First Supplementary memorandum by the
Department for Communities and Local Government
During the evidence session on the 12th December,
I offered to write providing examples where my Directorate has
intervened where it appeared that local housing authorities were
refusing to accept or deferring a homelessness application when
in fact the applicant might have been entitled to be accepted
as homeless or been at least offered comprehensive options to
avoid homelessness.
I made clear to the Chair that I did not wish
to name or shame different councils but did offer to provide concrete
examples of where poor practice has been brought to the Directorates
attention and where officials and specialist advisors (seconded
to my Directorate) have intervened/visited to ensure good practice
was being adhered to. Examples of this are attached at annex A.
The Directorate also provides support and advice
to all Councils as well as specific action where problems have
been identified. The activity which officials/specialist advisors
carry out to advise Councils on the best way to prevent homelessness
includes:
— Homelessness Roadshows—These
are regional events where the Directorate's specialist advisor/officials
highlight all areas of good practice that Councils should be adopting.
All local authorities are invited to attend, usually resulting
in over 90% take up. We have undertaken 25 of these events in
the past two years covering every region. Councils are informed
about how to analyse their own performance with a view to improving
it and advice on how to get more out of their RSL partners, to
enable them to tackle homelessness more effectively.
— Good practice toolkit—This
is a comprehensive homelessness prevention toolkit in the shape
of a checklist for the local authority to compare their performance
against the good practice options listed.
— Regional Champions—Over the
past two years we have appointed local authorities to act as critical
friends to other authorities and advise and support them with
their homelessness agenda. This is carried out by way of an action
planning day or a peer review over 3 days. Regional champions
have been selected because of their track record on homelessness.
There are currently 14.
— Mystery shopping—Specialist
advisors will randomly ring local authorities from a member of
the public's perspective to ascertain whether or not good practice
is being adhered to.
— One to one diagnostics—Specialist
homelessness prevention advice to individual Councils (including
all front line staff) over 1 or 2 days, depending on size—We
have visited over 200 in the past two yearn.
The Homelessness Minister, Yvette Cooper also
wrote to all local authorities last June outlining the need for
them to adopt good practice when tackling and preventing homelessness
but also making clear that they must ensure that they fulfil their
statutory obligations in parallel with their prevention work.
Although we have done our very best to ensure
that all local authorities adhere to the best possible practice,
there of course have been Instances where this has not been the
case. However, investigation by my officials has found that this
has been mainly due to poor judgement on a individuals' behalf
rather than the Council openly flouting the rules.
I hope this clarifies the work of my Directorate
to continue to support local authorities' performance in tackling
and preventing homelessness.
Terrie Alafat
Director, Housing Strategy and Support
12 January 2007
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