“Too many single homeless households do not get full state support to find a permanent place to live. The absence of housing options during times of personal crisis means that many single homeless adults are driven towards the most dreadful corners of the English housing market, forced to live in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, private hostels and short-stay houses in multiple occupation (known collectively as ‘unsupported temporary accommodation’). The physical and social conditions in these dwellings are often appalling. There is limited statutory control over who is placed or directed to the accommodation, and enforcement activity on the conditions of dwellings and quality of the management is often found wanting.

Part of the problem is that this is a group of hidden homeless households, and their plight and housing largely go unseen and undocumented. As a result there are no accurate estimates of the number of single homeless households living in B&Bs or good records of the number of bedspaces this sector provides. Previous estimates have suggested the problem is considerable: for instance, research by Shelter suggests that single homeless use of private B&Bs and hostels is 5–10 times greater than is reported in quarterly government data (see Credland 2004, Crisis 2006).

The practical and policy interventions in this report are structured around the four stages of a typical stay, with a view to providing support at each stage and breaking the cycle many people face as they move into, out of and back into unsupported temporary accommodation. We seek to repair the ‘control deficit’ that many tenants feel when they move into unsupported temporary accommodation, and also to build their experiences into a positive ‘feedback loop’ between tenants and local actors.

Rather than rely on the Westminster government’s agenda in this area, we propose local but system-wide changes designed to empower tenants to have more control over their own journey, and to have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of the people who live in unsupported temporary accommodation.

Key recommendations

• New formal, local bodies – temporary accommodation boards – should be established to bring together the activities of neighbouring housing authorities, public services and the homelessness sector. Partners should be mobilised to gather, share and monitor information about local bedspaces and the individuals living in them, to inform referrals and signposting towards appropriate accommodation.
• Temporary accommodation boards should create and maintain live ‘greenlists’ of acceptable local bedspaces and ‘blacklists’ of unacceptable bedspaces using the data they gather and aggregate. Tenants should be offered detailed information about their options, while blacklists would be used primarily to stop tenants flowing into the worst-quality properties, and to incentivise landlords to make improvements.
• A clear set of standards should be developed for the unsupported temporary accommodation submarket, and local authority housing teams should make full use of the new powers provided by the Housing and Planning Bill to aggressively target the temporary accommodation sector and improve or close down the poorest properties. Temporary accommodation boards should be charged with developing a single tenancy agreement for local bedspaces, setting out the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords, details of services and service changes, and a named point of contact for tenants in the event that issues arise at the property. And tenants should be supported to make complaints, including by allowing them to reclaim a proportion of the housing benefit previously paid to their landlord.
• Arrangements should be put in place to ensure that proper placement and in-tenancy support exists to help individuals manage their stay and to prevent their cycling in and out of unsupported temporary accommodation. This should include ‘warm handovers’, where the person referring the individual goes with the tenant to check the condition of their new home and provide support with paperwork and settling in.”

“England and Wales’s prison system could do better at reducing crime and rehabilitating offenders: it is currently a hugely expensive and highly inefficient arm of the public sector. As the number of prisoners continues to rise, and as the Ministry of Justice budget is faces further cuts, this is clearly unsustainable.

This paper argues that reform is needed to address the inherent flaw in our criminal justice system: that the bodies that could take action to reduce offending have neither the financial power nor the incentive to do so. This is because many of the services and agencies that could act to reduce offending are organised and controlled at the local level, whereas the budget for prison places is held by central government.

The challenge, therefore, is to ‘unfreeze’ the resources that are locked up in the prison system, and ensure that local services and agencies are enabled and incentivised to use those resources to both prevent crime and develop alternatives to custody. At the moment, incentives work in precisely the wrong direction: if a local authority invests in high-quality services that keep people out of prison, the financial benefits accrue to the Ministry of Justice (as it spends less on prisons as a result) rather than the local authority, which ends up meeting the costs of ever more people using their community services

The recent drive to devolve power and resources to groups of local authorities and city mayors could hold the answer to this problem. The government has already successfully experimented with devolving elements of the youth justice system to local authorities, as well as granting greater powers over transport, skills and health services to some of England’s major cities and counties. In this report We propose that this approach be extended to the management of low-level adult offenders, who make up the bulk of ‘churn’ within the prison system. This would involve giving city mayors or combined authorities a budget to cover the costs of these offenders, but charging them for each night that an offender from their area is held in prison. This would give local authorities resources to invest in preventative services and alternatives to custody, and give them a strong financial incentive to ensure that these investments deliver results, while also ensuring that money and responsibility for the reduction of reoffending is located where it can best be exercised.

This report presents case studies of a number of youth justice programmes in the US and England that have proven effective at reducing pressure on prisons and reoffending, drawing from them eight principles that should underpin the reform and devolution of the adult offenders budget. Bearing these principles in mind, it sets out detailed recommendations for the timings and mechanisms by which the government should pursue these reforms – which bodies should be allowed to bid for control of the custody budget, how targets should be set and oversight and accountability ensured, how funding and savings should be managed and how, in time, funding for probation services for low-level offenders should also be devolved.”

The introduction of Universal Credit (UC) will leave working families worse off on average, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said.

The report below comes from the BBC News pages on line:

“UC, which combines six benefits into one monthly payment, was intended to be more generous than the current system but the IFS said cuts to the programme meant this would not be the case. It had said that UC would encourage people into work and save £2.7bn a year. Ministers said the IFS had ignored other benefits such as extra childcare.

Universal Credit’s single payment replaces six current benefits, including Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

According to the IFS research, an estimated 2.1 million families will face an average loss of £1,600 a year, while 1.8 million will gain an average of £1,500.

Its figures suggest 1.1 million homes with no-one in paid work will lose out by about £2,300 a year, while 500,000 are expected to gain of £1,000. Working single parents are said to face an annual loss of £1,000.

The new payments system still only affects a minority of claimants, but it is gradually being rolled out across the country.

Single parents

Robert Joyce, the author of the IFS report, added: “The potential gains from simplifying the working-age benefit system remain mostly intact: Universal Credit should make the system easier to understand, ease transitions into and out of work, and largely get rid of the most extreme disincentives to work or to earn more created by the current system.”

The government has always said that Universal Credit (UC) would encourage more people to find work.

The IFS said that was true for most people, but not all.

It said that single parents, for example, had less of an incentive to work under UC than under the old system.

Where couples are concerned, UC encourages just one of them to find employment, rather than both, the IFS claimed.

Single parents claiming UC will keep 8% less of their earnings than previously, its figures suggest.

Although Chancellor George Osborne abandoned cuts to tax credits in the Autumn, cuts to UC announced last summer will still go ahead.

From this April the amount that anyone on UC can earn before their benefits are cut will be reduced.

This so-called Work Allowance will be £4,764 for those not claiming for housing costs, or £2,304 for those who do.

Once claimants earn above that amount, they lose 65p for every pound they are paid.

From April 2017, parents making new UC claims will only be able to take their first two children into account, while the first child premium will be abolished.

Separately, a committee of MPs has also complained that UC is getting further and further behind schedule.

The Public Accounts Committee report accused the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of being “evasive” when asked about the delays.

But the DWP said that the programme was being rolled out “safely and securely” and would be completed by March 2021.

The overhaul of the welfare system has been driven by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who argued that too many people were trapped on benefits.

But shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith said Mr Duncan Smith’s claims were “in tatters”.

He said “everyone can now see that successive cuts to Universal Credit have destroyed many of the work incentives that were supposed to be the very reason for the scheme, hitting single parents particularly hard”.

The government has always said that no individuals will lose money as a result of the changes. New claimants for UC will also be helped by transitional support.

And a spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “Universal Credit will make work pay and increase financial incentives for people to work more, while also bringing the welfare bill under control.”

He added: “Universal Credit also includes a wide range of additional benefits – including increased childcare and more support from a dedicated work coach both things that were ignored in the IFS’s analysis.” “

Seputy director of regulation Jonathan Walters’ presentation at the National Housing Federation’s Risk Conference from 14 January.

Jonathan Walters also spoke at the National Housing Federation’s Future of Welfare Reform event on 21 January. Download his presentation here.

The following uppate was provided to HAs this week by the NHF:

LHA cap

We fully understand the urgency and the level of concern there is about the potential cap of Housing Benefit to LHA levels. I know that without swift clarification and real certainty from the Government, this cap could have a catastrophic effect on supported and sheltered housing and accommodation for vulnerable under-35s. We are pressing for clarification that would resolve these issues and we are also absolutely clear that no tenant over pensionable age should be impacted by this cut. This is an absolutely top priority for the team here, and we are speaking with officials and ministers across government on an almost daily basis about the need to quickly resolve this issue, stressing that supported and sheltered housing schemes are at risk now because of the change.

I know that this is an incredibly urgent issue for many of your businesses and for the people you support, so I will keep you updated about any further developments. 

Housing and Planning Bill updates

There have been a number of positive developments in the Bill following lobbying work by the Federation and by many of your organisations. 

•           Compensation for sales under Right to Buy

Following conversations with the Federation, the Housing Minister Brandon Lewis made a statement in the House of Commons that clarified ‘grant will be paid to housing associations as compensation for the Right to Buy discount. The terms of the grant-making power in the clause will enable it to be considered a revenue grant, so it will be sufficient to classify the grant as income.’ It is useful and welcome to have this confirmed, but we are clear that the agreement with the Government was always made on a voluntary basis dependent on associations receiving full compensation. If this had not transpired, or if it should ever cease to be the case, the agreement would simply no longer stand.

•           Pay to Stay

Having pushed hard for Pay to Stay to remain voluntary for housing associations, I am pleased to confirm that this is now reflected in the Bill. This means that housing associations will be able to apply the measure if they feel it is appropriate, but it will remain at the discretion of your organisation.

•           Section 133 on valuations to LSVT properties

The Federation has been lobbying for the removal of restrictions in the way Large Scale Voluntary Transfer (LSVT) organisations are able to value their stock for loan security purposes. An amendment to the Housing and Planning Bill removing the current disposal consents means that this restriction has now been lifted. This will potentially allow LSVTs currently valuing their stock at Existing Use Value – Social Housing (EUV – SH) to access higher values and unlock additional capacity for the development of new homes at no additional cost to the public purse.

•           Changes to the planning system

We have also secured a number of important changes to the planning system, announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review. Local authorities will have a new power to grant permission in principle on land for housing, which aligns with our zoning asks. This will make more land available and send a clear signal to developers that land is suitable for development, speeding the process. The Government has also included housing as part of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects, which will speed up larger scale housing developments.

Local authorities must now put local plans in place for 2017 to ensure that land is found for housing in a way that suits local people, and that land for affordable housing is delivered. We will continue to stress that local authorities should be given the freedom to plan to meet objectively assessed needs to deliver the tenures that are most needed locally. Finally, the Government’s new register of brownfield land will again speed development and clarify what land is available for delivery, something we’ve called for since before the General Election. We are now pushing to see this register expanded to cover all land.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

We know that the 1% reduction in social rents is a really important issue, particularly for those running supported housing schemes. As the Bill has progressed through the House of Lords, we have been pushing hard – alongside a number of members – for an exception for specified accommodation from the rent reduction.

We have built support from peers across the political spectrum and worked with a group of 30 peers to raise the issue in a letter published in The Times. We continue to discuss the issue with ministers and in Parliament ahead of the Bill’s next debate on 27 January. We hope the consensus on the need for an exception for specified housing will encourage the Government to change its position and ensure these vital schemes are protected.

Sector Image Review – your views needed

Finally, in a time of such change and housing so high on the political agenda, the reputation of the housing association sector has never been more critical. There has been real progress with key political stakeholders over the last few months, with Brandon Lewis making a number of positive comments, and calling housing associations “professionally run and managed organisations, with very clear intentions about doing the right thing for their tenants” in the House of Commons.

This is extremely welcome, and reflects the sector’s ambition to deliver more homes and its efforts to engage constructively with the Government on issues like Right to Buy. But we still have some way to go. There are stakeholders and commentators who have little awareness of what we are and do, and we have little profile among the general public. Feedback you’ve given us via 1,000 Conversations and elsewhere suggest that decision makers and opinion formers don’t always understand what we do and how well we do it.

The Federation has therefore launched a new project, Sector Image Review, to address this, which we’ll be launching at our Leadership Summit in February.”

In late January – the NHF provide the following update and support for HAs rlating to the RTB:

Launch of the Voluntary Right to Buy pilot scheme

Applications from tenants in the pilot areas will open in the week commencing 25 January. DCLG will post the news on their website while the pilot housing associations will issue local press notices and handle their own social media activity, as well as continuing to work with the Federation on other targeted media.

Last week, residents in the pilot areas received communications from their landlords about the VRTB pilot to ensure they were aware of the pilot ahead of the application process opening. As predicted the number of tenants expressing their interest in VRTB has increased as a result of this activity. So far queries from tenants have centred on the application process, the value of their properties, their eligibility and joint ownership with family.

The housing associations in the pilot are continuing to work through the application process and application pack. Sovereign will manage all applications online while the other associations will issue application packs.

All applications will be date stamped so we can identify when the maximum pilot numbers have been reached.

Please do contact me if you have any queries.

Heather Bowman, Sovereign

Dates of upcoming workshops

Right to Buy Section 106 and restrictive covenants invitation workshops

10 February 2016
Timings: 10.30am – 12.30pm; 1.00pm – 3.00pm; 3.30pm – 5.30pm
Holborn Bars, 138-142 Holborn, Holborn, EC1N 2NQ

This has been an area of real concern for members as it is not currently clear how such arrangements will work in the future. The central premise of affordable housing remaining at an affordable price for future eligible households is obviously a challenge within the VRTB context. Housing associations are legally bound by the terms of the Section 106 agreements and restrictive covenants attached to their land title, and these obligations may limit your ability to sell social/affordable rented properties.

The complexity of unpicking these issues means that homes developed through Section 106 have been excluded from the VRTB pilot. However, given the number of homes likely to be affected nationally, a solution will need to be found before the wider roll out of the policy.

We hope that members who have raised issues about how VRTB will interact with the terms of existing Section 106 agreements and other restrictive covenants, and are likely to be affected by it, will join us at one of three workshops with DCLG and the HCA. These are designed to help us explore the issue in more detail, understand its potential impact and identify ways to mitigate its effect.

To help us prepare for the workshops, it would be very helpful if members could share examples of the terms of the Section 106 agreements and restrictive covenants that apply to you. We’d also appreciate it if you could indicate the amount of your stock affected by this issue. All information you provide us with will be treated as strictly confidential.

Right to Buy LSVT workshops 

Charitable HAs will still have to apply to a government body for permission to dispose of stock, despite ministers’ drive to reduce regulation.

The Housing and Planning Bill, currently going through parliament, will remove the requirement for associations to obtain consent from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) to dispose of stock.

Inside Housing has suggested:

“Many associations will have to instead obtain consent from regulator the Charity Commission. The rule will only hit organisations registered as charities with the commission.

Up until now landlords have been exempt from needing Charity Commission consent due to the HCA regulation, which the government is planning to remove. This is because the Charities Act 2011 exempts organisations if they are already required to obtain consent from another statutory body.

According to an HCA list, around 600 English housing associations – a third of the sector – are charities registered with the commission, although many of these are small almshouses that would not often need to sell stock. Stock transfer landlords Bolton at Home, Poplar Harca, Halton Housing Trust and Helena Partnerships are among the landlords registered with the Charity Commission.

Most housing associations are classed as ‘community benefit societies’ and do not have to register and would therefore be unaffected”

Eleven of Greater Manchester’s housing associations have won the right to deliver their first public services contract through a pioneering joint company – a £353,000 contract to deliver accredited employment, training and placement opportunities in the area.

The Skills for Employment programme, which is funded by the Local Growth Fund and European Social Fund (ESF), marks the first use of this company to secure a contract.

The providers expect 12,000 local people to benefit from the support it will provide over the next three years, with delivery commencing this month.

The contract will be managed by The Manchester Growth Company (MGC), a consortium of companies focused on growth in Manchester, and delivered by the housing associations. One Manchester, a 12,500-home provider, will lead the work which includes 10 other providers from across the region.

According to Inside Housing:

“Dave Power, chief executive of One Manchester, said: “This is an excellent opportunity for Manchester Athena and One Manchester to demonstrate that the term ‘housing association’ can be fairly deceptive.

“Manchester Athena delivers much more than housing alone and we’re absolutely delighted that our quality, consistency and ability to deliver, has been recognised by MGC and the Skills Funding Agency through this bid.”

Athena is the ‘delivery arm’ of a partnership between the region’s social landlords, and will be used to bid for public contracts, particularly programmes focused on employment. The landlords hope the company will position them well, particularly post devolution, to manage and deliver major contracts.”

Stock transfer organisations that fail to adapt their board memberships in a changing operating environment will face governance problems, a report has warned.

Here is the report:

lsvt – the future

According to the NHF:

“Research carried out by consultancy Altair found Large Scale Voluntary Stock Transfer (LSVT) landlords that had failed to change the types of people on their boards since their stock transfers faced “challenges in their governance arrangements”.

LSVT landlords, which hold 44% of the 2.7m housing association homes in England, have traditionally differed from traditional housing associations in terms of their local focus, retaining close ties with founder local authorities and tenant and councillor participation in governance.

The report, commissioned by Magenta Living, Incommunities and Bolton at Home, said research into LSVTs’ specific governance arrangements is outdated, with little academic study in the last five years. It said: “Yet, due to recent developments in the operating environment and the increased diversification of the sector, the need to understand best practice approaches to governance, particularly in the LSVT sub-sector, has never been more pertinent.”

It said the impact on business plans created by recently announced government policies, including the 1% annual rent cut, and the Right to Buy extension, will “place increasing pressure on organisations to ensure that they have board members with the skills and experience necessary”.

However, the report, entitled LSVT governance that is fit for the future, found “many [LSVT landlords] have introduced board pay, streamlined their arrangements, and reduced the size of their board to enhance and supplement their approach”.

“Most significantly we have found that there has been, and continues to be, a move towards more skills-focused governance arrangements.”

It added: “It is apparent that those who do not adjust to the challenges… are likely to find the capability, viability and adequacy of their organisations’ governance threatened and their effectiveness and resilience undermined.”

The report also said the government should revise its guidance to place “the required emphasis on the need for adequate skills when transfer organisations are created”.

The research was based upon questions to a range of landlords, including a recent survey undertaken by the National Housing Federation of more than 70 LSVT organisations.”

“The plan emerged as the government pressures social landlords to become more efficient. The results of its analysis would be used to influence in-depth assessments (IDAs), with high-spending landlords required to explain their costs.

The director of regulation at the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA, said she was looking at introducing a “regression analysis” on housing associations’ operating costs.

A regression analysis is a statistical tool that involves isolating factors that might influence costs – such as managing a large portfolio of supported housing – in order to attain a better picture of a costs compared to the rest of the sector.

A previous HCA regression analysis in 2012 found “clear differences” in operating costs between landlords. Matthew Bailes, then-director of regulation at the HCA, said the analysis showed boards needed a firmer grip on their VFM

Speaking at a Capita regulation conference Ms MacGregor said the HCA would use the regression analysis in their “in-depth assessments” of landlords.

She said providers that could not explain particularly high operating costs could have questions to answer in their IDAs.

“When we did it last time, we found that about half of the cost differential could be explained by a range of factors but about half couldn’t,” she said. “If we did it again and that was our conclusion, what we would want to talk to you about in a helpful way is can you explain the other half?

“[We will ask if] you know… about your efficiency compared to other organisations.”

Ms MacGregor said unlike in 2012, the HCA was unlikely to name the organisations if it published its regression analysis. Inside Housing understands the plans are not a result of pressure on the HCA from government.

The HCA’s regression analysis in 2012 pulled together detailed analysis of costs for every provider with 1,000 homes or more between 2005 to 2011.

In September, David Cameron said social landlords had not “been through efficiencies… and I think it’s about time that they did”.

Since the 1% rent cut was announced in the July Budget, housing associations have been making cuts to their staff budgets in order to reduce costs.” ”