Written evidence submitted by Cosgarne
Hall Ltd
INTRODUCTION
Cosgarne Hall Ltd. is a Registered Charity dedicated
to the alleviation of homelessness among vulnerable and socially
excluded people. Although the majority of our funding comes from
our Local Authority, many of the benefits that our service provides
accrue to National services and budgets and the service that we
provide is non-statutory.
We are the principal provider of alcohol-tolerant
(a.k.a. "wet house") Supported Accommodation for Offenders
and Substance Misusers in the South-West of England. We regularly
receive referrals for clients returning to Cornwall from all over
the country. All our clients are homeless on arrival, many with
long histories of homelessness. More than two thirds of our clients
have spent time in prison and three quarters have histories of
serious drug or alcohol addiction.
In addition to my role as CEO of Cosgarne Hall Ltd.,
I represent Supporting People Service Providers in Cornwall at
Regional level on the South West Regional Providers' Forum. I
represent the South West Regional Providers' Forum on the South
West Homeless and Vulnerable People Board, which advises the Government
Office South West on all aspects of homelessness among vulnerable
people in the region. I also represent the SWRPF on the South
West Prison Pathways Accommodation Group, which advises the Regional
Director of Offender Management on all aspects of accommodation
for Offenders leaving prison.
We are therefore in the privileged position of combining
a detailed knowledge of the housing related support sector on
the ground with an understanding of, and engagement with, national
agencies and national policy.
SUMMARY
The areas of localism that are of direct concern
to us professionally are:
1. The impact of Localism on decisions about
the provision of locally funded services which achieve savings
in the cost of nationally funded services: as a direct result
of Localism, Local decisions may perforce ignore National benefit.
There is a serious and immediate risk of a move away from "joined-up
government" and a return to a "silo mentality",
costing far more than it saves. By way of example, decommissioning
our service would, according to DCLG figures, cost six times as
much as it costs to run it.
2. Effective accountability for expenditure
on the delivery of Local services when the funds for those services
have been raised Nationally rather than Locally: unaccountable
local decision makers may use un-ringfenced money for a different
purpose than that for which it has been raised, thus defeating
the will of Parliament. An un-ringfenced, un-named Supporting
People grant, for example, will come like manna from heaven to
many Local Authorities: "We need to plug some holes in our
budgets if we're going to avoid cutting staff. Here is an enormous
pot of money with no strings attached. The SP Programme is a Central
Government policy, not one of ours—they get the benefits,
not us. Let's cut the SP services, problem solved". Oh, and
"Parliament neutered!".
3. The impact of localism on service commissioning
decisions that affect vulnerable groups who have little local
support or political appeal: in the search for popularity
and the votes they need to keep them in power, local decision
makers may find themselves under pressure to give in to vociferous
minorities and so the strong will win at the expense of the weak.
4. The potential for cuts in front-line services
over administration: giving the administrators carte blanche
to decide to decide where the axe must fall, is a bit like asking
turkeys to vote for an early Christmas.
5. Short term expediency resulting in increased
costs in the future: without appropriate direction and control
from Central Government, local decision makers will find themselves
under pressure to cut the investment necessary to achieve significant
future gains, in order to make smaller but more immediate savings.
Those are our chief concerns. I expand on each of
these to a greater or lesser extent below.
CONCERNS
1. The impact of localism on decisions about
the provision of locally funded services which achieve savings
in the cost of nationally funded services
Particularly at a time when all Local Authority (LA)
budgets are under severe pressure, LAs will be forced to favour
the provision of services which achieve benefits locally over
those which result in national benefits. For example, when deciding
whether to spend funds within their control on services which
reduce re-offending, LAs will be likely to take into account financial
benefits accruing to them, but to ignore those accruing elsewhere,
eg to the Prison Service.
Not only will this mean that such decisions will
be taken from "within the silo", but they could have
a destabilising effect on national budgetary considerations, because
anticipated savings in national budgets would not materialise.
2. Effective and appropriate accountability
for expenditure on the delivery of local services when the funds
for those services have been raised nationally rather than locally
Using the same example, if Parliament votes funds
to LAs to commission services which reduce re-offending in pursuit
of a policy of reducing the prison population, Parliament has
a right to expect that LAs will spend that money on that purpose.
Unless LAs are accountable to the Exchequer for the manner in
which they spend the funds provided by it, they will be free to
spend that money on other services, which may have more local
benefits, contrary to the will of Parliament.
This is particularly relevant when the funds are
provided for the commissioning of services for which LAs have
no statutory duty at a time when all publicly funded services
face the possibility of being cut in order to reduce Local Authority
spending in line with Central government requirements: there will
be a temptation for LAs to reduce spending on non-statutory services
in order to use the money thereby saved to pay for those services
for which they do have a statutory responsibility.
For example, funding for Supporting People (SP) services
is now part of the Area Based Grant (ABG). Indeed, it is not only
a part of it, but the largest component of the Area Based Grant
represents 34.5% of the grant nationally and in some areas over
50%, so it is a large and tempting target, capable of filling
"black holes", or preventing cuts, in several other
budgets.
SP services are not, however, services for which
LAs have a statutory responsibility. We have already seen examples
of swingeing cuts in SP services, the most notable of which was
in the Isle of Wight earlier this year, when Councillors cut £2.7
million from the SP budget in order to balance the Social Care
budget. The council said the decision was not about cuts, but
about a transition to a different type of care. The reality was
that it was a transfer of resources from non-statutory, preventive
services into statutory, reactive ones, because of careless stewardship
of the Council's Social Care budget over a number of years. Vulnerable
and socially excluded people were robbed of the services on which
they relied in order to make good the deficit.
3. The impact of localism on service commissioning
decisions that affect vulnerable groups who have little local
support or political appeal
A significant number of services are provided locally
with funds that have been identified nationally by a Government
which has indicated its responsibility at the helm of a civilised
society to take care of vulnerable people who are unable to look
after themselves. How can that Government fulfil that responsibility,
if it has no control over how the money it raises for that purpose,
is spent?
Because Councillors rely on the votes of their electorate
for their jobs, they may be tempted to give in to local pressure
groups who want them to cut services for people who are widely
regarded as having been the architects of their own downfall.
This option will be particularly tempting at a time when this
can be seen not only as a means of appeasing vociferous minorities,
but also of avoiding other cuts which might be more widely resisted—"killing
two birds with one stone".
Services like ours, which are mainly about providing
support and accommodation for chronic alcoholics and drug addicts,
are seen by many as helping people who do not deserve help—"they've
made their beds, they can lie in them". The fact that his
view also seems to be held by some people in the upper echelons
of Central Government who come from a similarly privileged background
as my own, does little to help.
It is also widely believed that, if such services
did not exist, the clients would go somewhere else, so the local
community would be better off. The reality, of course, is quite
the opposite: without services like ours, the problems caused
by our clients would be many times worse, because they would be
living on the streets, making no effort to address their addictions,
indulging in crime to fund their habits and causing disorder by
the anti-social behaviour which results from those habits, as
any sensible person knows.
However, at election time, the candidate who announced
that his policy was to close hostels for alcoholics and drug addicts,
to get rid of their inmates and cut the Council Tax, might stand
a good chance of dislodging a responsible Councillor from his
seat in a marginal ward.
Not only has this the potential to result in poor
decisions on humanitarian grounds, but also on financial ones:
services like ours have been shown in independent research commissioned
by the Department of Communities and Local Government to save
far more than we cost (Capgemini: "Research into the Financial
Benefits of the Supporting People programme, June 2009"—see
appendices 1 & 2 below).
4. The potential for cuts in front-line services
over administration
The very people who are making the decisions are
those who have most to lose by cutting administration in favour
of maintaining front-line services.
By way of example, in June this year, announcing
various cuts including £30 million in the SP administration
grant, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said:
"The detailed spending decisions outlined
today show a clear determination to make the necessary savings
whilst minimising the impact on essential frontline services.
We have focused attention on reducing the centre and it is here
that the reductions are the hardest."
And
"Councils have been given the flexibility
they need to determine where they make savings."
Councils did, indeed use that flexibility: many immediately
"top-sliced" their services budgets in order to continue
to pay the salaries of those who administer them—they cut
the front line in order to maintain the centre.
In part, they had no choice: you cannot administer
a service without anyone to oversee it and the cut in the SP admin
budget amounted to an effective abolition rather than a cut. But
even had it been a manageable cut, it is hardly human nature to
make oneself redundant if one can avoid it, unless one is being
compelled to do so: if you say to someone "you can join the
ranks of the unemployed, or cut some services, it's entirely up
to you", what do you expect?
5. Short term expediency resulting in increased
costs in the future
Without adequate measures in place to prevent LAs
from doing so, they will be under pressure to cut preventive services,
which require short-term investment for long term gain but produce
good returns, in order to finance reactive ones, which show immediate
gain but represent poor value for money.
Supporting People services, which we and many other
organisations like ours provide, are primarily preventive. Although
we help people with their immediate problems, we do so in a manner
which either:
1. achieves lasting long-term benefits by avoiding
recurrence, which may initially seem more expensive than necessary,
but is in the long term cheaper. This is probably best summarised
by the well-know maxim "give a man a fish and you feed him
for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for life",
or "invest to save"; and
2. prevents those problems from requiring much
greater expenditure by early intervention, tackling them before
they become critical. For example, preventing someone from becoming
homeless can be far less resource-consuming than addressing the
problem when they have become homeless.
SP services are not expenditure, they are
investment. Let me explain why.
1. It would actually cost more, not less,
to reduce spending on SP services
Independent research commissioned by the Department
of Communities and Local Government concluded that a national
investment of £1.6 billion prevented £5.0 billion of
public money being spent on other services, producing a net benefit
of £3.4 billion. In other words, every £1 spent on SP
services actually produces a saving of more than £2 on the
cost of other services, over and above the cost of providing SP
services. In commercial terms, a return of 300%—the sort
of return that would make any Dragon drool. And because the research
was approached through estimating the financial impact of withdrawing
SP services, the reverse is true: it is clear that the withdrawal
of SP services would impose additional costs elsewhere three times
the size of any apparent savings.
A detailed breakdown of the figures reproduced from
the research is attached as Appendix 1.
This is compelling enough in itself. However, because
the scope of the research was limited to immediate or near-immediate
costs to which a financial value can be attributed, the authors
(Capgemini) pointed out that there are two categories of benefits
from SP services that are not included in the figures calculated:
1.1 Immediate or near-immediate unquantified
benefits to the users whose ability to live independently and
avoid or recover from crisis is improved by SP services.
1.2 Long-term reductions in both the need for
support and social exclusion. These are particularly significant,
albeit unquantified, benefits: they are valuable in themselves
to the clients concerned, and may also, in the long term, reduce
the size of the client groups and the cost of providing support
to them.
As the costs associated with these two categories
were outside the scope of the research, but potentially enormous,
the overall financial benefit of SP services (and, therefore,
the costs incurred if they are withdrawn) could be significantly
understated.
2. The true cost of decommissioning our service
would be more than six times the cost of continuing to provide
it
What does the research mean in specific instances?
Taking our service as an example, based on the Capgemini figures
for the client groups representing the primary support needs of
our particular clients, the value of the net benefit achieved
by our service is just under £4.50, over and above the cost
of service provision, for every £1 spent providing it. The
full calculations are included at Appendix 2.
So, on the basis of the Capgemini/DCLG figures, the
cost of decommissioning our service would be four and a half times
the cost of continuing to provide it.
What the research also does not take into account,
however, is that, in many cases, an SP contract can form the nucleus
on which a provider can build services that go beyond the scope
of the contract itself, but without which it cannot operate at
all.
By way of example, our service has an SP contract
to support 35 people with chaotic lifestyles, the vast majority
of whom are people with drug and alcohol problems that have brought
with them a history of offending, homelessness and rough sleeping.
We do, however, actually support 48 people, although the extra
13 are funded from other resources. Such are the financial dynamics
of the service, however, that if we were to lose our SP contract,
the entire service would have to close, so in fact the true cost
of decommissioning our service would be more than six times the
cost of continuing to provide it.
3. The implications of cuts in preventive
services go far beyond merely the additional cost which would
be imposed elsewhere if they were withdrawn
For services like ours which provide accommodation
as well as support, service closure means more than just the loss
of the support: it means the loss of the accommodation, too, so
our clients would become homeless. While support can be replaced
when times get better and financial constraints are eased, once
you lose the accommodation from the stock available for letting
to vulnerable people, replacing it becomes very difficult: investment
in real estate is a long term activity.
Many other services operate on similar bases, ie
the actual benefit arising is higher than a direct multiplier
of the cost per place funded by SP services and other parts of
the service are dependent on the existence of the SP service.
4. The benefits of preventive services go
beyond what can be measured in financial terms
The first three of my four arguments are financial
ones: particularly in the current climate, any publicly funded
service must justify its existence in hard financial terms. In
a civilised society, however, we must not lose sight of those
benefits that preventive services like the SP programme provide,
but which are not necessarily calculable in strict financial terms.
Primarily, SP services provide benefits to their
Clients. There are, however other, indirect beneficiaries, who
will lose out if SP services are withdrawn.
For Clients, benefits vary from one client group
to another, but may include:
¾ Increased
stability and in particular greater housing stability, allowing
people to deal with the issues in their lives, eg drug or alcohol
addiction.
¾ Improved
mental and physical health.
¾ Improved
quality of life.
¾ Acquisition
of life skills such as cooking, shopping and management of finances.
¾ A return
to independent living.
¾ A realistic
prospect of returning to employment.
¾ Greater
choice in options of where and how to live.
¾ Increased
ease of access to appropriate services.
¾ Social
inclusion (or reduced risk of social exclusion).
¾ Increased
participation in the community and decreased isolation.
¾ Keeping
families together.
¾ Improved
educational outcomes, in the long term, for children.
¾ Reduced
risk of death—many homeless people, drug addicts or alcoholics
would die if SP services were withdrawn.
It is not, however, only the Clients who benefit
from the existence of SP services. The Local Community benefits,
too, from:
¾ Reduced
anti-social behaviour.
¾ Reduced
crime and/or fear of crime.
¾ Streets
free of vagrants.
¾ Reduced
burden on the Police, leaving them free to deal with other issues.
¾ Reduced
burden on the NHS, Ambulance Services and Carers, which means
more resources available for everyone else.
¾ Greater
participation in the community by SP clients: they become givers,
not just takers.
What are Supporting People services?
As not all readers may be familiar with the Supporting
People programme, it may be worth clarifying what SP services
are, with a few examples. In practical terms, Supporting People
services support a wide range of vulnerable people across society:
¾ Older
people who need support for to remain in their own homes, or specialised
accommodation.
¾ Young
people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
¾ Women
fleeing domestic violence, by providing refuges and support for
survivors of domestic violence and abuse.
¾ Offenders
leaving prison who need support and accommodation to prevent re-offending
and returning to prison.
¾ Rough
Sleepers and others with a history of homelessness, by taking
homeless people, including offenders, drug users and alcoholics,
and their anti-social behaviour, off the streets into Supported
Accommodation where their issues can be addressed.
¾ People
with mental ill health who need support to help them recover.
¾ People
with learning disabilities who need support to maintain independent
lives.
¾ A wide
variety of people who need floating support services which prevent
tenancy breakdown and loss of accommodation.
CONCLUSIONS
There is nothing wrong with local democracy. But
Local Authorities, like everyone else, should be accountable for
their decisions, especially where those decisions involve spending
money that they have been given for a particular purpose. While
it is right that everyone to whom responsibility is delegated,
should have the flexibility to empower them to discharge that
responsibility, so also should there be clear parameters within
which they must exercise that power. They also need that accountability
and limitation, to afford them the protection from unreasonable
pressure to make unwise or short-sighted decisions.
Unrestricted localism will deprive Parliament of
its ability to achieve national policies. The Government has promised
to take care of the poor, vulnerable and elderly, by defending
the front-line services that they need, something which any Government
in a civilised society has a duty to do. But they no longer have
the power to do so: even if the DCLG provides the necessary funds
to run particular services, the decision on how to use those funds
has been passed on to Local Authorities, who can use the money
however they choose and will find themselves under pressure to
use some funds for purposes other than those intended by DCLG.
RECOMMENDATIONS
DCLG decides how much money to give each LA by assessing
what it needs in order to provide the services which the DCLG
charges it with providing. Having done that, it is entirely logical
that DCLG should then give clear guidance as to what amounts are
provided for what purposes and then hold the LAs to account for
doing so. Indeed, it has a responsibility so to do. In order to
achieve this, I suggest:
1. DCLG should continue clearly to stipulate
the amount of money provided within the Area Based Grant for specific
types of services such as Supporting People services, for specific
client groups, in order to achieve national policies.
2. The Chief Executive of each Local Authority
should be charged with personal responsibility for ensuring that
the money concerned is spent on services of the designated type.
3. It would be the Chief Executive's responsibility
to decide how best to use that money to commission those services,
having regard to the nature of local needs and the opinions of
locally elected representatives, ie Councillors and others with
expert knowledge, including Service Providers.
4. Chief Executives would then be directly responsible
to:
4.1 DCLG for demonstrating that the money has
been spent in accordance with the DCLG's directions; and
4.2 Local Councillors for ensuring that it is
spent in a manner commensurate with local needs.
I trust that these recommendations will find favour
with the Committee.
APPENDIX 1
NATIONAL STATISTICS FROM CAPGEMINI/DCLG REPORT
"RESEARCH INTO THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF THE SUPPORTING PEOPLE
PROGRAMME,
JUNE 2009"
| Client Group |
Cost
(m.) | Benefit
(m.)
| Net
Benefit
(m.) | Net
Benefit
per £1.00
cost
| %age
of
average |
| People with alcohol problems | £20.7
| £112.7 | £92.0 |
£4.44 | 210% |
| Women at risk of domestic violence | £68.8
| £255.7 | £186.9 |
£2.72 | 128% |
| People with drug problems | £30.1
| £187.9 | £157.8 |
£5.24 | 248% |
| Homeless families with support needs—settled accommodation
| £32.5 | £32.0 |
-£0.5 | -£0.02 | -1%
|
| Homeless families with support needs—temporary accommodation
| £17.5 | £46.0 |
£28.5 | £1.63 | 77%
|
| Single homeless with support needs—settled accommodation
| £130.1 | £160.8 |
£30.7 | £0.24 | 11%
|
| Single homeless with support needs—temporary accommodation
| £106.7 | £203.6 |
£96.9 | £0.91 | 43%
|
| People with learning disabilities | £369.4
| £1,080.7 | £711.3
| £1.93 | 91% |
| People with mental health problems | £254.4
| £814.1 | £559.7 |
£2.20 | 104% |
| Offenders or people at risk of offending, and mentally disordered offenders
| £55.4 | £95.7 |
£40.3 | £0.73 | 34%
|
| Older people in sheltered accommodation |
£198.2 | £845.1 | £646.9
| £3.26 | 154% |
| Older people in very sheltered accommodation
| £32.4 | £155.8 |
£123.4 | £3.81 | 180%
|
| Older people receiving floating support and other older people
| £97.3 | £725.3 |
£628.0 | £6.45 | 305%
|
| People with a physical or sensory disability
| £28.4 | £101.7 |
£73.3 | £2.58 | 122%
|
| Teenage parents | £24.9
| £6.6 | -£18.3 |
-£0.73 | -35% |
| Young people at risk—settled accommodation
| £94.9 | £121.5 |
£26.6 | £0.28 | 13%
|
| Young people at risk—temporary accommodation
| £38.1 | £64.7 |
£26.6 | £0.70 | 33%
|
| Young people leaving care | £12.7
| £12.0 | -£0.7 |
-£0.06 | -3% |
| Total all client groups | £1,612.5
| £5,021.9 | £3,409.4
| £2.11 | 100%
|
APPENDIX 2
| Client Group | Net
contribution
to other
budgets for
every £1.00
spent on SP
services
(from
Capgemini
Statistics)
| Cosgarne
clients
primary
support
needs
(see
Client
Analysis)
| Cosgarne
SP price | Cosgarne net
contribution
to other budgets
for SP funded
spaces (35)
| Net
contribution
to other
budgets for
every
£1.00
spent on
SP
services
| Cosgarne net
contribution
to other
budgets for
all spaces (48)
| True net
contribution
to other
budgets for
every £1.00
spent on SP
services
|
| Total all client groups | |
| £269,081.66 |
| | | |
| People with alcohol problems | £4.44
| 65.8% | £176,930.41 |
£786,357.38 | | £1,078,432.97
| |
| People with drug problems | £5.24
| 24.7% | £66,348.90 |
£347,835.78 | | £467,093.76
| |
| People with mental health problems | £2.20
| 4.1% | £11,058.15 |
£24,328.80 | | £32,670.10
| |
| People with learning disabilities | £1.93
| 4.1% | £11,058.15 |
£21,293.08 | | £28,593.56
| |
| Women at risk of domestic violence | £2.72
| 1.4% | £3,686.05 | £10,013.41
| | £13,446.58 |
|
| Total | | |
| £1,189,828.45 | £4.42
| £1,620,236.98 | £6.02
|
Notes:
1. The above is based on an analysis of all clients in our
service between 1/4/2009 and 31/3/2010 by their primary support
needs
2. It is difficult to assign clients to one group: being real
people, they do not conveniently fit into one pigeon-hole or another.
Most of ours fall into several client groups, so we have taken
the principal support need in each case - the one which, as far
as we can tell, has given rise to the others and differentiates
them from other clients (in our case, this means mainly drug or
alcohol misuse).
3. All clients are single and were homeless, or about to become
so, on arrival, but homelessness is invariably the consequence
of behaviour resulting from the client's primary support need,
so this category has been ignored as a primary support need in
itself.
4. The majority of our clients have histories of Offending
related to their primary support needs and again this is usually
effect rather than cause, so this category has been ignored as
a primary support need, but recorded separately: 68.5% of these
clients had been in prison on one or more occasions. It is an
established fact that homelessness is a major contributory factor
in re-offending, so the savings to the prison service as a result
of our clients being accommodated, is a very significant one (albeit
not directly relevant to Local Authority budgetary considerations).
October 2010
| 
