Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
COUNCILLOR ANGELA
HARVEY, MR
STEVE MOORE,
COUNCILLOR TONY
NEWMAN AND
MS GENEVIEVE
MACKLIN
30 NOVEMBER 2004
Q80 Mr Clelland: But on the question
of provision of new housing, Westminster have criticised the Government's
concentration of new affordable housing in the Growth Areas, but
is it realistic, indeed economic, to build new homes in central
London given the land prices?
Cllr Harvey: I would like to answer
that in two ways. First of all, the new Growth Areas do not take
into account the infrastructure costs and I think our own experience
from the 1970s and 1980s when large estates were built and people
went in in one go, it led to much more uncohesive, shall we say,
communities than we would have wished. Therefore, by having a
steady trickle where we can build, certainly our experience is
that it develops more cohesive communities. As I say, the new
Growth Areas do not take into account the costs of the infrastructure
itself. Also people do want to live in central London and we have,
through our affordable housing policy, working with private developers,
produced over 1,000 new homes in the last five years, so there
is a way of getting advantage within. Can I say that when the
Gershon reforms come through, of course there will be some land
available in central London and perhaps we might want to develop
that thought further.
Q81 Mr Clelland: Can I ask the ALG about
choice-based letting schemes. Do you think that these will help
or hinder the equivalent housing schemes?
Cllr Newman: I think choice-based
letting schemes are, where they work, a very positive thing indeed.
I have a choice-based letting scheme in my own borough, Croydon,
which was set up in partnership with Shelter, who worked on it
with us. It has removed the old points scheme of allocating housing
and this, in a borough, like London as a whole, where there is
extreme housing pressure, is a much fairer system where people
can see what type of property they might be applying for, how
long they might have to wait if they want a property in a certain
area, and if they are prepared to look at living in other parts
of the borough, then that may reduce the time to wait for a property,
but it seems a much more transparent and much more fair scheme.
The challenge in London, some London boroughs now work on a sub-regional
basis together and it is looking at how one can then move into
cross-borough nominations. The ODPM are talking about, with the
ALG and others, the possibility of sort of pan-London opportunities
and that I think, in principle, is something the ALG can support,
but only at a time when the supply has been addressed and we are
a long, long way from there now because if you attempt to move
into pan-London lettings when there is such a limited supply,
you can to a degree address that on a borough level, but it will
not work. We have seen how housing can be misused in London in
terms of outfits like the BNP in Barking, Dagenham and other areas
playing off people's fears around housing and choice-based schemes
with wild allegations about who may or may not move into an area,
and it is a very sensitive area and I think before getting much
more ambitious than one or two well-working borough schemes in
London, we need a lot more work on this in terms of how we are
going to tackle it. It must be done, as I said, in relation to
supply because, without sufficient supply, it simply will not
have any credibility.
Q82 Chairman: How many people are you
actually housing in your local authority who are not homeless?
Cllr Newman: Croydon is just above
the average, I think. About 65% of the people we house are homeless.
Q83 Chairman: So it is a very small proportion
of people coming off the ordinary housing list?
Cllr Newman: Yes, and London boroughs
as a whole, that average stands for London at approximately 65%.
Mr Moore: If I could add Westminster's
figure, we are running at about 83% this year and we were running
at above 80 in the last five years, so a significant proportion
of the overall available net stock goes to the homeless we are
housing.
Q84 Christine Russell: The question I
wanted to ask you was that you mentioned a figure of housing and
affordable homes that you provided overall in Westminster, but
is that in a year?
Cllr Harvey: That is over the
last five years.
Q85 Christine Russell: So what policy
do you have with developers? Do you have a percentage where you
say to developers, "Right, we want 25%", or 50%? What
do you say to developers of housing schemes?
Cllr Harvey: We say 30% because
the use of land in Westminster is very complicated with the
commercial pressures and there are many other things that people
can do with land in Westminster and make money out of it, so we
had to make sure that we set a target which was achievable and
we are very pleased with the results at 30%.
Q86 Christine Russell: And the developers
are quite willing to cough up 30%?
Cllr Harvey: Well, it takes some
negotiation with my colleagues in some cases, but we are getting
30%. We had a recent case where we went higher than that, but
that is untypical.
Q87 Mr Sanders: The Government is investing
an increasing proportion of funds in key worker housing and in
low-cost home ownership schemes rather than general social housing
provision. Is the balance of priorities right?
Ms Macklin: I think we would say
no, certainly from a London-wide ALG perspective. The point I
was making earlier was that with the large number, with the
disproportionate problem that London faces with 60,000-plus
households in temporary accommodation and rising, 60,000-plus
houses severely overcrowded and rising, the only way we can address
that severe housing need is to provide affordable rented housing.
Unfortunately, the supply of affordable rented housing has been
dropping over a number of years and the target used to be about
75% of the ADP-funded programme and it is now less than 50%. I
have mentioned already that there is a target in London now for
5,500 social rented units and that is already not going to be
delivered. Now, if that happens, what we can see is that the temporary
accommodation pressures are going to increase and the overcrowding
problems are going to increase, so we would argue that more needs
to be invested in social rented housing and there is a way to
do that. For example, if you give a greater weighting to severe
overcrowding in the distribution formula, that will help somebody
to supply more social rented housing. We have also worked out
that from the Spending Review announcement of the additional 10,000
homes nationwide, if London got 40% of that, 4,000, and that is
based on its backlog need and its emerging need, then those 4,000
homes would help to contribute towards the 50% affordable target
of 15,000 units across London in the Mayor's plan and in the London
Housing Strategy, so it does mean more resources to London. Where
London has the greatest proportion of the nation's problem, if
we want to tackle those problems, then I think London is the place
to do it.
Mr Moore: Can I just support the
ALG on that and say that we are as one on that particular issue.
It is very difficult when we are dealing, as we are in Westminster,
with such acute homelessness, particularly at the lowest level
where we are talking about rough sleeping where people have absolutely
no choice in some instances and we are having to help them from
the streets, it is very difficult, as a housing professional,
to look at the investment that we have now got coming through
and think that key workers should be a high priority. Certainly
in terms of the north London sub-region, the two-year programme
we are currently in the midst of, over 52% of those units are
social rented and the rest are for key workers. The balance is
not right, so it does need to get better.
Cllr Harvey: In fact some of our
fellow boroughs in the north region are finding it difficult to
let people take up the key worker accommodation and people just
are not taking it up.
Q88 Mr Sanders: Given the pressures that
you have got with an increasing proportion of social housing being
let to homeless households, is this causing problems in creating
mixed and sustainable communities on social housing estates?
Cllr Newman: I think it is and
coming back to the point we just made about the key worker investment,
it is how we need to address this in the future and be careful
that we are not putting people into what you might call too fixed
a category, given an ever-growing list of who is and who is not
a key worker and homeless households because, linked to training
opportunities and linked to education opportunities, it should
be that someone who is perhaps today a homeless household, in
terms of their ability to train perhaps in further education or
in a different career perhaps they then can be defined as a key
worker. I think that by saying, "That block are key workers
and these people are homeless", we do risk perhaps making
some of the mistakes of the past. Just on that key worker point,
there is clear evidence that there is not a take-up across London
and it is very ill-defined. My own local paper recently carried
a half-page advert which said, "Are you a key worker? Ring
this number and get a house for £50,000". Well, most
people in housing are still trying to work out the definition
of a key worker, let alone readers of The Croydon Advertiser,
so there is a lot more work that needs to be done on this. Clearly
some housing for key public service workers is a reasonable aim,
but the ever-expanding list of who is a key worker at the expense
of those in immediate housing need, I think we need to keep this
at the very least under a very thorough review indeed.
Q89 Mr Sanders: Are you finding that
the social housing landlords are reluctant to accept a high proportion
of homeless households which are nominated by local authorities?
Mr Moore: No. We have got very
good links with our RSL landlords. We do not have any difficulty
in putting people forward. We do have various support measures
which support people coming forward if they have particular vulnerabilities
or difficulties and we make those support services, with floating
support, et cetera, available.
Q90 Chairman: So the 83% that you were
saying is coming off the homeless list, that is the same whether
it is going into your own stock or whether it is going into housing
association stock?
Mr Moore: Indeed.
Ms Macklin: The problem here is
that the overall lettings available have dropped by about 30%
in the last three- or four-year period. The supply and demand
statistics show that the RSLs are accepting a higher proportion
of homeless households. Nevertheless, they argue that they would
prefer to have more economically active households in order to
fulfil sustainable communities and the more mixed and balanced
communities agenda, and they are requesting that boroughs work
with them to develop local letting plans. That is fine, but again
it comes back to the severe problems around the level of overcrowded
and homeless households that need to be accommodated and, therefore,
going back to the point that Councillor Tony Newman has made that
we must be more holistic in our approach and we must make sure
that we are not talking about homeless households as a category,
but we have got to link it with other initiatives, like the Key
Worker Initiative, with key worker housing for the homeless and
existing social tenants and let's make them key workers so
that they can become more economically active.
Q91 Mr Betts: Because of the pressures
of the existing system, do you think local authorities are now
getting tougher about those they accept as homeless?
Ms Macklin: There is no evidence
to suggest that. It is a very kind of legal definition and acceptance
that they have got to follow lots of legislation. I think what
has happened is that the level of acceptance, the evidence shows,
has remained pretty stable, or it has increased slightly, but
not significantly. I think it would have increased more significantly
but for the work that boroughs have been doing around prevention
strategies and there has been some real success in that area.
We carried out recent research at the ALG and the prevention strategies,
particularly around rent deposit schemes and mediation for young
people, 16- and 17-year-olds, have shown to be, very effective
in terms of preventing, and, for example, the mediation services
for young people have had an effect of almost 45% in those young
people who have been presenting themselves not then being accepted
as homeless and alternative options there.
Q92 Mr Betts: Are there tensions across
the different boroughs because there are obviously different rates
of acceptance? I understand that the figure for London as a whole
is about 44% of people who are presenting themselves are accepted
as homeless and in priority need and in Westminster, for example,
it is just 21% which is less than half of the London average.
Cllr Harvey: Well, Westminster
is a very nice place to live. Of those we accept we break them
into three parts and certainly about 25% of those we accept have
no connection with Westminster at all. As my colleague said, it
is very focused and there is a strong local focus as to what we
can do. There are legal requirements.
Q93 Mr Betts: But why is your acceptance
rate just half of that?
Cllr Harvey: I think it is because
more people apply who do not have the right to be housed under
the social housing reference.
Q94 Chairman: Do you have any information
about the people you have refused? Do you know whether the people
that you refused then applied to somewhere else as homeless and
were accepted? That would illustrate your claim that Westminster
is a nice place, so people apply first in Westminster rather than
somewhere else.
Mr Moore: There is evidence that
people do represent elsewhere and they have no local connection.
About a third of the people who come to us overall have absolutely
no connection with anywhere and their movement is such that they
have lived in so many different places that they do not actually
form a local connection anywhere.
Q95 Chairman: So you are tougher on them
than other people?
Mr Moore: Well, I think we apply
the law and we apply it correctly. We obviously have finite resources
and we want to make sure that those people who do get the benefit
of the legislation are people who properly qualify, so we have
a stringent gatekeeping policy, but a fair gatekeeping policy.
Occasionally we are judicially reviewed and I have to say that
most of the time our judicial reviews are upheld, but we work
very closely with the local law centres, et cetera, in making
sure that our decisions are transparent and people can see that
they are fair, but yes, I do take the point that we have got a
very good record on gatekeeping, but even allowing for that good
record on gatekeeping, we still have a severe shortage overall
in terms of supply. There is a complete disparity between demand
and supply.
Cllr Harvey: I wonder if I could
continue with that. Of those accepted as homeless in the year
to March 2004, less than half of them demonstrated a local connection
to Westminster for more than three of the last five years, and
a quarter of them demonstrated a local connection of only six
months of the last twelve months, and, as I have already mentioned,
25%, a quarter, had no local connection proved. I think that all
of us here would like to talk about the local connection rule
inasmuch as the money coming to us is no longer locally based,
in fact it is shared, but we still have to house people within
Westminster who wish to be housed within Westminster more than
elsewhere and the money is going—
Chairman: I think we will probably want
to pursue the local connection a bit later on.
Q96 Mr Clelland: Another way of tackling
this problem is to prevent homelessness happening in the first
place. Is there something about how the strategies which were
introduced in the 2002 Homelessness Act are working out? Are they
proving to help to resolve these problems?
Ms Macklin: I think certainly
homelessness strategies have helped. I think the whole policy
around the kind of reduction in bed and breakfast targets for
families and the development of local strategies has been very,
very helpful to boroughs. There is still an analysis, some research
that needs to be carried out because it is early days yet in terms
of seeing the overall effect, but certainly the work that was
done around prevention is proving to be successful in certain
areas around certain prevention strategies and less successful
in other areas, so it does depend on local markets. The three
elements of prevention strategies that have worked best, as I
mentioned earlier, are, firstly, the rent deposit scheme and that
has cost-benefit measures coming out of it as well as help to
reduce the number of acceptances and help prevent homelessness.
Then the homeless visiting officers and mediation services for
young people are very successful and I have already mentioned
the success with the mediation for young people, and both of those
in particular have cost benefits to them.
Q97 Chairman: The rent deposit scheme,
can you just very briefly explain that to me?
Ms Macklin: It is where, usually
in the private rented sector, the landlord will ask for as a deposit
a month's rent in advance as well as the deposit, so the borough
funds that perhaps up to £2,000 per household.
Q98 Mr Sanders: Does it actually pay
money to the landlord or does it hold it in trust?
Ms Macklin: Some of the boroughs
will do a kind of scheme where they do actually pay out the deposit
and it is not returnable. Others, which is obviously more cost-effective,
provide a rent guarantee service to the landlord. That scheme,
the young persons mediation service and the visiting homeless
officers are also working quite well. One that is not working
so well is mediation for families and that is largely because
of the supply issue where the highest percentage is for families
and friends who are evicting existing occupants and that mediation
service is not really working there and that is largely because
there are too many people in the household and they need to be
in another additional family unit, and that just reinforces the
issue around overcrowding and the need for greater supply.
Q99 Chairman: If you throw them out,
they come to the head of the housing queue, do they not?
Ms Macklin: Yes, absolutely, but
what we are saying is that the prevention methods which have been
introduced by local authorities to try and help families to accommodate
them for a bit longer are less successful than the other prevention
schemes, and that is because it is really a supply issue rather
than something where you can help relationships work better, which
works for 16- and 17-year-olds and other young people, but less
well for families.
|
