Written evidence submitted by Nottingham Community Housing Association [EXA 015]
NCHA is a social landlord and care and support provider in the East Midlands. We manage 10,000 homes and deliver 1,000,000 hours of care and support services per year. We are submitting evidence to the inquiry as we are concerned about:
All of our supported housing is commissioned and/or endorsed by the local authority.
There is a wide quality range depending on the circumstances of supported accommodation.
‘Exempt’ housing provision refers to all supported housing where the landlord is not-for-profit and there is some care, support or supervision provided that is more than minimal, as described in housing benefit regulations.
Most of the exempt accommodation that NCHA encounters is commissioned and contracted by the local authority. The contract specifies the level of quality required, and there is usually an approach to quality assurance which may include data returns, audits and other compliance checking.
We are also aware of an increasing number of non commissioned services where people’s needs are not being met, and in some cases the lack of support in the ‘supported’ housing is damaging to the individual and results in more support needed to bring them out of crisis than would have originally been needed.
Where the landlord is transparently covering the additional costs of supported housing through the HB-eligible service charge, and only providing those services that are needed by the tenant because of their vulnerability, then financial viability and value for money are possible.
Registered Providers that are regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing already have to demonstrate how their services represent value for money to customers.
Un-registered landlords do not have to demonstrate VFM, but may be challenged from councils’ housing benefit teams. HB teams are not best placed to determine VFM: they should be assessing compliance with HB regs only.
NCHA’s view is that local authorities with strategic housing responsibility should require non registered providers of supported housing to demonstrate VFM in their rent and service charge levels.
Regional differences are created by the degree to which local authorities shape the local supported housing market. For example some local authorities create homelessness pathways where people can only be referred to approved providers on their pathway.
After the ringfence around Supporting People funding was removed in 2009, many short term supported housing services closed, resulting in an undersupply of supported housing in some areas. Following the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 there has been an increased homelessness duty on local authorities. In some areas there hasn’t been enough short term supported housing that local authorities need to refer people into, creating an opportunity for newly formed community interest companies to establish unregulated supported housing to meet the demand. In some cases (particularly thinking of Nottingham and Derby) this is well-intentioned but poorly executed, leading to increased risks to the vulnerable individuals and ultimately more demand on public services where they are eventually referred when reaching a crisis again.
Unknown.
We do not know the proportion.
We believe that all exempt accommodation should be endorsed by the local authority, or even better, commissioned. The local authority has strategic housing responsibility and knows the housing need in the area. Ideally it should be funding support and prevention services, but if not it should be approving any providers who want to access exempt levels of HB.
Registered/non-registered
As the Regulator of Social Housing is concerned with protecting the interests of tenants and protecting social housing assets, it is in a good position to investigate issues relating to exempt accommodation. The updated consumer regulations will further support this. It is not necessarily the case that every registered provider is delivering high quality supported housing, but the fact that they have to follow the Governance & Financial Viability, Rent, Tenancy and VFM Standards in particular will ensure that if their supported housing is poor quality the RSH can issue a notice or judgement and they risk losing their registered status.
Therefore we do not believe that any further regulation of RPs is necessary.
Commissioned/non-commissioned
As stated above, most of the exempt accommodation that NCHA has come across is commissioned and contracted by the local authority. The contract specifies the level of quality required, and there is usually an approach to quality assurance which may include data returns, audits and other compliance checking.
Non-commissioned services need to find a way to fund the support service in order to meet the HB exemption. This could be through tenant direct contributions, fundraising or other means. As there is no third party involved through funding or a contract, the quality of the service is governed solely by the provider’s own policies. In this instance HB teams are the only ‘gatekeeper’ deciding whether or not it is exempt. As they can only use the housing benefit regulations to allow or deny the HB claims, it is absolutely not their role to do quality assurance, the most that they can do is make a referral to DWP for fraudulent claims. This is not sufficient to ensure quality. Therefore there is a considerable risk that non-commissioned services are poor quality.
The service should cost what it costs to provide a good quality service with no profit. We should not be prescriptive about costs as many factors influence the cost of a service such as location, throughput, intensity of support and other services provided. Providers should required to be transparent about their costs with housing benefit teams and demonstrate that their services are needed. Many housing benefit teams already require transparency.
As stated above, exempt accommodation should only be provided if endorsed by the local authority.
Registered Providers should continue to be regulated by the RSH.
Non- Registered Providers should be quality assured by the local authority, who should have the power to remove their exempt status.
Non- Registered Providers should be required to demonstrate how they meet the national statement of expectations for supported housing, and be subject to audit assurance of their self assessment by the local authority.
As Registered Providers are already regulated they should be passported through some or all of this.
No – costs, expectations and quality are not transparent to prospective tenants. There should be a national database for example using homeless.org.uk
January 2022