House of Commons - Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions

Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Tenth Report

3 Review

Why review?

12. In October 2003 the Treasury and the ODPM commissioned an independent review of the Supporting People programme from Robson Rhodes, in view of the substantial rise in the 2003-04 cost of the programme from the projections made in December 2002.[4] The review was asked to "gauge the true picture of how the funding is being utilised" and had to report swiftly enough to be able to inform SP grant allocations for the coming financial year. The review considered:[5]

the variation between the Administering Authorities costs and patterns of service provision estimated during the transitional period and that of the requested allocation;
the legacy of provision looking at total allocations, unit costs, regional/local authority cluster variations and provider prices;
grant provisions and re-deployment of funding for services which were previously paid for out of other budgets;
governance and whether Supporting People is meeting its original objectives, including schemes which raise questions about compliance with grant conditions;
service user group issues and an appreciation of the two specific types of provision - floating and generic.

The review process included consultation with a wide range of stakeholders and was overseen by a steering group with broad representation.

Outcomes

13. The Robson Rhodes report was provided to Ministers in January 2004 and published on 12 February 2004. It made recommendations in four broad areas: improvements in high costs authorities, the 2004/5 Supporting People allocation and distribution, future allocations and growth.[6] In general it concluded that the £1.8bn was "too much to pay" for the legacy provision, but not necessarily too much for the needs of the vulnerable groups. In publishing the report, the Minister announced that local authorities would be expected to make up to 2.5 percent annual efficiency savings, with a proportion of them reallocated to fund services that had come on stream in 2003-04 and were "reaching unmet need". She also announced that the Audit Commission would be undertaking detailed inspections in a number of local authorities.

14. The report exposed in broad terms what had happened over the three year transitional period, and in particular the last few months between December 2002 and April 2003. Both statutory and non-statutory providers saw the period as a "window of opportunity" to improve existing service provision or develop new services, funded by Transitional Housing Benefit [THB]. Alongside an admirable and wholly proper desire to provide better and more housing-related services for vulnerable people, there was a degree of opportunism, including -

De-registration of residential homes to create THB-eligible person-centred accommodation
Transfer to THB funding of services previously funded by local authority housing or social services budgets, or local health budgets: and of voluntary sector services hitherto funded by local authorities
"Provider-led" development of new schemes driven by the funding opportunity.

15. Authorities and providers who could get services funded under THB knew that the funding stream would be taken over as part of the "legacy provision" by SP funding. The report noted that one reason for the scale of the legacy provision was that "the THB guidance and the role of Housing Benefit Officers as gatekeepers allowed schemes and prices which would not be eligible under the current definition for SP eligibility".[7] It does not go into how this came about. The report also drew attention to the scale of "floating" support, which increased in the last few transitional months from £160 million to £332 million, and "generic" support. The sense of the report was that some of this new provision was opportunistic.

16. It was generally agreed that the Review and report had provided some useful focus, although limited time had meant that a thorough investigation could not be carried out.[8] The review referred to the absence of a detailed examination of small and/or vulnerable client groups. Home Improvement Agencies were not acknowledged at all. Foundations (the co-ordinating body for Home Improvement Agencies) commented that:

"The review really did not address the improvement agency sector at all; I think it is probably fair to say….. We did put in a submission to [the Review] in order to raise the profile of HIAs and ensure that they were considered within the review. I suppose we were surprised that they were not mentioned at all."[9]

17. There was dispute over the report's implication that the Supporting People programme was not giving value for money. Diane Henderson from the National Housing Federation explained that:[10]

"I do not think in the time that they had available they were able to determine that. They were certainly able to determine that there were very differing unit costs and per capita costs which definitely need exploring, but that does not necessarily mean that the individual schemes were not value for money."

The Way Forward

18. The ODPM's brief response to the review was posted on the Supporting People website in March 2004, outlining how they would be taking forward the recommendations made.

"It is our intention to address all the recommendations made in the Independent Review in our work programme. This will be carried out in full consultation with local authority representative bodies and other key stakeholders including the Administering Authorities, providers and service users."[11]

The main focus in the ODPM plan is on funding. It also anticipates working with Administering Authorities to address issues such as identifying and filling gaps and service reviewing.

19. We welcome the Robson Rhodes review of the Supporting People programme. It has been useful in drawing attention to serious shortcomings in control of public expenditure. But in the short time available a full audit of the Supporting People programme was plainly impossible. Its conclusions on the extent to which the programme as a whole represents value for money can therefore have only limited validity. The forward plan set out in the ODPM's response now needs to be rapidly and fully implemented. The Committee would welcome a written update in March 2005 on how successfully these plans have been implemented.

Reporting to Parliament

20. The Supporting People programme at £1.8 billion is a pretty substantial slice of public expenditure, even by ODPM standards. When we raised the rather modest profile of the programme in oral evidence with the Minister in March 2004, she told us that it had indeed taken up quite a bit of her time since she had taken over responsibility for it in August 2003.[12] The Office's 2004 Annual Report has two substantive references. Under "Other housing policy activities" is one paragraph stating that "during the year ODPM took over responsibility for funding the programme from DWP. …Through our efforts, the programme now provides high quality, strategically relevant and value for money housing -related support services which are tailored to assist some of the most vulnerable people in our society".[13] Later in the report is half a page setting out briefly the progress made in introducing the programme, including some detail on the system of monitoring by quarterly milestones.[14] Neither the Minister for Local and Regional Government's written statement of 13 July 2004 on the outcome for local government of SR04[15] nor the Deputy Prime Minister's oral statement to the House on 13 July 2004 referred to the SP programme.[16] Given the chequered history of the programme to date, its scale and its significance for vulnerable people, we expect the 2005 Departmental Report to give a fuller account of how ODPM has managed the Supporting People programme.