Examination of Witnesses (Questions 75-79)
COUNCILLOR ANGELA
HARVEY, MR
STEVE MOORE,
COUNCILLOR TONY
NEWMAN AND
MS GENEVIEVE
MACKLIN
30 NOVEMBER 2004
Q75 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the
Committee for the second session of evidence on homelessness,
but before we start this session, can I just place on record my
appreciation to all those people who helped us with our visit
to Birmingham and gave us informal evidence while we were there.
Can I now ask you to identify yourselves for the record?
Cllr Harvey: Yes, I am Councillor
Angela Harvey, Cabinet Member for Housing in the City of Westminster.
My responsibilities also include rough sleeping.
Mr Moore: My name is Steve Moore
and I am the acting Chief Housing Officer of the City of Westminster.
Cllr Newman: Councillor Tony Newman,
Chair of Housing at the Association of London Government, Cabinet
Member with housing responsibilities currently in the London Borough
of Croydon and the Leader elected to Croydon Council.
Ms Macklin: Genevieve Macklin,
Director of Housing Policy at the Association of London Government.
Q76 Chairman: Do any of you want to say
anything by way of introduction? We have obviously had your written
evidence, but if anyone wants to make a brief statement, please
do.
Cllr Harvey: Thank you, Chairman.
No doubt many of you will think of Westminster as an affluent
place and will question why we are here today to talk about homelessness,
but the reality is that Westminster is a city of very mixed places.
The recent Indices of Deprivation identified one of our neighbourhoods
as the most deprived in London, and perhaps this was exaggerated
by the Census undercount, but certainly more than half of our
wards are more deprived than the national average, and two are
among the 10% most deprived in England. We are also a very diverse
city and we are proud that people from a range of backgrounds
choose to make Westminster their home. About 30% of our residents
are from an ethnic minority group and just over half were born
outside the UK. There are over 100 different first languages spoken
by the pupils of Westminster's schools. Today there are three
principal areas of concern that we would like to draw to the attention
of this inquiry. Firstly, on homelessness, benefits and employment,
where the current system of funding temporary accommodation creates
a poverty trap for residents from which it is virtually impossible
to escape, there is an alternative and we would propose a system
which would not cost any more, but would provide an incentive
for homeless people to work. Secondly, the local connection rules,
as they currently stand, are difficult and make little sense in
a transient place like London where we have a 25% population change
every year in Westminster. The move to sub-regional procurement
of affordable housing and away from direct funding to local authorities
and the advent of the Growth Areas make it more difficult to satisfy
people's demands to be housed locally. Finally, on rough sleeping,
the problem of rough sleeping is not going to go away and our
message is that the Government's focus and funding need to be
sustained. For every 15 people we help off the streets, another
14 arrive, and it is time to take even more and a greater sustained
effort to manage the numbers down. The recent emergence of nationals
from the EU Accession States sleeping rough on our streets is
evidence that this is a constantly changing agenda, and I addressed
a select committee of the Polish Parliament ten days ago to talk
about the successful free movement of workers with the issues
of support to rough sleeping in Westminster. Thank you, Chairman.
Q77 Chairman: Thank you. Do you want
to say anything?
Cllr Newman: Yes, very briefly.
London boroughs are working very closely together to address many
of these pressures in London, but London does have 60% of the
nation's homeless households. I think some of the other key areas
I am hoping we might move on to are the balance between what is
known as `key worker housing' vis-a"-vis the needs
of those who are the homeless households, the key impacts in terms
of overcrowding in parts of London, and also just to prove that
where London boroughs have had what has often been very limited
and targeted funding from ODPM in terms of the Bed and Breakfast
Strategy that saw children taken out of bed and breakfasts in
London, and very welcome too, and homeless strategies, we can
actually come up with effective solutions if we are working together
as boroughs with the OPDM.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Can I
just emphasise that if you agree with each other, then please
do not say anything more, and if you disagree, get in as quickly
as you can.
Q78 Mr Clelland: Given the resources
available and the current planning regime, do you think the Office
of the Deputy Prime Minister are being realistic when they say
they hope to reduce or get homelessness under control by 2008?
Mr Moore: Looking at our supply
and demand patterns, we have about 5,500 people a year coming
to us as homeless applicants, and we accept around 1,200 a year.
Now, over the last three years, we have lost the investment that
we were previously making of around £10 million a year in
local social housing grant and that has cut our amount of new
units coming through RSL investment by about half. We are currently
seeing our temporary accommodation rising by around 200 a year,
so that is people in temporary accommodation of 200 a year, despite
over 80% of our available units each year going to homeless households.
So against that backdrop, unless there is a significant increase
in the overall supply coming through, it is extremely difficult
to see how we are going to be under control by 2008, and I think
all the indicators would suggest that where we are at the moment
is a rise in the temporary accommodation population going on into
the foreseeable future.
Q79 Mr Clelland: So what is your estimate
of the situation in 2008? Will it be worse than it is now or better
than it is now?
Mr Moore: Certainly I would expect
more people to be in temporary accommodation in 2008 than there
are today.
Ms Macklin: Can I just add to
that that I would agree with that because in London as a whole
temporary accommodation is going up by 5,000 per year, so it illustrates
Westminster's issue at the more local level, and there is not
sufficient supply to be able to counter that. In fact, the number
of social rented units predicted in the London Housing Strategy
is 5,500 per annum, but we have already received recent information
which suggests that is going to be 800 units short of that target,
so that means that the temporary accommodation problem is going
to increase. I think there are ways in which we can address this
issue, which are not just about putting more funding into new
social rented supply, although that is welcome and that is what
we need as well, but there are other measures which we submitted
in our evidence, like the Better Value Investment Model, which
is really about just using the large sums of money that already
go into temporary accommodation in a different way and it actually
has cost benefits and savings to government. There are also a
number of other initiatives which will produce longer-term savings
for government which help to increase the supply, so again the
Better Value Investment Model will produce 40% more housing by
just using the same amount of money, but using it on permanent
housing instead of temporary accommodation. I think that does
require the DWP, the Treasury and ODPM working together and we
would like to see initiatives like that coming through. Similarly,
there is the Revenue Incentive Scheme, and Westminster has already
mentioned the loss of local authority social housing grant, which
was funding an additional 1,000 units in London. We have put forward
a proposal at the ALG for high-demand authorities, which has already
been defined by ODPM through the right-to-buy discount initiative,
so in high-demand authorities, if an incentive is given to boroughs
to use their usable receipts to help RSLs develop more housing,
that is another cost-benefit analysis for government, so we do
not just have to keep talking about more and more money going
into new supply, but it is about better using existing money.
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