Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-117)
COUNCILLOR ANGELA
HARVEY, MR
STEVE MOORE,
COUNCILLOR TONY
NEWMAN AND
MS GENEVIEVE
MACKLIN
30 NOVEMBER 2004
Q100 Mr Clelland: The supply is uneven
across London. Is this not something which is really too big an
issue for the individual boroughs to deal with? Should this not
be a GLA issue, the whole question of homelessness in London?
Cllr Newman: I think there is
a role for the GLA, but if you look at how well local borough
homelessness strategies have worked, and the word "local"
is key here because in boroughs of between 100,000 and 300,000
people, these are significant-sized places, having a local input
into the local need I think is critical. The ALG and the GLA have
worked together on some projects, and Notify is a project where
information about those people who move into temporary accommodation
in London is shared, and I think a balanced approach where it
is right to have a London view and pan-London information with,
I think, still the delivery focused at the local borough level
has, I think, worked reasonably well. I think around some of these
strategies is the concern of some of them that if you went pan-London
with them, you would lose that connection with what is actually
happening in local communities and lose the solutions and the
answers as well, so I think there is a balance to be struck.
Mr Moore: We do not believe that
one size fits all. London is a very, very large city with lots
of dynamics and lots of different requirements, and what fits
residents in the centre of London is worlds apart from the leafy
suburbs of Bromley in the south and Enfield in the north to the
centre of London, Kensington and Chelsea, ourselves and Lambeth
and Southwark, so I think the issue for us is that the GLA has
a part to play clearly, as does the ALG, and we make sure that
we tap into those resources and we make sure that we use any conduit
that we can to further the aims that we have, but at the same
time we do require local discretion.
Cllr Harvey: If I can just add
to that, I think that if we want to strengthen and make more cohesive
our communities, to do it on the local borough basis will help
enhance that rather than diminish it.
Q101 Mr Sanders: Moving into Supporting
People, there have been major cuts and increasing uncertainties
in funding for the Supporting People programme. What has been
the impact in providing services for the homeless in London?
Ms Macklin: About 35% of the Supporting
People funding in London goes into homelessness projects, so it
is a fairly high proportion and I think probably higher than anywhere
else in the country, so the sort of reductions in the funding
could potentially have significant issues. I think one of the
things that the boroughs are grappling with at the moment is really
the kind of timing of when the reviews of their strategies are
taking place because with the uncertainty about how the funding
will be distributed and the formula, it necessarily means when
you develop a formulaic approach that some boroughs will lose
and some boroughs will be better off, so they need time to be
able to review what they are doing with their Supporting People
services in order to be able to ensure that they can adjust their
programmes and meet the needs and particularly those of homeless
families. I think at the moment the issue that they are most concerned
about is having sufficient time to be able to review those strategies
and adjust them in order to take account of the funding changes
that will happen.
Mr Moore: We have about 50% of
our Supporting People grant going into our homelessness or associated
funding streams, so clearly we have been hit quite hard, as other
boroughs have, by the formulaic approach in terms of no increases
for inflation and real cuts in percentages. The way we have dealt
with those to date is to take a very hard-nosed look at all of
the contracts that we have and actually impose reflective cuts
in the amount that we are prepared to pay and shave some of the
frills off the edges, if you like, in terms of the overall. Where
we are now is that we are waiting for next year's grant announcement,
any day now, we are told, which does not really give us a great
lead-in time to the 1st April to actually put in place what we
will need to make it fit, but quite clearly we are concerned with
the sort of noises we are getting in terms of what may be the
imposed cut this year which will have a direct effect on the services
that we can provide and we will have to start cutting services.
Q102 Mr Sanders: What is your view of
the bureaucracy associated with the programme? Is there anything
the Government could do or you could do at the local level to
ease some of the complexities of monitoring and the bureaucracy
associated with Supporting People?
Mr Moore: I think there was a
learning curve at the outset on Supporting People and I have to
say I put my hand up because I still do not feel that I adequately
know the full complexities of the Supporting People regime, and
I am very fortunate to be in a team where we have people who understand
it a lot better than I do, but it is complex. It is complex in
the way it is put together, the way the bids were put together
and the way it is applied across the board.
Q103 Chairman: Could the Government simplify
it?
Mr Moore: We believe so, yes,
that there are ways of simplifying the way forward.
Q104 Chairman: So that would actually
mean that the money got spent on people rather than government
and local authority bureaucracy?
Mr Moore: Well, we certainly have
not got massive bureaucracy going into it, but certainly any regime
where it ends up on the first day that you have got to carry out
a major review of those contracts cannot be one that has been
set up directly accountable.
Q105 Mr Betts: Homeless people often
have a variety of problems, apart from the fact that they have
not got a home. It could be that those problems are created because
they are homeless or it could be that they are homeless because
of those problems, whether they are older people, people with
mental health problems or people with alcohol or drug abuse problems.
Have you got those problems sorted out so that you are actually
dealing with the issues in a comprehensive way and other people
providing services, other organisations, are actually linking
into your homelessness strategy and is it actually working?
Mr Moore: It does work, I would
say, very much so. I think probably in terms of national averages
we have double the amount of people presenting to us who are accepted
as homeless who have, for example, mental health problems. About
20% of our cases are mental health cases and about 20% of our
cases perhaps are physical disabilities and a further 10% are
elderly. Now, in all of those categories, they are about double
the national average, so we have had to respond to those with
direct links into floating support services and mental health
professionals. We fund, along with the Wellcome Fund, and ODPM,
I would hasten to add, various services around mental health assessments
and ongoing support and these areas are vital in actually making
sure that the homelessness issue is not just a matter of finding
a home and putting somebody in there, but supporting the person
as well and we are very clear that our services are holistic and
they need to cover the range that we believe they do.
Q106 Mr Betts: And is this an area where
the Supporting People budget gets pushed down so that it creates
further problems?
Mr Moore: I think that the future
on SP, as I have already intimated to a colleague of yours, is
that the pressure which will happen from here on in will mean
that services will have to be cut and some very hard and difficult
decisions will have to be made and that could well be one of the
areas.
Q107 Mr Betts: In many cases homeless
people, although they may be housed, are actually housed in temporary
accommodation away from their normal area of residence and that
then causes difficulties in terms of them accessing the support
services for mental illness or drug and alcohol abuse, so is that
a major problem area?
Cllr Newman: I think that is a
critical issue, and returning and linking that to something we
said earlier around whether we should be investing in areas of
London that are high cost, critically we should support services
to temporary accommodation, the ability to have accessible and
easy move-ons for somebody who has been homeless perhaps with
other issues and challenges they are facing into temporary accommodation
of one sort or another and the ability to be supported within
what is their local community, and the ability perhaps for links
in terms of family is critical here as well and the support structures
there. So although there is an initial, if you like, extra cost
and it is very easy to see housing in terms of saying it would
just be cheaper to build everything in the Thames Gateway, clearly
we need areas of growth as well and it is vital that the infrastructure
is in place, but also investing across the capital is equally
important, otherwise we are going to see whole areas of London
where unless you are earning £200,000 a year, no one is going
to be living there. I think a holistic approach is needed as to
how the investment is looked at here because all the costs in
terms of people with mental health problems or looking at the
education costs of families moving around and the impact that
has on education budgets, national health budgets and everything
else, just seeing this in terms of housing and housing investment
ultimately is not where we need to be.
Q108 Christine Russell: The Government
claims that the target for cutting the number of rough sleepers
by two-thirds has been met. Has it in Westminster and across London?
Mr Moore: Unfortunately not. We
are experiencing extreme difficulty in dealing with the rough
sleeping issue in Westminster. We are working very, very closely
with the ODPM on our policies there, but we have not seen the
reductions that we would have liked to have seen. We were targeting
a reduction this year to below 100 by the end of the year and
sadly I do not believe we will be achieving that. We have managed
to reduce the numbers this year and our latest count brought the
number down to 144 of rough sleepers, excluding the EU Accession
States cases, of which there were a further 24 rough sleepers,
but we are clearly struggling to get that number down. In order
to try and move from our current system, in discussions with both
the voluntary sector, with whom we work very closely, the police,
who carry out enforcement services for us, and indeed the ODPM,
who have sat down and worked out that we do need to move from
where we are at the moment, which is a system where we are actually
providing services on the street and to a certain extent that
does, we acknowledge, sustain rough sleepers where they are, what
we are moving to from next April is a building-based approach
by which there will be a safety net on the streets to make sure
that the most vulnerable do still receive services, but that all
other people will be signposted to various hostels where those
services and a more detailed and better assessment can be carried
out indoors, and we want to make that break between services on
the street and services inhouse. We hope and believe that that
will be successful and we will start making strides towards reducing
the numbers, which we are seeking.
Q109 Christine Russell: What are you
going to do if they refuse it, they just point blank refuse to
go to any kind of support?
Cllr Harvey: We will support them,
we will continue to support those who are most vulnerable.
Q110 Christine Russell: On the streets?
Cllr Harvey: Certainly we will
do that, but we hope that will be a very small number because
those on the streets very clearly know that they are much more
likely to be victims of crime, to get tuberculosis, that it is
a rotten life, so if we can get people into the building base,
on to education programmes and through the system and into a normal
life, then that is obviously much better for them, but we will
continue to support them. What I want to say very quickly though
is of course that Westminster is the recipient of the rough sleeping
problem of many other parts of the country where other councils
do not have their own rough sleeping policy as clearly in place
as ourselves, and, as I say, the mediation to get people to go
back to where they have come from has been very successful, but
for every 15 we get off the street, another 14 arrive.
Q111 Christine Russell: That is the actual
statistic?
Cllr Harvey: Those are the statistics
that we have been given and the numbers who arrive, new people,
is 43 new people, never been seen rough sleeping before, so the
churn is enormous.
Q112 Mr Betts: Can I just raise the issue
of hostel accommodation and, first of all, is there a pressure
problem there where, like bed-blocking, people are staying in
hostels far too long and, therefore, not making the spaces available
when people want them sometimes on a temporary basis, and can
anything be done about that immediately? Also, what about the
quality of hostel accommodation and are steps being taken to improve
it?
Cllr Newman: It goes back to the
need to have adequate move-on. There is pressure on hostel accommodation,
but the way to address that is where people go from there and
we are back into discussions about temporary accommodation, the
adequate supply of temporary accommodation in terms of how we
are funding that through housing benefit, often very high housing
benefit rates, and whether that money could be invested elsewhere.
Therefore, to keep the answer brief, Chairman, there are pressures
and the long-term solution and answer that we need to continue
to work on is the move-on accommodation from hostel accommodation.
Mr Moore: We have a significant
number of hostel beds in Westminster, around 1,100, and every
night they are full. We have carried out a study of those and
we believe there is a significant number of people who at one
point may have needed that type of accommodation, but do not need
it now, so part of our approach to this and move to the building
base is to try to sift as many of the hostels as possible, and
we are working very closely with the voluntary sector there to
make sure that we get move-on in significant numbers to be able
to move people off the streets because without the place to support
them, the building-based approach will not work, so we are working
very hard on that at the moment.
Q113 Mr Clelland: Councillor Harvey was
keen to talk about the local connections, so this is your opportunity.
Are they appropriate to London and, if not, how will you change
them?
Cllr Harvey: The dysfunction is
between the money which comes which is no longer local, but the
requirement to house still is, and that is really the nub of it.
We have had cut down to a fifth the amount of money that came
into Westminster to build affordable housing and, as you can see,
the number of people on our homeless register continues to rise.
Q114 Mr Clelland: What changes do you
want? Do you want more resources?
Cllr Harvey: Yes, please! Also
if there is a disconnection between supply and demand, we have
got to do something about that, so what we would like is to see
the local connection rule changed and perhaps instead of after
six months or no local connection at all, we could move to some
kind of compromise, a connection of two years in the last four,
something like that, so that we still have a local connection
rule so that we still regard communities and make them cohesive,
but that we should not have to accept over half of our people
at the moment that we have on the housing register with a connection
of nothing at all or only six months in the last 12.
Q115 Mr Clelland: What about the arrangements
by which local authorities refer homeless applicants to each other,
the interconnection between local authorities? Do these work well?
Mr Moore: That works well. Clearly
everyone is suffering from supply difficulties, but clearly we
do have instances where a particular case wants to be in a particular
area, not necessarily within our sub-region, and we have these
reciprocal arrangements. They have worked for many years and certainly
I know with Tony's authority we have certainly accepted Croydon
cases before and indeed they have taken some back in the other
direction.
Q116 Chairman: Do you think you have
managed to refer enough on to the City of London? I will need
a phrase from you rather than smiles to get it on the record!
Mr Moore: They are reciprocal
arrangements that we have got.
Q117 Chairman: Would it not be better
if the situation got worse in London because would that not convince
a lot more people that it was worth moving back to the north of
England, to places like Stoke or Burnley, places in the north-east
where there are empty homes?
Cllr Newman: Well, we have at
the ALG got schemes which the ODPM has actually supported in terms
of working with all those places and others that you have just
named and some people have taken the opportunity to move, but
clearly there is a link here, perhaps speaking with a Local Government
Association hat on briefly, in terms of where we are going with
employment opportunities and training opportunities because the
pressures that we get in London which feed back from those authorities
and others that you named are that they can see some of these
people as a burden on them and it is very much encouraging families
to move on if there are employment and education opportunities
in other parts of the country and I think that is where we need
to get to. I do think that we need to wonder really in terms of
what are still some of the projected large-scale demolitions in
parts of the country. I know a place in Hull very well and plans
to knock down large swathes of that are still in place and there
has been a mini housing boom in Hull, so it has gone from £5,000
a property to £30,000 a property. People do want to move
into some of these areas, but whether anyone from London would
go there, I do not know.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed
for your evidence.
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