Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies on facilitating moving on from emergency accommodation of the findings published in paragraph 15 on page 8 of the National Audit Office Investigation into the housing of rough sleepers during the COVID-19 pandemic, published on 14 January 2021.
Answered by Eddie Hughes
This Government has taken unprecedented steps to protect rough sleepers during the pandemic. This work has not stopped, and through Everyone In, by November we had supported around 33,000 people with nearly 10,000 in emergency accommodation and over 23,000 already moved on into longer-term accommodation.
We have been in close contact with councils to develop plans for the coming months, supported by the Next Steps Accommodation Programme, which aims to ensure that as few people as possible return to the streets. This includes bringing forward 3,300 new homes this year for rough sleepers, backed by £150 million, leaving a national legacy of the Government’s support for these individuals.
Through this programme and as part of the move on process, local authorities could bid for support for individuals, in line with legal restrictions, to determine or resolve their immigration status. Local authorities were also able to bid for funding to facilitate reconnections with friends or family through voluntary returns and provide employment support. The Home Office has also put in place a dedicated Rough Sleeping Support Service to prioritise support work and help people who sleep rough resolve their immigration status.
For some people, who have received all available support, they may decide to return to their home country. For people who have no means of doing so, or who need some assistance, the Voluntary Returns Service can provide practical support to assist those who wish to return.
The Government is also providing funding for charities and voluntary organisations across the country to provide help and information to vulnerable EU citizens applying to the EU Settlement Scheme.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the steps required to scale up Housing First programmes to reduce rough sleeping and homelessness.
Answered by Eddie Hughes
Housing First has an impressive international record in helping people with complex needs to recover and stay off the streets for good, which is why we awarded £28 million to pilot it at scale in three areas (the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region).
The Government committed to expanding Housing First in its latest manifesto. We will use the findings of our comprehensive evaluation that is already underway, together with the experience of the three pilots, to inform next steps.
Published Housing First evaluation reports can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/housing-first-pilot-national-evaluation-reports
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the report, Implementing Housing First across England, Scotland and Wales, published by Crisis in August 2018, what recent estimate he has made of the number of people for whom Housing First homelessness provision would be effective; what the capacity is for Housing First homelessness provision; and how many additional Housing First homelessness places he plans to create over the next two years.
Answered by Eddie Hughes
Housing First has an impressive international record in helping people with complex needs to recover and stay off the streets for good, which is why we awarded £28 million to pilot it at scale in three areas (the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region). The pilots are now in their third year (ending in 2022/23) and have currently supported over 770 individuals across 23 local authorities into both permanent and temporary accommodation with over 560 clients moved into tenancies.
Government committed to expanding Housing First in its latest manifesto and we will use the findings of our evaluation, together with our experiences from the three pilots, to inform next steps.
Alongside Housing First pilots, the Government has funded a number of Housing First style schemes through the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) and Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme (RSAP) where local partners have identified a local need for this type of provision.
We are also putting in place an unprecedented level of support to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over 2021/22. This includes £676 million in resource funding, a 60 per cent increase compared to the Spending Review in 2019. On 28 January we launched RSI 2021/22 and will continue to work closely with local authorities to understand their local needs.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when his Department plans to bring forward legislation to repeal Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government remains committed to abolishing Section 21 through a Renters’ Reform Bill which will enhance renters’ security. However, our collective efforts are currently focused on responding to the coronavirus outbreak.
Repealing Section 21 represents the largest change to renting in 30 years and it is only right that the reforms are taken forward in a considered manner. It is important that providing tenants with greater security of tenure is balanced with an assurance that landlords are able to recover their properties where they have valid reasons to do so. This is vital to ensuring the future supply of good quality housing in the rented sector.
We will bring forward the Renters’ Reform Bill at the appropriate time.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent discussions he has had with mortgage providers on automatic movement onto variable rate terms for people who are unable to remortgage due to outstanding fire safety issues, with regard to the affordability of those variable rate terms.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The lending industry has assured the Minister for Building Safety that their existing customers in multi-occupancy and multi-storey buildings with fire safety issues should be able to access a product transfer without penalty. Individual lenders will make a commercial decision where a leaseholder is looking to re-mortgage.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with housing providers who offer shared ownership in buildings where there are outstanding fire safety issues, in relation to the (a) ability of their residents to sell their share, (b) liability of shared owners for remediation payments, (c) ability of shared owners to sub-let and (d) ability of shared owners to buy the remainder of the leasehold.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government has continued to engage with leaseholders and housing providers of all kinds at ministerial and official level, to understand their concerns on a range of issues and discuss various policies.
It is unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about the cost of fixing historic safety defects in their buildings that they didn’t cause.
The Government is determined to remove barriers to fixing historic defects and identify financing solutions that help to protect leaseholders, whilst also helping to protect the taxpayer. The Government has asked Michael Wade to accelerate this work. We will provide an update in due course.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what advice his Department is providing to social housing providers that offer shared ownership in buildings where there are outstanding fire safety issues, in relation to liability for remediation costs for (a) the provider and (b) individual shared owners.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government has continued to engage with leaseholders and housing providers of all kinds at ministerial and official level, to understand their concerns on a range of issues and discuss various policies.
It is unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about the cost of fixing historic safety defects in their buildings that they didn’t cause.
The Government is determined to remove barriers to fixing historic defects and identify financing solutions that help to protect leaseholders, whilst also helping to protect the taxpayer. The Government has asked Michael Wade to accelerate this work. We will provide an update in due course.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many and what proportion of insurance claims made since July 2017 against developers’ insurance for remediation costs relating to fire safety issues have been successful, in cases where defects have been accepted by developers.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
This information is not held.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what liability exists for surveyors who failed to identify and report building defects that created fire risks in breach of building regulations in force at the time of the surveyor's inspection and which were identified only later.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The forthcoming Building Safety Bill, the draft of which the Government published on 20 July 2020, will introduce far-reaching building safety reforms, including industry-led measures to improve competency across the sector. Through this we will create duty holders that are responsible for a building’s safety throughout its lifecycle with existing in-scope buildings transitioning into this system.
Chartered surveyors are regulated by RICS and members are required to have PII which provides a minimum level of indemnity cover for the professional risks they accept in undertaking their work. It is for the appropriate professional standards bodies to regulate the surveying profession. Government is not able to pre-determine what liability individual professionals hold for historic work.
Asked by: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the report of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults entitled, No place at home, published in September 2019, if his Department will allocated resources to local authorities in areas with high rates of county lines grooming and exploitation to ensure the provision of (a) in-area placements and (b) accommodation to children and young people (i) involved in and (ii) vulnerable to county lines criminal exploitation through (A) children’s services, (B) social housing services and (C) temporary and emergency housing.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
We are working across government to reduce the risk of children being criminally exploited and groomed by gangs, including involvement in ‘County Lines’. Last year we strengthened the statutory guidance for safeguarding children, ‘Working Together’, to support practitioners in preventing child criminal exploitation. We are also investing £2 million in the Tackling Child Exploitation Support Programme, to provide dedicated advice and practical support to local area partnerships, focused on developing effective multi-agency responses to identifying the risks and warning signs of exploitation so that action can be taken early.
Ensuring children and young people have safe and secure living arrangements is absolutely vital in reducing the risks of criminal exploitation. This is particularly important for children in care, who are some of society’s most vulnerable children. We have made over £200 billion available until 2020 for councils to deliver local services, including children’s services, and provided a further £410 million in 2019-20 for local authorities to invest in adult and children’s social care services. Thinking ahead to next year, we are now able to confirm that all social care grants available this year will continue at least flat in cash terms.
Taken together with a new £1 billion cash grant for social care, this means that councils will benefit from having £2.9 billion of extra funding available to them for the core services that are so important to residents. Beyond social care, we are protecting vital front-line services by increasing elements of core settlement funding in line with inflation, and we will consult on a 2 per cent core council tax principle for all councils next year.
Outside of the main Local Government Finance Settlement, local government will also see increases from wider resources made available this Spending Round, including a £700 million increase in grant funding for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
Local authorities have a statutory duty to make sure that there is sufficient provision to meet the needs of children in their care. We are supporting local authorities to increase the sufficiency of care placements and ensure that placements meet children’s needs, including investing part of our £200 million children’s social care Innovation Programme into three residential care projects to increase councils’ capacity and improve commissioning practice.
Government provides largely un-ringfenced funding to councils, giving them freedom over the money they receive. This allows them to work with their residents to decide how best to make their spending decisions.