Localism Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. Amendment 12 would require local housing authorities to provide written notification of housing and homelessness advice and assistance given under housing option schemes and to undertake other measures for the prevention of homelessness. Central to many councils’ current approach to homelessness and its prevention is the concept of housing options. Under this model, people who approach the council for assistance are required to have a formal interview in which advice on housing options is offered. This is a prerequisite not only for those seeking homelessness assistance but for those seeking to join the housing register or to apply for social housing under a choice-based letting scheme. Under the current system, housing options advice is subject to virtually no statutory guidance. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, drew attention to the recent report by the Local Government Ombudsman, and I should like to say a little more about that as it is highly material to this part of the Bill. That report highlights instances of council gate-keeping, where local authorities delay or prevent homelessness applications for no good reason. It notes how many people are prevented from making a homelessness application even when they are clearly in a priority need category. It warns that councils could be guilty of maladministration, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, pointed out. It also states that some councils fail to do enough to prevent people becoming homeless, fail to look into whether a person needs help and fail to recognise an application for help with interim accommodation when someone is legally entitled to it. The ombudsman’s report specifically calls on councils not to use homelessness prevention activity to block people from making applications, illustrates why this amendment is necessary to ensure minimum standards for housing option services, and, crucially, recommends that councils explain any decisions in writing. The ombudsman, Dr Jane Martin, said: "““We see too many cases where individuals have suffered injustice at a particularly precarious moment in their lives when they most needed help. Often extremely vulnerable, they can find themselves sleeping rough or on people’s sofas, struggling to find the foothold that would allow them to change their circumstances. When councils fail to give them a helping hand at that key moment, it can affect that individual for years””." In many instances, people are not being permitted to make a homelessness application. In other cases, they may accept the offer of a private sector tenancy, believing this to be made under one of the statutory homelessness duties, only to find that the authority does not regard itself as having taken a homelessness application at all. The amendment would ensure that people who seek homelessness advice are fully aware of whether they have made a homelessness application, and are given a letter clarifying the advice that they have received. The amendment was spoken to briefly in Committee by my noble friend Lady Doocey. The Minister responded by saying that the amendment would place requirements on local authorities to provide advice and assistance that were too bureaucratic and that she would resist it for that reason. However, I hope that she will be prepared to look at this again, because the findings of the Local Government Ombudsman—we shall have further debates about the role of the ombudsman when considering later amendments—clearly show that there are significant problems with the service that some local authorities provide, and that there is a need for minimum standards for housing option services to ensure that they adhere to existing homelessness legislation. There must be a guarantee that people will not be turned away without meaningful support, or prevented from making a homelessness application when they are entitled to do so. The amendment would not encourage bureaucracy, since many good local authorities already provide this type of service as a matter of best practice, and the requirement to provide written statements of advice or client care letters is standard practice in the advice sector. It is a basic level of service in most other advice agencies and a core element of services contracts such as legal aid contracts delivered by agencies such as Shelter and Citizens Advice. The requirement to provide written notification advice would also make it more likely that authorities would record data covering the reasons why people approach them for assistance, the type of household and the advice given. Such local data would be essential to inform local planning decisions, documents and tenancy strategies, which is a new duty required by the Bill. I turn to Amendments 13, 14, 15 and 16. Amendments 13 and 14 relate to the notification of homelessness advice for non-priority-need homeless people. They link to Amendment 12 and would ensure that people who are homeless but are not in priority need and therefore entitled to a duty of advice and assistance are given improved notification of the support that they receive. Experience shows that single homeless people who approach their local authority for help are often given inadequate advice and assistance and can be left with no choice but to stay in overcrowded conditions or with friends or family, to squat or to sleep rough. One-third of single homeless people applying to their local authority did not even get to see a housing adviser, according to a report by Crisis earlier this year. Others may be given unhelpful advice, wrongly signposted, sent to hostels that are full or given written material that is not entirely helpful. Amendment 14 would also require local authorities actively to consider using their existing discretionary power to accommodate non-priority- need homeless households. If they chose not to exercise this power, they would have to give a reason for the decision in the notification of homelessness advice. Finally, Amendments 15 and 16 relate to the emergency duty to accommodate. The aim of the amendments is to ensure that non priority-need homeless people are entitled to emergency accommodation. At present, if a household is deemed to be in priority need but intentionally homeless, in addition to providing advice and assistance the authority has a duty to provide suitable accommodation for a period that will give the householders a reasonable chance of finding accommodation for themselves. The amendment would extend that duty to cover homeless people who are deemed not to be in priority need. This is a complex set of amendments relating to the rights of people who are homeless and the duties of local authorities to provide advice and support for them. However, given the overall context of newspaper reports over the summer stating that there will be a rise in the number of homeless people, we should take the matter seriously. There is going to be a rise in homelessness in the next few years. It seems to me that in order to explain to local authorities what they are required to do and to give voice through your Lordships' House to the views expressed by the Local Government Ombudsman, the Government need to move a little more in the direction of supporting the aims of Amendments 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to give us some further confidence that this matter will be looked at again.