Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee
Oral evidence: Pre-legislative scrutiny of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill, HC 809
Wednesday 16 November 2022
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 16 November 2022.
Members present: Mr Clive Betts (Chair); Bob Blackman; Mrs Natalie Elphicke; Ben Everitt; Mary Robinson; Mohammad Yasin.
Questions 25 - 61
Witnesses
I: Nic Harne, Assistant Director, Neighbourhoods and Housing, Hull City Council; Sue Ramsden, Policy Leader, National Housing Federation; Lucy Hadley, Head of Policy, Women’s Aid Federation of England.
II: Jasmine Basran, Head of Policy and Campaigns, Crisis UK; Sam Lister, Policy and Professional Practice Officer, Chartered Institute of Housing.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Nic Harne, Sue Ramsden and Lucy Hadley.
Q25 Chair: Welcome, everyone, to this morning’s session of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee. This morning we have a second session on the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill, which is a Private Member’s Bill that one of our Committee members, Bob Blackman, is introducing with a Second Reading in the House on Friday. It looks at the problems we identified in a previous report about something called exempt accommodation, accommodation for people who have particular needs. We had concerns about the fact that those needs were not being properly supported, some of the accommodation was in a terrible state, and communities were badly affected by how it was managed. The intention of the Bill is to deal with some of the issues we found.
This morning, we have three witnesses before us in the first panel and two in the second. At the beginning, I would just ask the Committee members to put on record any interests they have that may be directly relevant to this inquiry. I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Mohammad Yasin: I am a member of the Bedford town deal board.
Mrs Elphicke: I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Mary Robinson: I employ a councillor in my team.
Ben Everitt: I am a VP of the LGA and I employ a councillor in my team.
Chair: Joining us is Bob Blackman, who is here to observe today as the sponsor of the Private Member’s Bill. He will be listening to our deliberations and reflecting on them with regard to the Bill he is introducing on Friday, which is very welcome indeed. Over to our first panel of witnesses, I will just go down the table and ask you to introduce yourselves.
Nic Harne: My name is Nic Harne. I am the assistant director of neighbourhoods and housing at Hull City Council.
Lucy Hadley: My name is Lucy Hadley. I am the head of policy at Women’s Aid Federation of England.
Sue Ramsden: I am Sue Ramsden from the National Housing Federation.
Q26 Chair: Thank you all for coming this morning. When we did our inquiry, we heard a lot of really bad stories and personal experiences from people living in exempt accommodation and neighbourhoods significantly affected by the proliferation, in some cases, of exempt accommodation and the problems that created. We said they were some of the most shocking examples that we had ever seen in any inquiry. Do you think this Bill is going to improve the situation, both for those who live in exempt accommodation and for those who live in neighbourhoods with exempt accommodation?
Nic Harne: At the most basic level, yes, I do. It seeks through better oversight and regulation to improve standards. What we find in Hull is that those neighbourhood and resident experiences are a symptom of poor support. By improving the support and accommodation, in turn you improve things for the wider neighbourhood and for residents.
However, just to counterbalance that slightly, I feel that the Bill very much tackles the rogue end of the spectrum. Something we have been working hard to do in Hull is to improve the sector as a whole. The idea is continuous improvement. Some of the powers within this Bill are existing ones. We welcome them coming together but, critically, we would like to see that support element, ensuring more than minimal or the supported housing standards, come to the forefront in this, to give us the tools to address that.
Chair: Eventually, that is a question of the standards being set, which we will come on to ask about in due course.
Lucy Hadley: Similarly, we strongly support the aims of the Bill in improving oversight. In turn, we would very much hope that that improves the lives of people living in these forms of accommodation. We are a network of 170 member services delivering domestic abuse support across England. Particularly since 2020, our members have been raising the concerns you have outlined in your report. Obviously, for survivors of domestic abuse, this kind of accommodation is not only of poor quality; it can be really dangerous and traumatising, and prevent them moving on to independent lives. Absolutely, tackling the rogue providers and improving oversight is going to be really important for survivors of domestic abuse.
Ultimately, to improve the lives of women and children escaping abuse and trying to access support, we need to see sustainably funded, specialist services that are designed very specifically to meet their needs. Refuges are not just a roof; they are not just a form of accommodation. They are providing holistic wraparound support to survivors and their children. Those specialist services with expert staff who are trained in domestic abuse, understand its dynamics and can support women and children to cope and recover from it are the best-placed organisations to provide that support.
We absolutely need to tackle the rogue providers, but we also need to ensure that those specialist services are sustainably funded. Particularly in the context of this Bill, we need to ensure that there are no unintended consequences for those specialist providers as well.
Sue Ramsden: Representing good-quality providers in this market, we welcome the intention of the Bill to tackle abuses within the system and rogue landlords. We share the Committee’s shock at some of the findings that are detailed in the report. These poor-quality services have tarnished the reputation of supported housing. Supported housing is a success story in this country. It is a range of services that help people live independently and get their lives back on track. We have a wealth of evidence to show the cost savings of delivering these services in terms of what the alternatives are for these people, so we really welcome legislation in this area in order to provide targeted tools for local authorities to deal with problematic providers.
To your question about whether it will solve the problem, I think the problem is wider. There is an issue about what the alternatives might be for the people currently living in this very poor-quality accommodation. As you recommended within your report, there is a need for an adequate supply of affordable social housing to meet housing need and adequate funding for support services. In order to provide quality, person-centred support for individuals, many of whom have complex needs, we need properly funded support services.
On the overall question about tackling the problem, my final point is around the resources that are available to local authorities in order to implement effectively both these new powers and the existing powers that they have. That came across very strongly in the Committee’s report, the evaluation of the pilots, and the work that DLUHC has done in funding a number of local authorities across the country.
Q27 Chair: One of the concerns that many people in the exempt accommodation have is that they complain and they are told, “Put up with it or you are out of the door”. Then they go to the local authority, which says, “You are intentionally homeless”. Does the Bill give protection to people that means they will not be intentionally homeless if they leave exempt accommodation in these circumstances?
Sue Ramsden: It is important that that element is there within the Bill in terms of protection and intentional homelessness. Overall, when we look at reforming the system, it is also really important that we understand how powerless tenants and residents feel, and that is also partly because of the lack of alternatives.
Lucy Hadley: That provision within the Bill is welcome. Ultimately, there is a question of what is in legislation and what is implemented on the ground. We saw that with the Domestic Abuse Act, which changed priority need status for survivors of domestic abuse. That was in the legislation. Unfortunately, we have not necessarily seen it translated consistently across the country, so there is a question about implementation as well. It is very welcome that it is there.
Nic Harne: We find that people in this sector are the least likely to complain, so it is really important that we support them, enabled through that process. In Hull, we currently deal with it by using discretion around whether people are intentionally homeless or not. One of the concerns we have pored over with this Bill is how it would actually be applied, and how it would relate to any licensing regime that might come in. On the reading of it, it looks like it is very absolute in nature, so a small breach could trigger intentional or unintentional homelessness. How can the local authority then cope and deal with that? Actually, it is about how we deal with the provider and ensure that the accommodation and support gets up to the correct standards. At face value, absolutely, we would deal with it in that way, but the concern is how the legislation might be applied.
Q28 Mary Robinson: The Bill wants to look at the quality and quantity of exempt accommodation. Would you say that this Bill does enough to provide local authorities with the powers they need to control the quality and quantity? Nic, you mentioned that this Bill tackles rogue elements, but you are already doing other bits of work around the rest of it. Do you think the Bill will drive out every existing rogue provider and make it impossible for rogues to set up in the first place?
Nic Harne: There are lots of aspects of the Bill to go through on that, but certainly setting supported housing strategies, depending on how they get embedded into the planning system, will impact on quantity. Giving us the tools to say that there is sufficient quantity within the market to provide for need would be very useful. I note that the Act is quite discretionary around the planning and whether that can be brought in for use as a quantity tool.
On quality, it is very interesting in the sense that, as I said, it will set a bar for the quality of that accommodation through the licensing, but the element that it will not necessarily do is about how we drive those improvements and the wider, softer side of what we do with the sector. The way I would describe this in more simple terms is that it will create a very reactive regime that allows for licensing and targeting the worst elements within it, but will miss the proactive element where we go out and work with support providers, which the levelling‑up funding has allowed us to do, in order to improve quality and standards. It is a yes and a no on that one.
Q29 Mary Robinson: When this Bill is in place, which I hope it will be, will a rogue provider just say, “Not for me”?
Nic Harne: We have some evidence in Hull, through our work and our supported accommodation team providing a gateway role. We have not seen the sector grow as much over the last couple of years as we had previously. It might encourage providers who may be of the persuasion to be at the end of the spectrum not to apply into areas that have licensing or better controls over that. What is difficult to say is where those already existing in that provision will end up, and whether they will go somewhere else or remain within it and improve.
Q30 Mary Robinson: Lucy, do you have any comments? There is this idea that rogue landlords might just move and switch their proceedings somewhere else.
Lucy Hadley: From working with our member services on this issue, we found that there was often a huge amount of knowledge, expertise and insight locally, from both the local authority and our members, about the rogue providers, what was happening and the impact it was having on people’s lives. In many places, it seemed that there was absolutely no power to do anything about that. We would really hope that the powers to create licensing schemes, to require providers to be licensed, and sanctions such as fines, would mean consequences for rogue providers that would help remove the incentive to establish poor-quality exempt accommodation. Ultimately, again, it depends on how effectively it is implemented locally, and whether all local authorities take up these powers. The national oversight element there is really important.
Rogue providers moving on and targeting other areas is a big concern for us. We noticed from feedback from our members that rogue providers, and sometimes community interest companies, were targeting specific areas of the country where there was cheaper property. They are obviously very wise to the way that they can exploit the current provisions, and we fear that they would look at other means to do so. For us, it is really important to ensure that providers of support in this area are not for profit. As your Committee report said, looking at where the income is ultimately going is another really important aspect of this.
Sue Ramsden: I agree. There is more that can be done around tightening scrutiny of not-for-profit status, and looking at organisations at that organisational level rather than scheme by scheme. Registered housing associations are very clearly regulated organisations with not-for-profit status. It is much more straightforward for a CIC. There is far less scrutiny for an organisation to set itself up as a CIC, so there is a lot of work that could be done in that area that I would like to see.
To your question about what the Bill will achieve, there is a concern among the provider community that it will drive behaviour within local authorities, because the implementation of this licensing scheme is quite resource intensive, whereas what we need to see across a local community is a whole authority approach around the housing needs of vulnerable people. We need a strategy around supported housing rather than a strategy around rogue landlords, because we need to meet the housing needs of these people who are there within our communities.
Q31 Mary Robinson: Is it the contention that, within local authorities, it will drive their behaviour towards another type of provision?
Sue Ramsden: That is a concern. Also, we need to see this in the context of significant cuts in support funding over the last 10 years.
Q32 Mary Robinson: Put yourself in the mind of a rogue landlord. What loopholes are they going to exploit that we are not seeing in this Bill? Would it be setting up a CIC or doing things in different ways?
Sue Ramsden: You need to look at what a landlord needs in order to make a significant profit. You need reasonably cheap property and you need to be able to charge high rents, so those are the key things in driving people out of this market rather than moving them. It is important to concentrate on those two areas.
Nic Harne: The holes that are exploited around property condition and not keeping your property maintained in the way that it should be are a way of driving excess profit. Through our work over the last two and a half years, we found three and a half hazards per property visited. Over 60% did not meet the decent homes standard. Through better oversight within that, I believe quality would be driven up but, as I said previously, the care element is hopefully what this Bill will introduce to drive up the quality alongside that as well.
Q33 Mohammad Yasin: Nic, the Bill would give local authorities the power to create licensing schemes for exempt accommodations. What can we learn from other licensing schemes that local authorities are running already, such as for homes in multiple accommodation?
Nic Harne: A key point to take away from that licensing is that the requirement to submit applications and for us to work through, do a visit and understand that something is safe can be quite resource intensive and process-focused. As I said previously, there is quite a reactive element to that. We looked at the numbers of properties that we have for licensing, and we believe the cost for Hull itself might be around £2 million over five years to implement licensing. This cost would effectively fall on to the landlord but is eligible for the service charge. It might push costs up in that sense, but hopefully overall costs would come down with a better sector.
One of the key concerns with licensing is the resources and skills to implement it. We really struggle with recruitment, and this will introduce almost the same amount again of properties that we currently have under HMO licence into the exempt sector, so we would need a lot of time to gear up and for training around that.
Finally, the point I would like to raise on licensing is about understanding how it would be implemented. The way it currently reads is against a property, but we also have the requirement around care and support. Properties turn over quite a lot, whether that is coming in and out of the landlord’s ownership or turnover of tenants within those, and ensuring adequate support levels could be quite resource intensive with any licensing regime. One consideration is how we look at the provider level rather than simply the individual property level that traditional licensing schemes focus on.
Q34 Mohammad Yasin: Do you think that, because of the associated issues, some local authorities might decide not to take this licence?
Nic Harne: An important part of the Bill is that this may not be an issue for every local authority, and it is really hard for me to speak for them. The urban authorities, like the one I work for, would definitely be wanting to implement it, but it would be really hard in terms of resourcing up against other licensing requirements we have. There is some crossover here with the HMO if the planning and the RP get-out clause is removed as well. Yes, there is serious concern that not all the local authorities could implement something on this scale.
Lucy Hadley: Just in terms of the Bill providing for some exemptions to the licensing scheme, the Government would be consulting on those. The domestic abuse sector, as your Committee outlined, would be one of those, because it is very different from other types of supported housing. Thinking about an exemption for specialist refuge services or safe accommodation for survivors of domestic abuse, there are a number of ways we think that could work.
There are already established quality standards in the domestic abuse sector. Women’s Aid has quality standards. Our sister organisation, Imkaan, has quality standards that services are already accredited with, and that is a very detailed process of looking at their policies, procedures and governance, and the outcomes they deliver for survivors. We would really want to see some kind of system that recognises the standards we already have in this sector and the forms of accreditation we already have, using that to passport specialist services through a licensing regime, but we would really want quite a thorough and detailed consultation with the domestic abuse sector about any exemption to the licensing scheme in that regard.
Sue Ramsden: The implementation of licensing is very complex and potentially very resource intensive. Ideally, in a resource-strapped sector, we would like to see as much money as possible spent on supporting individuals in decent‑quality accommodation to turn their lives around. We would be keen to see a licensing system that is nimble enough to be targeted, with a very detailed process of consultation around appropriate exemptions. Duplicating a system of oversight and regulation does not do anything to improve services; it is just an extra burden of cost and administration. It is really important that we understand what the purpose of the licensing scheme is from the start and that we are clear about that, and that there is then a very detailed period of consultation in terms of exactly how it is implemented.
Q35 Mohammad Yasin: There is a risk that these rogue providers who are kicked out from one local authority easily move to another authority that does not operate this licence. How can you address that?
Sue Ramsden: Licensing is just one of the tools, so we need to look at the whole picture. That includes the whole of the supported housing market within a local area, and that includes the local authority-commissioned services, the services that have much tighter control in terms of what the local authority is doing within an area, referral routes into services, the overall standards that are expected, and the check that can come through that at a local level. Licensing is just one tool within that.
Nic Harne: The point to raise on licensing set out in the legislation, which makes it different to what is existing, is at 5(3)(c) and (d) around the provision, care and compliance with the national supported housing standards. That is what we would be supporting that is different to what we can already implement in terms of accommodation.
Q36 Mohammad Yasin: Our report is saying that there is a limit to what local authorities’ strategies for exempt accommodation can achieve without further reforms to the planning system. In your view, are there further planning reforms needed alongside the other new powers that this Bill would introduce?
Nic Harne: I accept that it is a really big step, but currently what the Bill is setting up is that we do supported housing strategies. We are looking at the amount of need in the area, but licensing does not necessarily address the need issue of controlling the amount of properties that would come into the sector. The only real tool to do that is through the planning system. Currently, under class C3(b), for example, you can move through the freeze within dwelling houses. It would have to be a separate class use, and we would welcome having better control of that, but we accept that that is quite a fundamental shift in where we are at currently.
Sue Ramsden: Your previous witness, who was responsible for drafting some of the Bill, described the planning option as a nuclear option. From a provider perspective, supported housing providers already have, in some areas, quite a lengthy process to go through in terms of establishing a new supported housing scheme, often for a client group where there may be local resistance to the prospect of seeing a housing scheme. Further changes to the planning system in this area could have significant unintended consequences.
The Bill takes the right approach in terms of putting that down as a marker of potential for change in the future if these other measures prove not to be successful, but it recognises what a significant change that would be. The experience of the existing planning system is that it is very complex, time consuming and costly, and can prove a barrier to good-quality providers setting up schemes, even where there is a clear housing need within a local area.
Q37 Mrs Elphicke: I want to explore oversight and standards, and within that also look at some of the proposals on consultation and statutory consultation provisions. Starting with the proposal to have a national expert advisory panel to advise the Secretary of State, my understanding is that, at the moment, that is intended to include representatives of the registered provider for social housing, local authorities, social services authorities, charities that are providing exempt accommodation and residents or potential residents. What are your thoughts on how the selection of that might be undertaken? Lucy, if you could also talk about what your experience has been of setting up the domestic abuse advisory panel, that would be helpful.
Nic Harne: From our point of view, we welcome having local authority representation on that, but the caveat is that we are a very diverse sector. Through the pilot, we have learned that we in Hull, even as an urban authority, are very different from Birmingham and Blackpool, and extremely different from rural authorities, so that is just something to bear in mind. We would really welcome the resident voice on that panel again. That is a really important element to come with it. Often, these are people with multiple disadvantages who have suffered trauma, so getting that point of view and lived experience is really important.
Q38 Mrs Elphicke: Is there anything specific on selection that you think could be brought to bear on that?
Nic Harne: It is only on the local authority point around making sure that that diversity is represented. That is all. I have no other comments.
Lucy Hadley: It is really important that there is national oversight, for the reasons we have already discussed. In terms of the lessons from the Domestic Abuse Act and the statutory duty, we argued during the course of that Bill for a national oversight mechanism that would oversee that statutory duty because, particularly in the refuge sector, two-thirds of women in refuge have moved from a different local authority area, so it is not necessarily just a local area. There needs to be that national network of services. We wanted to see an oversight mechanism with some real accountability and enforcement powers for the duty, where it was not being met.
What was enacted in the Bill was a national expert steering group that oversees the delivery of the statutory duty, and that is chaired by a Minister. It meets quarterly and includes quite a similar list as is the case in this Bill: representatives from local authorities, representatives of charities, the domestic abuse commissioner and a number of other different bodies. It is really important to get the representation right, so that it is not just one representative from each of those lists. As my colleague said, it is about diversity within those areas as well.
Also, I would recommend looking particularly at the powers of that panel. It is really good that it is chaired by an independent person, but what is not as clear is what teeth and powers it is going to have to intervene where things are going wrong. That is our lesson from the national expert steering group on domestic abuse. It has not necessarily intervened on issues where we have seen a real failure to adhere to the statutory guidance or to deliver the duty locally. It is about the accountability powers of that panel.
Q39 Mrs Elphicke: Can I just press you on that? In what way could the accountability structure be strengthened or improved? Would it be, for example, by doing a report to the Secretary of State that is published? What more do you think would be helpful?
Lucy Hadley: It is probably about going a stage further than laying a report. It is about ensuring that recommendations made in that report have to be acted on and listened to or reported back on by a local authority or another body in this sector. It is about going a stage beyond that and ensuring the panel’s recommendations have to be listened to and reported back on.
Sue Ramsden: The point about transparency is really important, whether that is reporting or clear accountability. It is about transparency to providers, residents, local authorities, and everybody with an interest in this.
I am also not completely clear on the remit. It needs to have a very clear remit. We have tended to use the term “supported exempt accommodation” as synonymous with poor-quality rogue providers. The term used within the sector is “supported housing”. It is what it is. It is housing for people who have support needs. Does it go broader than just the specific issue of tackling the problem of rogue providers? Can we turn it round to the housing needs of the people who live in these schemes rather than the emphasis on the rogue providers? In order for it to have a genuine role, and for the sake of transparency, it needs to have a very clear remit and purpose.
Q40 Mrs Elphicke: Building on that question of what a rogue landlord is, we obviously sit in some sadness today as a Committee, having had the coroner’s report into the appalling and avoidable death in Rochdale, which is obviously a housing association. Looking in particular at the role of registered providers as part of the group, but also you at the National Housing Federation as a statutory consultee, how do we make sure that we are focusing, across all aspects of housing, on where there is failure to deliver for people who have housing needs, just as you have described, rather than making an assumption that a certain type of landlord is a good landlord?
Sue Ramsden: That is right. Maybe it becomes a focus on people rather than the accommodation they happen to find themselves in. The purpose of this kind of advisory committee within the context of this Bill is initially, presumably, about the implementation of the objectives within the Bill, but this is such a complex area. In the future, I would hope that all of this activity makes housing providers, local authorities or Government have a much clearer focus on what supported housing is for and what the standards should be within that. Accommodation is part of that. Good-quality supported housing can be transformational, and I am sure people will have seen that within their own constituencies. Where we get this right, it works really well and needs to be preserved.
Q41 Ben Everitt: Sue, the broad thrust of your point here is the question of what problem we are trying to solve and whether the legislation does that. While we are talking about oversight and standards, I am interested in whether you feel that there is an adequate inspection regime mapped out currently and in the legislation.
Sue Ramsden: That would be attached to the licensing scheme and is also very resource intensive, so it needs to be targeted and concentrated on where there are real problems.
Q42 Ben Everitt: Yes. Do you feel that, as constructed, the Bill would be helpful or a hindrance to that? I am mindful of your earlier point about the potential for it to just drive compliance rather than a focus on the wider cohort of people who are in exempt accommodation.
Sue Ramsden: Yes, which comes down partly to the resources that local authorities have to implement this. In scrutinising and passing this Bill through Parliament, we need to be mindful of the context in which it will be implemented, which is one of a very tight local authority funding settlement.
Ben Everitt: Indeed, and, for anybody who knows anything about local authority finances, you can see the whites of their eyes right now.
If I move on to data, it is linked, to a large extent, to knowing who this cohort of people are and where they are. As a committee, it was jaw dropping when we realised that there was not an adequate dataset that was collected, held and shared by Government and across the regulatory framework. Put simply, the regulators did not know who they were regulating. We did not know, from various datasets, who this cohort of people were in exempt accommodation, which is frankly a fairly scary place to be, given the users of exempt accommodation. Sue, I will start with you, since we are chatting. What data on exempt accommodation should the Government collect, share and publish? Do you think that the Bill does this?
Sue Ramsden: Good-quality providers always want to be transparent about costs. Some services that are very expensive, especially services for people with learning disabilities, will come under the umbrella of exempt accommodation. Exempt accommodation is a housing benefit term and, for those people with very complex needs in very specialised accommodation, the rents and service charges tend to be high.
We want to be absolutely transparent, so we have no concerns around an open book approach to the provision of that data. It needs to be for a purpose, though. There is already data collected through various means by various bodies. As I am sure you have experienced when speaking to the various regulators, they do not always understand each other’s datasets.
Ben Everitt: At one point it looked like they had never met.
Sue Ramsden: Obviously, the gaps between the regulators and the lack of information sharing is one of the many reasons why we are where we are now. The approach to data needs to be proportionate. It needs to not place an undue burden. You need to recognise that the provision of data is a cost if you are asking an organisation, but the starting point is definitely an openness, a transparency, and a desire to recognise and meet housing need within a local area.
The best services are there with the full support of the local authority and full knowledge within an integrated system, because supported housing is about short-term, transitional services. It is about the right person moving into that scheme, receiving support in the right environment and then moving on. It is part of a system.
Q43 Ben Everitt: To paraphrase, we have the data we need in various arms of the local and national public sector, but we need to share it. Is that where you are coming from?
Sue Ramsden: We need to share it and understand what question it is that we are asking the data.
Q44 Ben Everitt: Thank you very much, Sue. That is very interesting. Lucy, the worry about data sharing, transparency and publishing is that this puts the survivors of domestic abuse at risk. Is this something you worry about in the legislation as it is drafted?
Lucy Hadley: Again, it is something that we need to think through really carefully in consultation. Obviously, it makes a provision for the collecting and sharing of data between the various bodies involved. As you say, it is really important that we prioritise safety in the context of domestic abuse. Far too often, we are still contacted by survivors whose personal details have been shared, and that puts them at huge risk. Yes, we absolutely need specific consideration on how we safely store or share any data on survivors of domestic abuse.
Obviously, when we are thinking about the cost of rent, that is not going to be person specific. There are lots of ways to collect, share and store data on domestic abuse that do not involve any kind of attributing factors. As long as domestic abuse organisations are involved in the development and design of that, we would not have any concerns.
Nic Harne: Interestingly, I think England is separate from Scotland and Wales in terms of registration of landlords, so just knowing who is working between different local authority areas can be really challenging and difficult. Also, linked to the previous question, these organisations can have very different and complex organisational relationships with others, and trying to unpick that and understand that better can at times be very helpful and useful.
We also will be operating a scores on the doors type function, where we will look at property condition, provider performance and support arrangements in place, and provide scores against those. Understanding new providers coming in from an area, how well they perform and how trusted they might be as an organisation would be extremely useful. I accept that it can be quite resource intensive for those to provide that information, but currently it is local authority reaching out to individual local authority in the absence of any national database.
Q45 Ben Everitt: Just while we have you, is there anything that we have not covered today and that you think we should be aware of?
Nic Harne: One thing that does not get picked up necessarily in the third report is this concept of the benefits trap, and people being able to remain in accommodation if they are starting to do well. As we move into a tighter licensing regime or with planning introduced, it might make that problem more difficult to solve. Alongside this, there might be unintended consequences. There might need to be more investment in things like move-on, which might not have been the intention of the Bill straight up.
Lucy Hadley: A licensing scheme can have unintended consequences, if it is not got right, particularly for small, specialist providers that are not commissioned. In the domestic abuse sector, I am thinking of services led by and for black and minoritised women, which are far less likely to be commissioned to receive funding. Often, because of the difficult funding and commissioning issues they have faced, they have poor relationships with a local authority, which might then impact their ability to be licensed if that was going to happen. It is important to get any exemptions to the licensing scheme right. Finally, there is also the issue of subsidy, which I know the Committee raised. Obviously it is not included in this Bill, but we really feel it should be addressed.
Sue Ramsden: I want to repeat the issue of subsidy. It is very important to see that recommendation in the report. However, it is very unlikely to change, so recognise that it drives local authority behaviour up to a point. That is the context in which we are working.
The only thing to add is about the importance of avoiding unintended consequences on the quality provider sector, and the delicacy and significance of the housing benefit system in underpinning people’s ability to afford the accommodation that they live in, whether that be good or bad. A point that has come up through this evidence is the value of looking at issues at an organisational level where possible, rather than in great detail, claim by claim.
Chair: On that last point about the benefit system, it is absolutely right that the benefits go to people in need, but it would also be very helpful if the DWP knew how much it was actually paying out in benefits and could tell the rest of us what the sums were. Thank you for coming in. That has been really helpful for the Committee to understand the details of the legislation and how you think it is going to be implemented in practice and deliver improvements. Thank you. We will come on to our second panel now.
Witnesses: Jasmine Basran and Sam Lister.
Q46 Chair: Thank you both very much for coming. I would ask you to begin by introducing yourselves.
Jasmine Basran: Thank you for having me. I am Jasmine Basran, the head of policy and campaigns at Crisis.
Sam Lister: I am Sam Lister, policy and practice officer at the Chartered Institute of Housing.
Q47 Chair: Thank you for coming. You have both been helpful in the formulation of this legislation, so that is appreciated as well as your coming today to talk to us. We did our report and heard shocking stories of the poor quality of exempt accommodation, the effect that had on people living in it, and the effect on wider communities. Both in terms of the residents who live in the accommodation and those who live in the communities where there is lots of exempt accommodation, do you think this Bill will actually improve the situation in the way that you would want?
Jasmine Basran: In short, yes. The impact on residents has been very much at the forefront as we have been developing the Bill. We are still working with people through our frontline services who are too scared to sleep at night. They are telling us they think it might be safer for them to sleep rough on the streets because the quality of the accommodation is so poor, and the intimidation they are experiencing from their landlord is so severe. The licensing provisions suggested in the Bill are really important for driving up that quality and making it difficult for rogue landlords to operate.
We feel this needs to be implemented in a proportionate way. There will be some providers in this sector who are not operating in bad faith and will need to be supported to improve their provision. However, we feel the licensing is a powerful tool to say to those who have no intention of providing the support, help and safe accommodation needed, “This is not the market for you”. As well as giving councils the powers to address it, we hope it sends a signal out to others who might be considering entering this market for profit.
Sam Lister: Yes, I pretty much agree with Jasmine there. One of the problems has been that residents in supported accommodation do not feel they have any power to push back. If they complain, they feel that the consequences would just be pushback on them, perhaps through the landlord asking them to move. If it is a complaint about support, one of the problems has been that there is not anything in existing powers to deal with support provision, so that is the major change that this Bill makes. As Nic pointed out, clause 5 gives the powers to actually regulate support, so that is the main change and the most important factor.
Q48 Mary Robinson: It is good to hear your positive responses to this Bill. Can we expect every existing rogue provider to be driven out through the implications of this Bill? Will it make it impossible for new entrants to set up if they are not interested in providing that good-quality support and accommodation? In other words, how can we stop this and prevent rogue landlords from moving to another housing sector too?
Sam Lister: I do not think for one moment that it is going to stop it. This Bill sets up a parallel scheme to the Housing Act powers around poor accommodation, and we know that there are still rogue providers not in the supported sector. The point is that there are enforcement powers to do that. This is providing local authorities with the tools to deal with these problems. That does not mean that they will magically go away just because of the Bill. It may put some off. We are hoping that it will do. Given the straight economic benefits of being able to pack loads of people into HMO style properties and get round the HMO regulations, hopefully this will make people think twice about that.
I agree with the speakers on the previous panel. What will matter is what resources local authorities have to put in to manage the whole system. That will be really critical around this as well.
Q49 Mary Robinson: Who will not be put off by this legislation and what loopholes will they exploit?
Sam Lister: It is like any form of poor housing and abuse at the moment. If people still think there is an economic benefit to be gained out of it, they might try to enter the sector. Through the licensing scheme, this sets up a gateway for that provision. At the moment, if somebody enters the scheme as a landlord and wants to set up, the only information that the local authorities initially have is through the housing benefit claim. That only collects details about things like income. It does not tell you anything about the quality of the support. The licensing scheme will reverse the burden of proof. There will have to be some evidence around the quality of the support to start with, so it will act as a little bit of a gateway to that.
Jasmine Basran: I completely agree with Sam that an important point on this will be resourcing the schemes, and I completely echo the points of the previous panel on that too. We feel that requiring standards to be met on the quality of the accommodation, the support services delivered and the governance—because there will be a fit and proper persons test as part of this—will be a deterrent. It will certainly require providers who are not meeting those standards to improve or they will not be able to qualify for the higher rate of housing benefit, so it will remove that financial incentive.
It is true that on the face of the Bill there are no provisions to prevent rogue landlords or bad faith operators from moving to another area, for example, where a local authority might not have the licensing scheme. However, there are safeguards in the Bill. One is that the Secretary of State can direct a local authority to set up a licensing scheme, for example if the local authority is slow to respond.
We also feel that this is where there needs to be a conversation about national oversight. We have the advisory panel in there to pick up this conversation on what national enforcement looks like if we are starting to see these problems move around and the rogues develop more sophisticated ways of evading regulation. We would like the advisory panel to be focusing on that and there are provisions in the Bill to start that conversation. As part of the consultation on the national support standards, there will be a consultation on alternative ways of enforcing those beyond licensing, so that starts a conversation about what this looks like if licensing is not an appropriate response for a local authority. If there is one scheme, how do we drive up standards and require providers to meet standards in order to qualify for that higher rate of housing benefit?
Sam Lister: To add to that, you have picked up a concern around landlords popping up in other areas. That is one of the reasons why the information sharing is quite important, so that information can be shared between local authorities. For example, if Hull has set up a licensing scheme, it might want to talk to adjacent local authorities about any particularly problematic landlords that it has had. Ultimately, in really extreme cases—we would not envisage this happening very often—there is the power to put landlords on the rogue database, so then that information would be shared nationally. In very extreme cases, those landlords could be subject to a banning order as well.
Q50 Ben Everitt: That follows on very nicely, Sam, because in our report this Committee recommended a compulsory registration scheme. Obviously, we are talking now about the licensing scheme that is within the Bill. In a previous answer, you actually mentioned that the provisions in this Bill run parallel to the legislation in a different Act. There is the potential for a huge amount of bureaucracy here but, from your previous answer, it feels like a compulsory registration scheme could work with a licensing scheme, and that would definitely help pick up, manage and drive out those rogues. Do you feel that we have the balance right there, that a registration scheme could work with the licensing scheme, and that the licensing scheme is adequate within the Bill as it exists?
Sam Lister: When we were talking about this, we toyed between registration and licensing. You normally have registration schemes where you do not know who the providers are, if we think about an ordinary landlord registration scheme. That is a problem. In this case, local authorities do know where all the landlords are, because, by definition, they have a housing benefit claim.
We just wanted to be honest about what we were implementing, which was licensing. The important thing, as I explained before, is that you are reversing the burden of proof. When a landlord enters the system, they at least have to give some initial evidence around the support. That is actually what the problem is. The local authority has the housing benefit claim in front of it, but it does not tell you anything about the quality of the support. The housing benefit collection data can only be information around rents and that kind of stuff.
This allows for that information to be given up front. Again, in the existing system, the only way you might get a flag is if somebody makes a complaint or if the local authority goes out to inspect every new scheme. There is not the resource available to do that.
I completely get your concern about there being overlapping schemes. In the way it has been set up in the Bill—this is one of the intentions Justin wanted to bring in, which is done in clause 5—if you come under this scheme, you will be taken out of any other licensing scheme. You would not have a situation where you would be in a HMO licensing scheme and in an exempt accommodation scheme as well.
Because of the way Justin had to construct the Bill, with a limited amount of space, that is not explicit, but the intention is that you would never get duality. The intention is to cover over the gaps that exist at the moment, not to put another layer on top of all of that.
Ben Everitt: That is reassuring.
Jasmine Basran: We did consider the case for registration. We decided that licensing is the more appropriate route at the moment. One of the reasons for that is that we see rogue providers exploiting registered provider status by being under the umbrella of a registered provider. There are a few other technical ways they do that. Licensing is a way to ensure that those loopholes, where we only bring out registered provider provision, do not still exist.
We have spoken to a number of small charities that have expressed concerns about the administrative and financial burden of registration. We wanted a proportionate response. I would really echo what Justin said in his session. Let us see how licensing goes. Hopefully, it will drive some of this out.
Sam Lister: There was a particular problem in Birmingham. I know Birmingham is fairly unique, but they were having landlords entering and, we think and they think as well, registering first as regulated providers in order to get round the HMO thing. That was one of the gaps that has been created. The Bill tries to make sure that gap is not there or cannot be escaped from.
Q51 Ben Everitt: Just to reassure me, we are not creating some bureaucratic nightmare and trying to play whack-a-mole with rogue landlords.
Sam Lister: The other thing about the scheme that is important to understand is the system of allowing passports through, which we have talked about. The important thing to get hold of, which will be for discussion once the Bill has passed through and you are sorting out how the regulations will work, is that, if the landlord has some evidence of the quality standard, they would hopefully be passported through and they would not see any change to the existing system.
The Bill is designed to cover up the gaps. Where you have people who are deliberately recalcitrant and will not co-operate, you will have the tools to do that. We would see that the passporting regime would be quite extensive. That would be done in co-operation with the industry, such as what Liz talked about. They have their own quality standard there. We would hope that those kinds of passport arrangements would be put in.
Mrs Elphicke: Moving to oversight and standards, I will start with oversight, if I may. I touched on the make-up of the national expert advisory panel in the earlier session. There were some important points made about ensuring there is proper diversity of representation in that. Jasmine, you made the comment about ensuring smaller organisations are reflected. The advisory panel will also be, it seems, advising on the implementation of the local authority review. Is that how you see this working? Something that will definitely happen immediately is that local authorities will be putting their strategies together. What do you see as the role of the expert advisory panel in the first stage of that?
Jasmine Basran: We absolutely see the role of the advisory panel as advising on, for example, the guidance and the methodology for those strategic needs assessments. We feel there needs to be a very robust national framework in which to operate in order to ensure consistency. We see the panel playing that role and having that representation.
We completely agree with the points made by the previous panel about the need for diversity on that, with, for example, representation across local authority areas. It gets that right.
We deliberately kept the scope of the advisory panel quite broad so it could look at bigger issues. We see it as a forum for issues to be brought forward, for example, if there are any problems with exemptions or unintended consequences on smaller providers. We very much hope we will not have those because there will be a consultation process and we expect Government to bring all those voices to the table.
We also see the role of that advisory panel as looking at the bigger picture, looking at the case for national regulation and advising on things like guidance and the framework in which this needs to operate, in order to ensure that the consistency is there and that it is proportionate.
Q52 Mrs Elphicke: Sam, particularly on the local authority strategic review, they have planned what we might need, but there is then no linkage through to, for example, an obligation in the local planning process to plan to deliver this or to work with others to do it. Is that the type of thing you could see the overarching steering group looking at once the baseline has been formed?
Sam Lister: Yes. The planning authority, which is the social services authority in England, has a role on the panel as well. I hope that is one of the things that would be covered.
Q53 Mrs Elphicke: Will this have enough teeth to do what it needs to do?
Sam Lister: It is an advisory panel. The teeth are in with the licensing scheme. If you look at paragraph 8 of clause 1, it includes information or advice about anything that, in the view of the panel, could have a significant impact. They are there to look at things like what this might do in terms of supply, if there are threats from the increase in regulation that this implies. They can pretty much cover what they see fit. Things might change as we progress.
Q54 Mrs Elphicke: I can see a lot of benefit in the flexibility of that scope and purpose. Moving on to the national supported housing standards, at the moment there is an “or” between property and care, support and supervision. They can bring in standards for the condition of the property or for the provision of care and support.
I just wondered what the thinking was around that, given that the provision of support is an integral and specialist part of this type of accommodation.
Sam Lister: You are right to pick up that care and support is the key thing we are trying to focus on. For some of the abuses—I gave the example earlier of landlords getting round the HMO standards by setting up as a registered provider—those property standards would be there.
I would not envisage them being much different from the standards we have at the moment. It is just an extra arm to deal with the support side, which they cannot set as conditions at the moment when it comes to setting the licence.
Q55 Mrs Elphicke: Would it be right that you might be passporting in, effectively, the standards of housing that were expected to apply and this would add the particular type of supported care that would be envisaged? Could it be in that sort of structure?
Sam Lister: Yes. If you have a registered provider, where they already fall under consumer regulation, there will be standards around that. You may have something that is a passport on that. If you are not a registered provider, you would fall outside HMO because you would go to whichever licensing scheme has the higher standard. This one has the higher standard because it is covering the support. You would still need the property standards there.
Q56 Mrs Elphicke: Yes, exactly. Thank you. That is really helpful. Jasmine, could I ask about the groups of vulnerable people? In the earlier panel, we touched particularly on survivors of domestic abuse. Are there other groups or types of vulnerable people who should have specific standards or specific consideration? That might be because they have particular vulnerabilities, language barriers or other challenges. What are your thoughts on that?
Jasmine Basran: If we are talking about exemptions, it is difficult to focus on groups of people purely for the reason that, for example, in the domestic abuse sector we know rogue providers specifically target domestic abuse survivors to say, “We can help. Come and stay with us”. We have seen the same with prison leavers. We have seen them target prisons and directly reach out.
If there was an easy way of having a list of people with support needs on the face of the Bill, we absolutely would have done that. We are seeing providers do that deliberately where they see there might be gaps in long-term sustainable funding and access to safe accommodation. They are using that to then bring people into really appalling provision.
We see the exemptions focusing more on where there is already existing regulation. For example, we do not want schemes that are subject to Ofsted licensing to have to be relicensed. That does not make any sense whatsoever. We would expect or like to see from the Government some consideration in the consultation of whether some sort of national accreditation scheme could sit alongside this.
As Lucy from Women’s Aid mentioned in the previous panel, the domestic abuse sector has this. We would like to see the learnings from that and that accreditation scheme being brought into this conversation. There may be others in the supported housing sector who can do the same.
My honest answer is that I can see the rogue providers targeting every single group underneath this, so, unfortunately, we cannot do it by group. There is absolutely a lot of specialist provision for which we do not think this will change anything whatsoever because they are delivering exactly what is needed for the people they are supporting.
Q57 Ben Everitt: I have a quick follow‑up. We have talked about licensing, about registration and about standards and oversight. It still feels a bit messy. It feels like we are covering a lot of areas and putting a lot of extra structures in. Are there any areas you feel the Minister, when this goes through its stages in the House, should give some clarity on?
Jasmine Basran: In terms of putting in a few structures, that is a fair point. This is a real belt-and-braces approach because we have seen such rampant exploitation.
I would like to take this opportunity to just reflect the comments of the previous panel. To prevent this in the long term, we need to see dedicated funding for support services and to address the chronic undersupply of generally affordable housing, which are both huge drivers of this issue but not within the scope of a Private Member’s Bill.
In terms of attention from the Minister that would be helpful, although there is a lot in the Bill, quite a lot of it is done as safeguarding or enabling provisions. We would really like to see a focus on the delivery of the licensing scheme, i.e. laying the regulations for the licensing scheme so that councils are given powers. In the first instance, that should apply to category 1 exempt accommodation. There are powers to extend that, if the issues move into other types.
Alongside that, there should be a conversation—that is linked into the national support standards and enforcement of those—beyond licensing about what might be needed in terms of national oversight in the long term. We see those as the two real starting points of this.
As the Bill says, in the future, if planning needs to be considered because licensing is not as effective, that can be brought back on the table, but we see those two provisions as being the main ones. That is within the broader context of a national discussion around resourcing and how we can support good providers to deliver what they need to.
Q58 Mrs Elphicke: I will conclude with a couple of short questions on the data and information-sharing provisions. Looking at the people who can share the data, I just wanted to explore whether it is envisaged that a local authority that had a scheme could share information with a local authority that did not have a licensing scheme.
Secondly, in terms of those groups, several times today we have touched on the role of the DWP and housing benefit. It is notable that the Secretary of State is envisaged to be the Secretary of State for DLUHC rather than the Secretary of State for DWP.
Could the provisions in relation to the sharing of data, as described in those functions, also enable the sharing of information about the benefit side of things, perhaps in amount if not individuals?
Sam Lister: Yes, that is the way it has been set up. Provided it is used for a purpose connected with the exercise of a function under this Act, it can be exchanged and shared.
Yes, I gave an indication in a previous answer that, where you have pop-up landlords appearing in another area, that is the kind of information that local authorities might want to share. They might want to do that in groups, particularly in the larger urban areas where there is no physical difference to the local authority boundaries, for example between Birmingham and the adjacent authorities, or in London or Greater Manchester, and where people can just move over the other side of the road. I would expect that information to be shared, particularly where they have somebody who is problematic. As I said before, if they ultimately end up on the rogue database, that is shared anyway.
There is also information that can be shared at the moment—it is not that it can be shared; it is actually public at the moment—around registered providers. If you have a registered provider that is problematic and that is reflected in its current grades as a social landlord, that information goes on the public register and other local authorities can see that. They have to record which local authorities they operate in.
There is some information that is out there already and some that this adds to. Again, it is covering over the gaps that are there at the moment. One example given to us in the evidence we collected on this was of a local authority that wanted information from the regulator, perhaps to compare the data that a registered provider had given the regulator about service charges with what it had put on the housing benefit claim form, to see whether it matched up. The local authority said that the regulator had to ask the landlord’s permission for that information to be shared. That is one of the gaps we were trying to make sure was covered, for example.
Mrs Elphicke: That is very helpful. I would hope that the Regulator of Social Housing would take notice of anyone who did not wish for that information to be shared in that way.
Is there anything we have not covered that you would like to raise with us and that we should be mindful of as we move forward to the Second Reading? I know we have touched on some of those comments. Is there anything you want to finish with?
Jasmine Basran: I want to end by saying that the approach of the Bill is very much to help drive up provision and stop the undermining of the really important role of supported housing. We know there are wider drivers that are needed to sit alongside that. We hope this starts the national conversation on that, and there are provisions in the Bill to enable that. We are pleased that, if this is passed, councils will have powers to start really tackling that. We think it will make a huge difference.
The other thing we have not mentioned, and as Crisis I really should, is that we do see it as really important to have the intentionality provision in there. I completely take the point made by Nic on the previous panel about the implementation of that, and guidance will be really important. It is absolutely right that people who are forced to leave because they are being bullied and intimidated or living in absolutely important conditions get the help they need.
We do hope this will be passed and strengthened as it is passed. Yes, we think it strikes the right balance between what is needed right now, future safeguarding and starting that national conversation about longer-term funding and access to mainstream housing.
Q59 Chair: I have two points to pick up briefly. We have to conclude there because we have to move on to questions in the House. There is no mention in these standards about the referral process, which is one of the concerns expressed to us on the Committee, where people are going on Gumtree to find out how they might get appropriate, or sometimes inappropriate, accommodation. Is that an omission?
Jasmine Basran: Yes, the intention is very much that the standards would look at referral processes and safeguarding as well. This will be picked up in the national standards.
Q60 Chair: Can it be, as the legislation is framed?
Jasmine Basran: Yes. The Secretary of State needs to consult on what the standards contain and what they look like. Yes.
Q61 Chair: It was mentioned before that there is an “or” in the Bill: “property or support”. There are a lot of instances of “may” in the legislation as well. To some extent it is an enabling Bill, is it not? It enables the Secretary of State to do a lot of things, if the Secretary of State decides that is what needs doing. Licensing was mentioned. It makes provision for licensing; it enables the Secretary of State. Could it be a bit tougher and say “they must”?
Jasmine Basran: Justin had originally drafted it as “must”. We spoke to civil servants and they made a very fair point. We feel the list in clause 5 covers the essential things you need in a licensing scheme, but we agree it needs consultation. If you put “must” on the face of the Bill, it pre-empts consultation. There are some real things, such as the exemptions and the fee structures, to ensure that they are proportionate, that need consultation.
We accepted the point that it needs to be a “may” on the face of the Bill. However, my understanding is that at Second Reading the Minister will be making commitments on bringing in the licensing scheme within 18 months. We will have commitments to strengthen that.
Chair: Yes, unless the Minister has changed two or three times by the time we get there. That is always a problem. Thank you very much indeed for coming. It has been really helpful for the Committee to understand your involvement in this and how the Bill has been framed to tackle the very challenging issues we identified from the evidence when we produced our report recently. Thank you very much.