Q80 Mr Jenkins: Yes, I perfectly
understand the flow issue. I am telling you that at the moment
there is a need for 250 units to be built now this year to accommodate
that bulge. If we were to extrapolate that across the country
it would work out at about a quarter of a million places that
people could live in. That is our biggest problem today.
Dame Mavis McDonald: But in the
example you posit where some of those are for people who do not
necessarily want social rented housing but want to buy in the
private sector then—
Q81 Mr Jenkins: Those have already
gone off. These are the ones on the council or housing authority
list; these are the ones in greatest need—not want; these
are in need. There is nowhere to put them at the present time.
Dame Mavis McDonald: Would the
local authority not be looking to both talk to its local housing
associations to work out the kind of extra new provision, and
would it be looking at the possibility of using the private finance
initiative proposals, or indeed if it is an excellent and good
authority use the new prudential borrowing arrangements, which
would enable it to borrow to have new supply, and would it not
be making a strong case to the regional housing board that it
should have access to some of the additional funding that is available
through the spending review?
Q82 Mr Jenkins: It can borrow money
to build then?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Under the
prudential borrowing requirements, you can do broader regeneration
schemes which involve the provision of new, social housing to
let and local authorities can do that too.
Q83 Mr Jenkins: I will pass that
information on. On the small number of people we have, the report
cites 300,000 cases. Have you done any work to break down how
many of these 300,000 cases are ordinary, young couples or single
people who, given a roof over their head, can quite adequately
manage their own life but they are not in a position today to
launch into and buy a property?
Dame Mavis McDonald: We do not
collect that data at the moment in a way in which we would be
able to absolutely answer and we do not ask local government to
give it to us, but we are introducing some new performance indicators
in April designed to get more detail of what is happening.
Q84 Mr Jenkins: This is a complex
report and I think the complexity of the report hides the facts.
When a person turns up at a local authority, depending on where
the local authority is, they are classified maybe as vulnerable
and therefore get priority treatment for accommodation. The term
"vulnerable" is one which I am familiar with but I cannot
quantify.
Dame Mavis McDonald: You can quantify
it if they are accepted as intentionally homeless.
Q85 Mr Jenkins: You can give me an
assurance now, because you have been able to quantify this, that
I can go to the south coast or Yorkshire with the same family,
the same circumstances, and I will be treated exactly the same
by every authority in the country?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Not necessarily
because it is an issue for local authority discretion.
Q86 Mr Jenkins: Vulnerability is
not a hard term?
Dame Mavis McDonald: The Act does
not talk in terms of vulnerability. The Act talks in terms of
entitlement in relation to being in priority need and unintentionally
homeless. It gives a wider power to local authorities in relation
to others who might be vulnerable and in need of help but it does
not require them to be found accommodation if they are not unintentionally
homeless. That does not answer your first question to me which
was: are some of these people who are turned down people who,
under other circumstances, might simply have gone off and bought
or rented on their own. We think quite a lot of them are but we
do not collect the data in that way at the moment.
Q87 Mr Jenkins: If the term "vulnerability"
is flexible, how do we maintain a constant approach across all
local authorities? One local authority may be collecting more
names, more people on their vulnerable list. Can they get extra
funds if they collect more names?
Ms Alafat: Under the homelessness
legislation, there are those who are vulnerable because they fall
within a priority need category. The guidance that we give to
local authorities has a statutory basis. Much of the way local
authorities carry out their homelessness duties is challenged
and has been challenged in court. The court has set precedents
about the interpretation. That we know. We know the numbers, for
example, that are accepted as homeless because they have a priority
need, because they are pregnant or—
Q88 Mr Jenkins: Of the 300,000, how
many, if they are not in the category that can manage their own
lives, are in the category of needing people's support? If they
were given a place, they could rent on their own but they need
additional support to allow them to be independent.
Ms Alafat: We are doing two pieces
of research. We did a piece of research looking at the support
needs of those people that were coming in and being placed in
temporary accommodation.
Q89 Mr Jenkins: The numbers are?
Are we talking about 10,000 out of the 300,000 or 30,000 or 250,000?
Roughly how many?
Mr O'Connor: We do not know the
numbers who are vulnerable in the sense you are describing but
there are duties on local authorities to assess their circumstances
when they make an application to them as a homeless household.
They must also provide them with free advice and assistance to
help them overcome the problem.
Q90 Mr Jenkins: Do you not fund this
programme, Supporting People?
Mr O'Connor: Yes.
Q91 Mr Jenkins: Do you send blank
cheques to local authorities or do they have to send returns back
in for how many people they are assisting?
Mr O'Connor: If you are asking
do we know how much support is provided through the Supporting
People Programme for homeless people, we know retrospectively
at the end of each year how much local authorities tell us they
have spent on services for clients who are labelled as homeless
by the services providers, who may be at risk of homelessness
or who have previously been homeless.
Q92 Mr Jenkins: They give you the
number of people they have assisted?
Mr O'Connor: Yes.
Q93 Mr Jenkins: If this honest person,
who may not be able to run their own life, is placed in accommodation,
becomes homeless again and goes on the merry-go-round and starts
again, are they counted each time they go round the circuit?
Mr O'Connor: They are. We have
recently introduced data through local authority recording that
identifies repeat homelessness cases. An initial estimate suggests
10% of homeless—
Mr Jenkins: I do not have time to go
on to rough sleepers or people put out from the armed forces or
accommodation run by local authorities etc., but do you see this
complicating the picture? We need some more guidelines and figures.
There is a small number which need people support and there is
a larger number of people who just need a roof over their head.
Then we can say that the solution is simple: just put a roof over
their head.
Q94 Mr Williams: Can I take you a
bit out of your area? Obviously, as a Welsh Member, I am interested
in appendix b on page 68. The Welsh Assembly has set up a Homelessness
Commission. How does that compare in terms of powers and range
of activity with the directorate that has been set up for England?
Mr O'Connor: It is different.
I am not sure of the exact details of how the Commission will
operate or is operating in Wales. As far as I understand it, it
is an advisory commission set up to look at the issues and make
recommendations to government. In a way, a similar approach we
took in England was back in 2002, preparing a report called More
than a Roof.
Q95 Mr Williams: What would you say
is the principal difference between the directorate and the Commission
from your point of view? Which is more effective? Start with the
difference and I will decide which is more effective on the basis
of what you say.
Mr O'Connor: I am afraid I do
not know the terms on which the Commission has been set up or
its membership in Wales. I am not able to comment in any qualified
way on the difference but it sounds as if it has an external element
to it.
Q96 Mr Williams: Does the Directorate
have any directive powers that the Commission in Wales does not
have? You said it is advisory. You do not describe the directorate
as purely advisory, do you?
Mr O'Connor: Perhaps if I describe
the way the directorate works, which is what we understand most,
we are responsible for funding and for providing good practice
advice to local authorities. I am not sure whether the Commission
in Wales is set up on a similar basis. I do not think it is.
Q97 Mr Williams: Could you let us
have a note on that?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Certainly.[4]
Q98 Mr Williams: Looking at that same
appendix, unless I have my figures wrong, in the third column,
"Assessed as Homeless & in Priority Need", in England
according to figure nine that has increased by 37%. According
to me, the percentage increase in Wales has been 70%, nearly twice
as much. That almost beggars belief when you think of the concentration
in London and so on. That is a staggeringly high rate of increase
compared with England, is it not?
Mr O'Connor: It certainly is a
higher rate of increase than has happened in England. If you look
at the fourth column in that same table which compares the number
per 1,000 household, that is the number of homeless accepted for
every 1,000 people in the local population, Wales has gone from
having a lower rate per 1,000 in England to a higher rate per
1,000 over that period.
Q99 Mr Williams: In fairness to Wales,
the 7.56 compares with places outside London, the immediate counties
and regions. The figures seem to come in line but I am puzzled
that this would appear to be almost an explosion in homelessness
and in priority need.
Mr O'Connor: This may, in a similar
way to the recent rises in England, be connected to the extension
of priority need in Wales which was changed at the same time as
it was in England.
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