Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-316)
MAJOR IAN
HARRIS, MR
NIGEL PARRINGTON,
MR PAUL
CAVADINO AND
MR NICK
O'SHEA
7 DECEMBER 2004
Q300 Chairman: Who runs these sub-standard
hostels?
Mr O'Shea: Are you asking me about
this?
Q301 Chairman: You all nodded when we
raised this question of sub-standard hostels. Is it a significant
issue, the standard of hostel accommodation?
Mr Cavadino: It is a significant
issue. In Nacro we run small hostels of a supportive kind which
would not take in one property more than 20 people at the very
maximum and usually considerably fewer than that. We have found
in trying to house people in a range of other accommodation that
there is strong and understandable resistance to going to some
types of hostel where people feel, possibly rightly, that they
will be among people who are trying to deal in drugs and trying
to intimidate them.
Q302 Chairman: Who is running these hostels
which do not meet adequate standards?
Mr Cavadino: In some cases we
are talking about private sector operations. As Ian said earlier
on, there are standards within the registered social landlord
sector, there is regulation by the Housing Corporation, there
are inspections by the Audit Commission and so on. Standards do
vary, but there is an enforcement process there which is increasing
standards and insisting on standards all the time.
Q303 Mr O'Brien: Are they inspected by
the Audit Commission?
Mr Cavadino: Housing associations,
yes, but I was referring to private sector properties.
Mr Parrington: The Audit Commission
undertake an inspection from the customer services perspective
of an association every three years and they are contracted to
do that by the Housing Corporation. The Corporation also undertake
an annual Housing Corporation assessment in terms of physical
standards, customer services, financial viability and governance
of every housing association.
Q304 Chairman: This is the public housing
sector in a sense as opposed to the private sector?
Mr Parrington: Yes.
Q305 Mr Betts: Priority needs categories,
are they right or should they be changed? The Salvation Army suggested
that everybody who is homeless ought to be given their statutory
right to be rehoused. There are other arguments about ex-offenders
who have got mental illness problems having an automatic right
to be rehoused. What are your views on this?
Major Harris: I guess those representing
any group of people would wish them to be prioritised. You have
said, quite rightly, that individuals need to be recognised with
their own needs. Recognising the scarce resources is the real
issue for local authorities and one that we need to work with
registered social landlords on, with the private sector and again
I would say partnerships is a way of working through this. Not
everybody can be prioritised because when you do that you then
have to prioritise the priorities and we have got to find a way
of doing that successfully in every area.
Q306 Mr Betts: Why do you want to return
to the statutory obligation to house everyone who is homeless
then because that is clearly not practical? It means the most
vulnerable are going to lose out because everyone is going to
have the same rights.
Major Harris: I do not think that
we have addressed the interpretation of vulnerability sufficiently
well because we tend to like to put people in boxes, so we say
that ex-offenders are vulnerable, single parents and the single
homeless are vulnerable depending upon our perspective. There
needs to be real work and investigation done about how we can
meet the needs of the individuals who present and whilst looking
at their situations and looking at their individual needs we need
to see if there is a way of accessing appropriate services for
those people.
Q307 Mr Betts: One group we have not
mentioned is the elderly. Is that an increasing problem? Do you
get involved in that at all?
Major Harris: We have 18 residential
homes for the elderly. We are finding it increasingly difficult
to fund those. We are finding that we are spending £2.5 million
to supplement the income that comes from either the local authorities,
social services or the individual. It will become more of a problem
as more and more people grow older and are unable to sustain their
independence.
Q308 Mr Betts: There are people who are
not a priority need but who have still got rights to advice and
information. Is it your experience that local authorities are
genuinely performing that role properly?
Mr O'Shea: I would say again it
is highly variable. When we did the national rehabilitation strategy
we went to a lot of prisons to see what they were doing in terms
of getting housing advice in there and there were some excellent
examples and there were some very poor examples where the local
authorities ignored what was going on.
Q309 Mr Betts: Give us examples.
Mr O'Shea: Portsmouth is an excellent
example, there is lots going on in Holloway and Durham has won
an award for its good work.
Q310 Mr Betts: And the other side of
it?
Mr O'Shea: There are 47 prisons
which have housing advice which is good and there are 138 prisons
altogether. Nacro do some very good work with their resettlement
programme.
Q311 Mr Betts: In two-thirds of them
the local authorities are failing, are they?
Mr O'Shea: There is just no housing
advice.
Q312 Mr Betts: Is that a failure of the
prison authorities or the local authorities?
Mr O'Shea: That is a tricky question.
In my opinion it is the local authorities because at the end of
the day they are the ones who can provide the housing when they
are released.
Q313 Mr Betts: Even the advice?
Mr O'Shea: Yes.
Q314 Mr Betts: So the local authorities
are failing to provide advice in prison?
Mr O'Shea: Yes.
Major Harris: Success comes through
partnerships. Portsmouth has a very good record of using a wide
range of different voluntary public bodies to offer these sorts
of advice services and it works.
Q315 Chris Mole: If a prison has got
a lot of people from out of their area, why would the local authority
want to encourage them to come and settle in their area?
Mr O'Shea: That is one of the
big issues about prisoners, this issue of denial. I have heard
of local authorities who say they do not have any prisoners returning
to their area and if there is no prison in their area then it
is not their problem. If you look at the offending rates across
the country, it is fairly standard. You might be picking up somebody
else's ex-prisoners today and somebody else will be picking up
yours tomorrow and it is about cross-co-ordination. It is people
not being willing to work with others and to take on different
things that is the problem. It is reflected in a PCT where you
are trying to get a doctor if you are from out of the area as
well. There is a need for cross-boundary working. Boroughs that
do not have a prison in their area should be trying to do something
too.
Q316 Chris Mole: There is evidence that
people from black and minority ethnic communities are likely to
experience homelessness across the board. Is this something you
find represented in your client groups, and how would you describe
the specific needs that they might have?
Mr Parrington: In certain centres
we do find that. In Great Peter Street we have a centre where
up to 70% of the residents are from BME groups. In terms of other
areas, in Swindon there is a high concentration of the Somalian
population and in that centre we are up to approximately 40% Somalians
and as a result of that we have employed two Somalian speaking
project workers, we have separate menu arrangements and separate
rooms for meetings for the Somalians. We can be flexible in terms
of some of the services that we supply, especially in terms of
bringing in other agencies as well to assist us. They are the
two main examples I would give you.
Mr Cavadino: We are dealing with
offenders and black and minority ethnic people are disproportionately
represented in the prison population. About 24% of the male prison
population and 31% of the female prison population are black and
minority ethnic people. About 27% of our tenants are black and
minority ethnic people. One of the issues that I think needs to
be addressed by non-statutory agencies as well as statutory agencies
is the need to monitor every aspect of what they do, including
both service delivery issues and staffing issues and to set targets
to ensure that they are promoting race equality. The requirement
under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act on public bodies to develop
a race equality scheme listing all their functions and what they
are going to do to ensure race equality is promoted and monitored
does not apply to non-statutory agencies. For example, it does
not apply to registered charities. We have adopted a race equality
scheme as a matter of good practice, but when we tried to get
ideas from other charities through the National Council for Voluntary
Organisations we found that very few other charities have done
so. I think particularly where public money is being given to
organisations that are providing housing it is important that
the standards of the provider organisations should be monitored
in relation to what they are doing to ensure race equality in
all their operations. Like many statutory organisations, we have
targets for the proportion of black and minority ethnic staff
and managers that we house over a period of time, we have targets
for the proportion of black and minority ethnic tenants that we
have over a period of time, we do satisfaction surveys for tenants
and we monitor those by ethnic group to ensure that the satisfaction
of black and minority ethnic tenants is not significantly lower
than it is for white tenants. We look at outcomes. We look, for
example, at the proportion of people from different racial groups
who are moved on successfully. That should be standard on the
part of anybody who is providing accommodation and certainly with
public money and yet it is not a requirement in the same way as
the Race Relations (Amendment) Act is a requirement on public
bodies.
Mr Parrington: That is exactly
the same as within the RSL sector with one additional target,
which is that we also measure the quality of accommodation to
ensure that the quality is not directed at one particular category
as well.
Chairman: Thank you very much for your
evidence.
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