Homelessness Action Team January 2008 update

This update is aimed at those with a role in preventing or tackling homelessness, giving you news about the role of the team, examples from a range of organisations and other useful information. We want you to contribute so please send information to hatenquiries@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk

Overcrowding action plan

On 12th December 2007 Yvette Cooper, the Housing Minister, launched the Government’s Overcrowding Action Plan. This document outlines the progress made so far in tackling overcrowding and the actions that will now be taken.

The action plan identifies that £15m will be invested in 38 pathfinder schemes across the 33 London Boroughs and five areas outside London with high levels of overcrowding; Birmingham, Bradford, Leicester, Liverpool and Manchester. Pathfinders will be expected to use a range of means to tackle overcrowding including:

Securing better deals with the private rented sector;
Making better use of the allocations framework to give greater priority to under-occupiers;
Targeted support for under-occupiers to make them aware of the options available to them;
Cash incentives for under-occupiers;
Giving greater priority to severely overcrowded households;
Joint working with housing associations to ensure a common approach to overcrowding through an agreed standard, common housing register and reciprocal nominations; and
Supporting adult children of overcrowded households to explore their own housing options.

The plan expects pathfinders to join up existing funding streams, such as homelessness grant, to further embed overcrowding in the housing needs and options approach.

To underpin the work of the pathfinders and to support wider work to tackle overcrowding the Government intends to:

Consult on introducing a statutory reasonable preference category which gives greater priority to people who want to move to smaller properties;
Introduce Capital Moves to make it more attractive for people to move to smaller properties and easier to move across boundaries;
Develop further approaches to improve mobility;
Encourage the development of regional and sub-regional choice based lettings schemes that offer more choice to both overcrowded and under-occupying tenants; and
Widen the remit of housing advisors to support the development of strategies to reduce overcrowding.

Updating the overcrowding standard
The statutory overcrowding standards are the minimum standard against which local authorities assess overcrowding. A household who falls below these standards is entitled to seek support from their local authority who is obliged to find them alternative, more suitable, accommodation.

The Minister is committed to updating the standard used to the bedroom standard that has previously been used to estimate overcrowding using data from the survey of English Housing data. Initially, the pathfinders will use the bedroom standard as a minimum level of assessing overcrowding. This standard allocates a separate bedroom to each:

Married or cohabiting couple;
Adult aged 21 or more;
Pair of adolescents aged 10-20 years of the same sex; and
Pair of children aged under 10 years regardless of sex.

Any unpaired person aged 10-20 years is paired, if possible, with a child aged under 10 years of the same sex or, if that is not possible given a separate bedroom. The same applies to any unpaired child aged under 10 years.

The standard is then compared with the number of bedrooms available for the sole use of the household.

The full action plan can be found on the CLG website.

What it means for you
The Homelessness Action Team has always discussed overcrowding with the organisations with which we work because it is very closely linked to homelessness.

The starting point for most housing organisations is to understand the levels of overcrowding and under-occupation in the homes that you manage and in the wider community. Our experience is that the quality of this understanding is quite varied. Most organisations have a fairly good ‘feel’ for where there is overcrowding and in which stock it may be concentrated. However, the majority of organisations do not have accurate data on those actually occupying their homes and, therefore, the priorities that may be drawn from that data.

Some associations have completed a ‘tenant census’ recently, often in response to the Housing Corporation’s guidance on equality and diversity. This is a real opportunity to obtain up to date information that can be input to housing management systems so reporting at different levels can identify those areas and communities that show the greatest pressures due to overcrowding.

Housing associations operating in the 38 pathfinder areas should be proactive in contacting their local authorities to discuss how they can be involved in local plans to tackle overcrowding.

Gallions Housing Association hosts a pilot under-occupation scheme for the South East London Housing Partnership. The scheme targets under-occupiers and assists them to move, utilising the released property to house an overcrowded household from the same landlord, with the resulting property allocated to the host local authority to nominate a household.

The Overcrowding Action Plan outlines some of the ways in which organisations can respond. The Homelessness Action Team is keen to hear from those organisations that believe that they already have effective ways to tackle overcrowding and from those looking to develop their approach so we can support you.

Working in partnership

In previous updates we have outlined the results from research commissioned by the Housing Corporation to support the key themes of its Homelessness Strategy. So far we have covered the Access to Housing Information Sharing Protocol and the report on Efficiencies in the Lettings Function. In this update we cover the research; “Tackling Homelessness – Housing Associations and Local Authorities Working in Partnership” written by the Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York. Recommendations in the report cover issues including:

The need to have greater strategic planning of services at a sub-regional level;
The scope for improved training and education to overcome the misunderstandings and miscommunication that can lead to operational tensions;
Recognising the tensions that can arise in pursuing the three policy agendas of tackling homelessness, controlling ASB and promoting mixed and sustainable communities, there is the need to avoid unreasonable expectations;
Improving partnership working with a wider range of organisations;
Improving data collection and data sharing;
Avoiding an over-emphasis on Supporting People funded services in developing and implementing local homelessness strategies.

This research provides an insight into the way partnerships work across the country, highlighting the great variation in how effective they prove to be. There are many pointers from which those looking to build partnerships can take guidance.

The full report is available on this site.

Events

These are some of the events being organised that may be of interest to those working around homelessness. If you know of future events please let us know so we can include them.

CIH Seminar – Everything you need to know about temporary accommodation and homelessness
Manchester, 31st January 2008

Shelter Homelessness Prevention Conferences
Birmingham, 21st February 2008
Guildford, 11th March 2008
(The HAT is helping to run some workshops)

Capita National Homelessness Conference
London, 31st January 2008

CLG Homelessness Summit aimed at local authorities
Cambridge, 6th February 2008
Plymouth, 27th February 2008
Bristol, 28th February 2008
Birmingham, 19th March 2008
London, 10th April 2008

CIH Seminars – Choice based lettings
Leeds, 21st February 2008
London’ 28th February 2008

CIH Housing Advice Conference
London, 18th March 2008
(Mark Meehan will be chairing the conference)

NHF Housing Care & Support Conference
Coventry, 3rd & 4th July 2008

The HAT goes on

The Homelessness Action Team were originally appointed on a secondment basis for the period of a year. You’ll be glad to hear (or we hope that you are!) that the team will now continue at least until the end of March 2009. This gives us much more time to work with a wider range of organisations, provide greater support to those we have already met and widen our remit to a certain extent. For example, we will look to provide greater advice on how to tackle overcrowding, as mentioned earlier in the update.

If you have not met us yet or would like us to do further work with you following previous contact, please contact us.