vulnerable people. That sort of so-called supervision would certainly pass the “more the minimal” test, but the idea that that is what was meant by the regulations that determine access to larger pots of housing benefit is utterly outrageous.

Cowboy operators know that they can access more money per tenant, and they do not have to spend very much—or indeed anything at all—to demonstrate that they are providing care, support or supervision. So, what is the upshot? Lots of cash is available for those who know how to game the system.