Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to protect funding for tackling homelessness.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
This Government is committed to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy which sets out an ambitious £100 million package to help people who sleep rough now, but also puts in place the structures that will end rough sleeping once and for all. This Government’s manifesto committed to halving rough sleeping in this Parliament and to end it for good by 2027.
The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period including £617 million ring fenced funding via the Flexible Homelessness Support Grant, which local authorities can use strategically to tackle homelessness in their area.
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will increase funding to councils to support the provision of council tax support.
Answered by Rishi Sunak
Councils are responsible for designing schemes that deliver an appropriate level of council tax support that reflect the circumstances in their area. Funding for local council tax support is provided, unringfenced, through the local government finance settlement. Councils will have access to £46.4 billion of funding next year – a 2.8 per cent increase from 2018-19.
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if his Department will bring forward legislative proposals to prohibit no-fault evictions.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
The Government is committed to protecting the rights of tenants and giving them more security. We recently consulted on ways to overcome the barriers to landlords offering longer, more secure tenancies in the private rented sector.
We are considering responses to the consultation and will be bringing forward proposals that make the system work for both tenants and landlords. We will provide more information on next steps shortly.
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what progress has been made on the northern powerhouse project since 2014.
Answered by Jake Berry
Since the Northern Powerhouse was launched in 2014, we have seen increased investment, enhanced international profile for the North and devolved new powers to the North. Since 2014, we have:
We seek to build on this success and have committed to refresh the Northern Powerhouse Strategy at Autumn Budget 2018.
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to improve outreach services for homeless people.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
The Government announced on 30 March a new Rough Sleeping Initiative team that has direct oversight over the delivery of £30 million in 2018/19 to 83 local authorities, with further funding of £45 million to be allocated in 2019/20.
This tailored approach is ensuring interventions are planned on the basis of local need, existing provision and service gaps in each area and that funding is directed to the places where it will have most impact.
The types of interventions we are funding include local co-ordination and case management work, increased outreach provision, a range of emergency accommodation options, access routes into more settled accommodation and support to help people engage and sustain accommodation. These interventions have worked in the past, and will work again.
To support this, the Government has also funded the London Training Academy to deliver assertive outreach training this Autumn to staff working with rough sleepers across England. The training will seek contributions from practised outreach workers and people with lived experience, sourcing materials including case studies and short films, creating a course that reflects good practice from across England, covering rural and urban areas.
The Government is committed to halving rough sleeping by 2020 and ending it by 2027 and this training will allow outreach workers to work this autumn to reach vulnerable people and make an impact on rough sleeping numbers immediately.
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of funding allocated to (a) Blackburn borough council (b) other local authorities in England.
Answered by Rishi Sunak
Over this spending period, councils will be able to access more than £200 billion to spend on local services; of this, Blackburn with Darwen Council will have available over £590 million. The majority of this funding is non-ringfenced as it is for local authorities who are independent of central government to manage their budgets in line with locally determined priorities.
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will take steps to provide additional protection to tenants facing eviction as a result of the end of an assured shorthold tenancy.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
Under the Assured Shorthold Tenancy regime, which is now the most common form of tenancy in the private rented sector, tenants have a minimum of 6 months security of tenure. According to the English Housing Survey, 10 per cent of tenants moved because they were asked to leave or were given notice by their landlord. A landlord can only seek possession within the fixed term tenancy period by applying to the court for a possession in accordance with section 8 of the Housing Act 1988 on one or more of the grounds contained in schedule 2.
Outside of the fixed term period, a landlord can evict a tenant using a Section 21 notice but only where the landlord has complied with certain legal obligations. These include protecting their tenants’ deposit in a Tenancy Deposit Protection scheme, providing Gas Safety Certificates, and also providing a copy of the Government’s ‘How to Rent’ guide.
The Government is committed to making renting more secure. On 2 July, we launched a consultation on overcoming the barriers to longer tenancies in the private rented sector. We are seeking views on a three year longer tenancy model with a six month break clause to allow tenants and landlords to exit the agreement early if needed. The Government will consider the responses to the consultation and set out next steps later in the year. The consultation document is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/overcoming-the-barriers-to-longer-tenancies-in-the-private-rented-sector.
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of children placed in temporary housing.
Answered by Nigel Adams
Temporary accommodation provides an important safety net and means that no one has to be without a roof over their heads.
We brought the Homelessness Reduction Act into force in April 2018. This is the biggest and most ambitious change to homelessness legislation in decades, focusing on preventing homelessness in the first place, and ensuring more people are getting the help they need.
We also replaced DWP’s Temporary Accommodation Management Fee with a Flexible Homelessness Support Grant which local authorities can use more strategically to prevent homelessness and help households find a settled home. This amounts to £615 million over three years from 2017/18.
Our new Homelessness Advice and Support Team, drawn from local authorities and the homelessness sector, is providing support to authorities to deliver the Homelessness Reduction Act and effective Homelessness Services. The number of families in B&B accommodation is down by 28 per cent compared to the same time last year. The number of households with children in B&B accommodation for longer than 6 weeks is down by 38 per cent on the same time last year.
There are councils who are successfully reducing the number and length of time families are spending in B&B accommodation. For example, the London Borough of Barnet has developed a targeted programme of support to reduce the use of temporary accommodation. From December 2016 to March 2018 it reduced the number of children living in Temporary Accommodation by 11 per cent. We expect areas in similar situations to follow their example.
Asked by: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for increases in the number of households in temporary accommodation in England since 2010.
Answered by Nigel Adams
There has been a rise in the number of households in temporary accommodation for a variety of complex reasons. The number of households in temporary accommodation varies across the country as there are different issues in different areas, e.g. affordability pressure in London and the South East.
England has a strong homelessness safety net, providing protection to the most vulnerable in our society. Time spent in temporary accommodation means people are getting help and it ensures no child or family is without a roof over their head.
Successful homelessness prevention and relief has risen by 30 per cent between 2009/10 and 2016/17. However, the Government remains clear that one person without a home is one too many. We are committed to doing more to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place.
That’s why we have implemented the most ambitious legislative reform in decades, the Homelessness Reduction Act.
We have also committed £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping including:
· £316 million of core funding for local authorities to prevent homelessness.
· £617 million in Flexible Homelessness Support Grant which local authorities can use strategically to prevent and tackle homelessness in their area;
· £72.7 million to support the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act;
· £20m Access to the Private Rented Sector Fund to increase access and sustainment of tenancies for those who are, or at risk of becoming homeless; and
· our £50 million to support 84 projects delivering an end-to-end approach to homelessness prevention.
MHCLG publishes regular statistics on temporary accommodation, rough sleeping, statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief in England. These are published at a local authority level. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics