Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2006
MS TERRIE
ALAFAT, MR
ANDREW WELLS
AND MR
JOHN DANIELS
Q60 Emily Thornberry:
How can you measure whether you are being successful on that and
how is it being measured whether you are being successful? We
have heard criticism today about some of the people who are getting
assistance who it is felt really should not need it.
Mr Wells: There are different
attacks on this process, are there not? Some people say you are
helping people who could have bought on the market. On the whole,
we should not be doing that although there are some categories
of key workers we help who are in the market, particularly more
mature teachers that you want to retain in London because otherwise
they would probably move with their families outside as they cannot
afford to teach in London and move into more senior teaching posts.
There is a particular category there. We are certainly not trying
to help people who, apart from those rare exceptions, could get
onto the market by themselves and we believe that the systems
we have are fairly successful for our subsidised products.
Q61 Chair: How
can you be sure they are not inheriting money from their parents
which 30% of all new buyers are supposed to be doing, getting
helped out? How can you check whether they have relatives?
Mr Wells: We do. Home buy agents
make inquiries on those sorts of things. It is very difficult
to deal with downright deceit but, apart from that, the aim is
to check out what their resources are, what they are bringing
to the table and help those who cannot.
Q62 Emily Thornberry:
Is there a way of measuring how successful you have been?
Mr Wells: I am slightly struggling
with that question. We try very hard not to help people who can
get onto the market by themselves and on the whole we succeed
in that. I am slightly struggling with, except for having those
sorts of conditions, how we could measure. We can evaluate the
programmes when they have been running for a while but the present
system was only set up this year and it considerably simplified
what Adam Sampson was describing as a rather complex set of products
and introduced these three new brands of home buyer products.
So there is a common set of processes, procedures, rules among
them so we have got those three products: Open Market Home Buy,
where we give people money to buy on the open market; New Build
Home Buy, which is new build homes, some of them on section 106
sites, some not; then Social Home Buys to help tenants move into
home ownership. When this has been running for a while, then it
will be possible to evaluate it and we shall be able to say what
the consequences have been. Apart from that, I am slightly struggling
with exactly how we would—
Q63 Mr Betts:
I was with a CEO earlier today who said one of the problems was
the complete lack of proper consultation with people who are going
to be involved in these processes before they were created and
they are so bureaucratic. I understand there are actually 40 social
home buy applications in so far, is that right?
Mr Wells: No, that is not right.
I can look out figures. Social Home Buy is new this year, it is
extending the idea of part ownership into getting social tenants
to buy a share of their own home; it is an untried concept and
we are trying it out.
Q64 Mr Betts:
So there are more than 48?
Mr Wells: We have a fair number
of people going through the process. We have had seven purchases
so far I think, but we have a considerably larger number than
that coming through; I think the number is 150 people who are
going through the process.
Q65 Chair: May
we ask for some hard and fast figures afterwards in writing? That
would be extremely helpful.
Mr Wells: Yes, by all means.
Q66 Mr Betts:
One of the areas in the new world of targets that you have to
focus on is homelessness. Local authorities have targets to get
their homeless figures down and no doubt you have targets to get
the national homeless figures down which will allow the local
authorities to get their figures down. There is an awful lot of
pressure on at present. Is there not some evidence around that
people who would have actually been accepted as homeless in the
past are now being, not necessarily for proper reasons, pushed
into private rented accommodation with benefits and that is deemed
to meet their needs rather than being treated properly as homeless
and going through that route?
Ms Alafat: May I explain what
we have been trying to do in terms of prevention of homelessness?
We are not pushing people into the private rented sector but what
we have actually done in terms of homelessness—and I was
interested when Richard Best was talking about comprehensive housing
advice—is funded local authorities over the spending review
period up to £200 million to invest in prevention. Prevention
is a range of things including housing options for people, looking
at issues around rent deposits, looking at issues around mediation.
It is looking at a range of interventions early on to try to address
the needs of homeless applicants. Those homeless applicants do
not just have housing needs as we know; they have a broader range
of needs. As part of that, we are looking very seriously at the
private rented sector and what role it should play. So there is
an issue about preventing homelessness from the private rented
sector because it still accounts for about 30% of people being
made homeless and that is where sometimes the work that is done
with landlords in terms of mediation and rent deposits and that
sort of thing can actually prevent the homelessness from taking
place, which is quite important. In terms of use of the private
rented sector, local authorities are currently working with applicants
and in some cases it offers a better option and indeed there is
a choice for the applicant—they are not forced and they
cannot be forced to accept. Instead of long waits in temporary
accommodation and maybe long waits of the sort where they will
then get allocated housing in another part of town or of the type
that is not as suitable or appropriate, they are working with
applicants to ascertain whether they would like to stay in the
private rented sector and helping them to do that. This is still
early days and we are testing this in various ways. Indeed we
have launched a scheme in London which you may have heard about
called the Extra Homes pilot where we are trying to test the extent
to which we can change our investment, the way the government
funding is going in through the subsidy, the housing benefit system,
with some upfront capital investment to see whether we can create
appropriate settled accommodation in the sector. It is early days
and we have gone out asking for bids and those bids will be coming
in and we shall be assessing them on a range of criteria. However,
one of the key things for us is that the schemes actually address
the needs of the homeless household and provide settled accommodation.
I am sorry, it is a long-winded answer, but the question is quite
complicated. One of the things that we do is monitor the number
of households being found intentionally homeless. In other words,
one of the things we are very aware of is the gate-keeping allegation
and indeed we try to work very closely with Shelter and others
to investigate where we think there may be a local authority that,
instead of preventing homelessness by offering real options, is
actually in effect shunting people away or gate-keeping.
Q67 Mr Betts:
What happens if you find that is happening in practice? What you
are saying about prevention and advice is all very admirable but
sometimes authorities may be a little bit over-enthusiastic in
the pursuit of your targets, trying to get ticks in the right
boxes and might actually be turning people away as homeless who
ought to be properly categorised as such and given the appropriate
treatment that that would merit. If you find authorities not behaving
in that way what do you actually do? Have you actually directed
any authority and said they are operating this incorrectly?
Ms Alafat: Yes, I have to say
we are quite active. It is always hard when you are in central
government ever to say that it is happening perfectly everywhere
the way it should.
Q68 Mr Betts:
How many authorities have you intervened on so far this year?
Ms Alafat: May I just explain
what we do because we have a whole range of measures? The first
thing is around best practice and promulgating best practice and
indeed, we have had for the last three years regional champions
that in effect are actually practitioners in the field that go
into authorities offering free consultancy to try to provide the
best service. We have advisers where we second people in from
the field who work for us and go out into local authorities and
keep very close track of what the authorities are doing and indeed
intervene, in the sense that they go out and advise and try to
ensure that the local authorities are adopting the best practice.
The third thing we do is actually allocate our homelessness grants
on the basis of performance, but it is not just performance against
a crude target. A key thing that is sometimes forgotten about
the Homelessness Act is that it was not just about target, it
was actually about homelessness strategies. We are now in the
process of the next round of homelessness strategies which requires
local authorities to take a broader view of housing need and to
come up with solutions. There can always be some examples of poor
practice. What we try to do is to work with our colleagues in
the sector and with local authorities, to address this.
Q69 Chair: We
are seeking a few concrete examples. Have you intervened on any
councils which appeared to be batting people away and pretending
they were not homeless when they were?
Ms Alafat: We do have some examples
but rather than starting to name and shame different councils,
if you would like concrete examples of how we do that, I am perfectly
happy to give you those examples.
Chair: If you could write to us that
would be very helpful.
Q70 Mr Betts:
If any elected member or indeed an organisation like Shelter had
concerns about a particular authority and came to you, would you
actually investigate and respond to them on that?
Ms Alafat: Yes. As a matter of
fact, we have had lots of conversations about Shelter letting
us know when they run into these problems so that we can either
go in ourselves or indeed work with them to do that. One of the
important things is that we still fund a network of independent
advice provided by Shelter and the CABs across the country. It
is very important that there still is that independent advice
and advocacy. Yes, we do want that intelligence.
Q71 Chair: When
you are evaluating councils' homelessness strategies do you ask
the people they have either failed to house or the people they
have put into the private sector whether they think it is an acceptable
experience?
Ms Alafat: May I just clarify?
What we are not planning to do with the homelessness strategies
is a full-scale evaluation, but we do, I have to say, use advisers
who actually go out and stay in bed and breakfast hotels and that
kind of thing to talk to real users to find out what experience
they are having. We do try to take into account that kind of thing.
Q72 Mr Betts:
May I ask you to comment on the scheme in Newham called Local
Space where homeless families have been put in temporary accommodation,
but it is temporary accommodation which is being bought up by
a housing association, rather than private landlords, with a view
eventually to funding, through the housing benefits that accrue
to that association the eventual purchase of those properties
so they can actually be put into the social sector. Ministers
have expressed an interest in that and I wondered whether you
had any views on that?
Ms Alafat: That is exactly the
type of scheme I was just talking about, which is sometimes called
"temporary to settled" and it is currently tagged the
Extra Homes pilot. The Local Space is one model. There is also
a model in Ealing called Safe Haven. But the idea is the same.
Can you actually, through the rents that are being paid through
the housing benefit and subsidy, use that money to pay the debt
charge of the cost of a mortgage and eventually bring the accommodation
into the settles sector rather than simply rent being paid out
over a period of years? Can you actually use that to pay the debt
charge of the cost of a mortgage and eventually bring that into
the sector? There are still some significant issues though. One
of the issues for us around Local Space, for example, is the length
of time for which the rents are kept at an unaffordable level.
What we have done in terms of the bidding criteria is to say we
want it to help achieve the temporary accommodation target; we
do not think people should be in a temporary position for a very
long time. We want to make certain that we are looking at issues
around worklessness and unaffordability and we want to try, by
putting some investment up front, to bring those rents into the
affordable category as soon as possible rather than the longer
timescale.
Q73 Sir Paul Beresford:
Another target. Last Wednesday the Chancellor said that new brownfield
sites were being designated that would raise the number of homes
on so-called surplus land to 130,000. Can you clarify whether
the 130,000 homes will be on surplus public sector land and whether
they will be exclusively built on brownfield sites? Can you expand
a little of surplus land and explain that? Down in the South-East
I foresee that there will be some public sector surplus land because
they are shutting the hospitals. What is effectively going to
be happening is that we are going to have new homes, more people,
more demands, less infrastructure because the public sector land
has gone for homes.
Mr Wells: This was an announcement
by the Chancellor and he has previously expressed an aspiration
to do 100,000 homes on surplus public land; so it is public sector
land. This was saying after further work that it looked as though
130,000 could be done. I cannot claim to be the great expert on
this, but I believe those are brownfield sites. They are surplus
public sector sites from central government and central government
bodies, but some of that number may come from local authority
surplus land.
Q74 Sir Paul Beresford:
So you are just about as much in the dark as we are.
Mr Wells: I have given you my
understanding of it.
Q75 Sir Paul Beresford:
When you get a clearer understanding could you write to us?
Mr Wells: By all means let us
write to you.
Chair: We should be very grateful if
you would.
Q76 Mr Betts:
PPS3 and the recent announcement on changes there. Is it really
going to benefit us in terms of improvements in the number of
affordable houses that will be created or is it simply another
opportunity to slightly relax the rules about building on green
space and greenfield sites which builders will take up with alacrity
no doubt?
Mr Wells: What it does is set
out a slightly less controlled and a more devolutionary approach
for local authorities. It puts them more in the driving seat,
both at the strategic level, regional assemblies setting regional
spatial strategies, and local authorities doing their local development
frameworks. I am not so sure it relaxes: it changes from a very
strong government drive to say we want these particular densities
and we want this amount of building on brownfield, to retain those
as national aspirations and indicative targets but to say in future
local authorities should make those decisions for their areas.
It also contains quite strong policies about doing housing needs
analyses and then planning to meet those needs in the area, including
quite a lot on family housing for example.
Q77 Mr Betts:
That is one of the big concerns that increasingly in the national
house building as a whole, we are building smaller percentages
of family houses and more and more small apartments, particularly
with the drive to buy to let. So local authorities are now going
to have real powers are they?
Mr Wells: Yes, to say what they
need in their area and those are slightly different in the affordable
sector where they will set out very clearly what they want on
individual sites and something which does not stifle the market.
It does not have them saying that at this site we want exactly
this mix, but does allow them to set aims for their area as a
whole and to determine planning applications accordingly, particularly
if the private sector is going in a different direction. There
has been a previous discussion about this question of building
lots of flats. That is true recently, but it is a fairly recent
phenomenon and it may now be coming to an end.
Q78 Chair: Why
do you think it is coming to an end?
Mr Wells: When I started this
job about three and a half years ago, the complaint was much more
that a lot of the permissions were being built out as executive
homes and that was a form which was being built. We have seen
a complete change on that which is sometimes attributed to our
policies, which is false. We have seen the market pushing into
city centre flatted development. There are some indications, as
Richard Best was saying, that that as a very attractive form financially
to build may be coming to an end and we shall perhaps see a more
balanced pattern of development as we go ahead just naturally
in the market.
Q79 Mr Betts:
Visually it does not seem to be coming to an end. Just going round
the City of Sheffield and Salford and the Thames Gateway; there
is a lot going on still, is there not?
Mr Wells: A lot of it is going
on but I do not think the numbers are such as to distort local
housing markets. It is also an international phenomenon. You are
seeing this all over the world: people are coming back into city
centres and there is quite a lot of high rise building going on.
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