MPs call on councils to justify supported housing cuts
Local authorities must justify decisions to divert funding from supported housing to other services next year, a parliamentary committee said.
The Communities and Local Government Select Committee said the government should publish the amount of Supporting People funding it gives to councils for supported housing. Next year the fund will be amalgamated into a lump sum, the area based grant, given to councils by government to cover a wide range of council services. The committee said councils should then give good reasons for spending the money on services other than supported housing.
The committee made the recommendation in response to fears from several housing organisations that councils could spend Supporting People funds on other services after the removal of the ringfence next year, which had obliged them to spend it on supported housing. The report says pressure on council budgets due to the recession ‘poses a real threat to the future of some existing Supporting People services’.
The committee was not convinced that the new comprehensive area assessment would identify when councils were failing to meet the needs of vulnerable people through supported housing.
It said councils should be obliged to provide data for the national monitoring system of the benefits of supported housing, and to keep their commissioning and contract monitoring systems for Supporting People.
Providers told the committee that some councils had used European Union tendering rules as an ‘excuse’ to put even small contracts out for competitive retendering every three years, which was costly and burdensome for providers and created financial uncertainty. The committee said the government should publish guidance on legal and proportionate ways to commission services focusing on both cost and quality.
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Readers' comments (2)
Joe Halewood | 04/11/2009 2:00 pm
Cop out!
Why didnt govt keep the ringfence and remove the conditions on its spend? Simple but obvious solution for these hare brains.
This committe is really saying, we know you're going to raid this SP funding but do it discretely else well have political hell to pay for robbing vulnerable people. The simple and easy solution above would have kept the funding all on vulnerable people and allowe councils to have the flexibility they claim the removal would bring.
Cop out!
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Outside Inside | 09/11/2009 12:39 pm
So where is the coverage of this in the printed version of Inside Housing?
Perhaps there was a page missing in mine, but I can't see one line of coverage. And last month's report on Supporting People from the Audit Commission had minimal coverage.
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