Q100 Mr Williams: Could it be a definition
issue? I would sooner you did not answer if you do not know. If
it is a definition issue I would like to know but if you are not
sure it is better you just say you do not know.
Dame Mavis McDonald: The NAO Report
has said that when the definition of priority needs was changed
the numbers went up in the same way as in England. We ought to
speak to our colleagues on this.
Q101 Mr Williams: Again, I would
like a note on that. If you look at the lower part of that set
of figures, "Temporary Accommodation", the Report and
your evidence have brought out the inefficiency of bed and breakfast
as a means of meeting need. I do not know how much it has gone
up in England over the three years covered. Do you know approximately?
Mr O'Connor: Total bed and breakfast
use has come down over the last year in England and, for families
with children, we have ended the long term use of it.
Q102 Mr Williams: It has gone up
five fold in Wales in three years in the most inefficient method
of provision. As compared with the fall you describe over the
last year in England, the use of bed and breakfast has more than
doubled in the last year. Does that suggest an inefficient use
of the resources?
Dame Mavis McDonald: We will have
to ask our colleagues in the Welsh Assembly.
Q103 Mr Williams: Is the NAO able
to help us in any way? It is difficult having stuff in the Report
on which no one is able to answer questions.
Mr Corner: We included these figures
for comparative purposes and we have cleared them with the Welsh
Assembly but I cannot add to anything that has been said.
Q104 Mr Williams: Having the separate
accounting bodies now, the NAO in Wales separately, the Scottish
and the Irish, one of the great values of it is we are able to
draw on best experience and learn from each other's lessons. It
is helpful having comparative figures but it is not helpful if
there are not comparative reasons. I am not sure where we go next
on this because I am not sure who knows the answer. The homelessness
and rooflessness grant, for example, in Wales: do we know how
that compares with the type of grants that are available from
the centre under the system in England?
Mr O'Connor: I do not know in
detail but it is similar in the sense that I understand it is
grants to local authorities.
Q105 Mr Williams: We know from whom
there are grants and to whom they are paid. We do not know how
the grants compare in value.
Mr O'Connor: The best we can do
is talk to our Welsh colleagues.
Q106 Mr Williams: I do not want to
embarrass you but it is helpful to me as a Welsh Member if I can
use your research capability to probe the thing. I am not getting
at you when I am asking questions.
Dame Mavis McDonald: It would
be perfectly proper for us to provide you a note with information
from Welsh Assembly colleagues, drawing some of the comparators
between our figures and their figures in agreement with them.
The policy is for the Welsh Assembly, not for us.
Q107 Mr Williams: You will provide
or you in conjunction with the National Audit Office will provide?
Sir John Bourn: We would be very
happy to join in this.
Q108 Mr Williams: I would be very
happy if the National Audit Office would make some comparative
studies for me as well. I was wanting to ask about the relative
effectiveness of the grant, which is again something we need to
look at. I can understand that is not answerable now. It is not
your fault. Can we switch to something that rather surprised me
earlier on the preparation of strategies? There is a table that
deals with the preparation of strategies and makes the point that,
in most cases, local authority social services departments—we
are now back in England—did not seem to be part of the assessment
work. Why is that? It would seem illogical, would it not?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Our guidance
said that they should be part of it. We found practice varied
more widely than we would have expected.
Q109 Mr Williams: It is page 62,
figure 29. "Social services often did not take part in the
review." Since essentially the directorate is all about joined-up,
relevant and interested parties and since we have the voluntary
groups and so on, why on earth are not the prime deliverers within
local government, the social services departments, parties to
the reviews?
Ms Alafat: When we placed the
requirement on local authorities to develop a homelessness strategy,
it was quite clear in that social services authorities also had
a duty to cooperate with housing authorities on homelessness strategies.
We did clarify that from the start.
Q110 Mr Williams: They are different
roles, are they not? The housing department is one provider of
a facility. The identifiers of the problem, which is what we are
concerned about, who should be the major participant in the decision
on strategies and so on, are the people who are dealing on the
ground with the problem. It seems utterly illogical for the social
services department not to be at the forefront.
Ms Alafat: It is the housing authority
that has responsibility to produce the strategy but the social
services authority was to work with them on that.
Q111 Mr Williams: This is much more
specific. It says, "Social services often did not take part
in the review,"
Ms Alafat: I was clarifying that
it was a requirement for local authorities. What was generally
found through the evaluation of the strategies was that across
the board the local authorities did involve partners. It is not
that every authority did not involve social services. What the
evaluation told us was that there were enough cases where social
services were not fully involved to make it an area where we needed
to do more work with the authorities.
Q112 Mr Williams: Is this something
you regard as a weakness in the current system and, if so, is
it something you are addressing? How are you addressing it?
Dame Mavis McDonald: I think it
is fair to say that when we commissioned the strategies we were
developing with local authorities the Supporting People Programme.
As social service authorities have taken on board responsibility
for that—of course, it is a county council responsibility
in the county areas, whereas housing is a district responsibility—that
has given extra impetus for the two tiers to come together. In
unitary authorities, we have much more experience.
Mr Williams: You are not really answering
my question. I asked what are you doing to make sure that they
are properly brought on board. Perhaps you would let me have a
note on that matter.[5]
However, if you would go to the very bottom point in table 29,
"Four out of ten authorities failed to identify the resources
they need to fulfil their strategy." That does not exactly
sound like serious strategy formation, does it? It could identify
targets but that is not a strategy. It can identify the targets
it might want to reach but it needs a strategy and to achieve
its strategy it needs an assessment of resources. How can you
have four out of ten councils failing to identify the resources
they need? How do they know if they have too little or too much?
Dame Mavis McDonald: We tried
to address some of that weakness in the way in which we have given
out the grant to local authorities, part of which is given on
needs in relation to homelessness but part of which is given in
the proposals they bring forward for specific plans to handle
what they have set out as their strategic priorities and which
we have set out as strategic priorities. We try to develop the
focused planning through that route. When they have to revisit
local authorities within the five year period we will be issuing
much stronger guidelines on what is acceptable.
Q113 Mr Williams: Five years is a
long time, is it not? This is rather woolly. What we are getting
is, frankly, almost a load of guff. If you are just talking about
producing strategies without producing an assessment of the ability
to provide those strategies, you might as well not talk about
the strategies in the first place. Take it to the next stage.
Most of the local authorities did not consider the full range
of funding opportunities. That is not difficult to understand
if they do not identify what they need in the first place, but
why have they not found out what the full range of funding opportunities
is? It seems to me that the information to build the blocks, to
solve the problem, the key information, is either not being sought
or it is not being provided.
Dame Mavis McDonald: We have been
trying to work through with local authorities, after the event,
a much more efficient process of developing their knowledge of
what works and what does not. We have quite a lot of evidence
that, following the strategies they have, they have worked better
with their other partners. They have increased the effort they
put in. They have begun to define much clearer grant propositions
on which they would spend the money to meet their priorities in
their strategies, working with us and government officer.
Mr Williams: I would like some more precise
information on both those areas of questioning in relation to
resource, assessment of resource and the previous issue. If I
am not satisfied with the reply, if necessary, I will ask you
to come back with the information.[6]
Thank you.
Q114 Mr Jenkins: It would be rather
remiss of me if I did not mention ex-servicemen. Almost to our
national shame, ten years ago we found that 25% of rough sleepers
were ex-servicemen. Is it lower now? Do you know what the percentage
is?
Ms Alafat: It is one of the areas
where there has been a success story. Our current information
tells us it is about 10% at any one time. Our work with the MoD
continues and we have worked with them on providing housing advice
at Catterick Barracks, for example. We are in the midst now with
them of doing some research on the housing and homeless need.
Q115 Mr Jenkins: At 3.11 it says
a number of schemes have been funded by yourself but who owns
these schemes? I wonder whether you are going to determine if
they are successful in delivering. I take it you personally have
a handle on these schemes and you know they are going to be delivered?
We have somebody in charge of this for monitoring these initiatives?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Yes. The
figures will be collected and the next series is due next week,
so we are tracking it.
Q116 Mr Jenkins: We will never get
it to zero obviously but we will get it to a single digit number,
I take it, in the near future?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Hopefully.
Q117 Jon Trickett: I want to come
back to this thorny subject of housing supply which I think is
probably the single, critical issue here. Paragraph 1.5 says that
ten years ago we were building 42,700 houses a year. I think it
means in the social sector. That has fallen to 21,000 a year in
2002-03. It goes on to say that you would need to increase the
number by at least 17,000 in order to meet the flow of new households.
I presume that is back up to about 40,000 a year. Can you confirm
that is right? Can you confirm that that means all we will be
doing is adding to the number of homeless households or households
in need of self-contained housing; and that to reduce the number
would mean we would have to go above that 40,000 or 38,000?
Dame Mavis McDonald: I do not
think I have understood.
Q118 Jon Trickett: The last sentence
of 1.5 says you would have to increase the number of social and
affordable housing by at least 17,000 a year in order to meet
the flow of new, needy households. Earlier, it said that we were
doing about 21,000 a year. Am I understanding this right to say
that we need 40,000 additional social and affordable houses each
year just to prevent the list from growing, as this sentence appears
to say?
Dame Mavis McDonald: This sentence
says what would need to be done on top of the programmes that
were in existence when Kate Barker wrote her report to meet the
growing new need and not address the backlog.
Jon Trickett: Can you give the Committee
your estimate? That makes 38,000, 21,000 plus 17,000. That is
not to tackle the backlog at all. Can you give us your estimate
of the additional number of properties above 38,000 which would
need to be built each year in order to begin to eat into this
400,000 backlog?
Dame Mavis McDonald: No, because
that is not the programme Ministers have set out in—
Q119 Jon Trickett: I have not asked
you what Ministers have said; I have asked you to answer a question
because this Committee would like to know what it would require
in order to really tackle the backlog. I am asking you as a witness
to tell us how many additional houses would need to be built to
tackle the backlog.
Dame Mavis McDonald: At the risk
of being repetitive, we do not accept that some of the figures
in the Kate Barker assessment necessarily mean being met in that
way but we would have to do a much more detailed survey to find
out the truth of this 154,000 figure which she has put in here,
using the Alan Holmans methodology, to have any real assessment
of the reality of that figure.
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