Hossack wins latest warden cases
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Campaigners for sheltered housing wardens have won legal cases against Barnet and Portsmouth councils.
The High Court ruled in favour of campaigners who argued against the removal of wardens. They were represented by solicitor Yvonne Hossack, who is bringing a series of judicial reviews against sheltered housing providers.
Portsmouth had already removed the wardens and introduced a mobile night service. It was ordered to reinstate wardens by 8 January.
Barnet – known for its idea to remodel itself on budget airline easyJet – will not be able to proceed with its plan to replace wardens with a peripatetic support with alarm service. Judge Milwyn Jarman ruled both had acted unlawfully.
Earlier this month the High Court ruled in favour of Ms Hossack in another case. It found Circle 33 Housing Trust had acted unlawfully by removing a live-in warden service without consulting residents first.
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Readers' comments (18)
Norman Adams | 17/12/2009 10:11 am
Well done Yvonne and well done everybody who has stood up and not just accepted what was happening to them.
Its taken a year plus of hard work and stress to set the dominoes in place BUT in the new year [2010] we expect to see housing provides across the social housing spectrum taken to task
And the ruling parties from the complete colour spectrum adjusting they’re policies to fit the new rulings
We have all the parties doing wrong – we have seen though this talk of we would act differently if in power – look across the country and you find – Conservative , Labour and Liberal Democrat controlled councils removing Wardens and replacing with ‘floating support’
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kass | 17/12/2009 11:25 am
Fantastic victory to stop these senseless social landlords making lives of their tenants even more a misery than already it is,
It shows that where and when possible tenants can achieve a lot in uniting against landlords' vctimisations.
I look forward to Ms Hossack's next victory for tenants.
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phoenix | 17/12/2009 11:25 am
Well done ?--Mrs Hossack has used large sums of legal aid when the outcome will still be the same--the residents never want to pay the full cost of a resident warden, neither do Supporting People and as there's no moral reason why other Council tenants should subsidise the warden service, these Councils will be back to the start in removing the wardens--at even more cost to all residents due to the huge legal and administrative costs incurred due to this ludicrous campaign by a professional soap boxer !!.
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tmcnabb40@yahoo.co.uk | 17/12/2009 12:46 pm
Christmas cheer for the vulnerable, where would we be without this "lady of conscience" If we had more yvonne hossacks in this world what a better place it would be. Best wishes from northampton.
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Joe Halewood | 17/12/2009 2:31 pm
Phoenix makes some strong points many of which I agree with.
Generally, residents dont want to pay the full costs of a resident warden service and, generally, SP do not fully fund its cost either. I fully agree there is no moral or other argument why sheltered tenants should be favoured over other vulnerable people in supported housing, even NIMBY groups.
Yet I fundamentally disagree with his comments over legal aid (and the public purse.)
It cannot be ever acceptable not to challenge vulnerable people being shafted by landlords or councils (SP). To allow that is far more immoral and offensive. That point is emphasised by the legal decisions of Barnet and Porsmouth and the earlier one this week of Garbet v Circle 33. If vulnerable people were not wronged then the court would not have ruled they were, its that simple.
The Garbet case is interesting for its specifics of cost that were revealed in the legal transcript. The scheme has 50 units and all sheltered tenants pay (self paid or through SP) £22.32 each per week. The landlord, Circle 33, is thus receiving well in excess of £1000 per week even allowing for voids / non payers and this is way above the full costs of providing a resident warden service.
So in that case sheltered tenants are paying more than the full costs of the service and, while this may be unusual across the country, it does deny the general points mentioned above. In fact the likelihood is that sheltered tenants there have been overcharged for the costs of the resident warden service that they have lost.
So, the landlord must have been making surpluses from the service charges and this calls into question the landlords decision not to replace the retiring resident warden with another one. It also disallows the usual reasons, that is reesidents not paying the full cost or SP not funding it correctly.
Yet in that case, the courts didnt make the RSL go back and change and put in place a new resident warden. The court and the judge copped out in fact - a view shared by many solicitors and barristers on another site and not just my opinion.
SP systemically fails resident warden sheltered housing and so the fault lies with central government ultimately and local councils far more so than social landlords, councils or RSLs. The funding crisis it has created has been known about since 1999 by all and so it is largely government to blame and not landlords.
That said, Hossack and any other solicitor has the right to seek legal aid on behalf of vulnerable people shafted by this systemic fault of SP or councils or landlord decisions and long may it continue. It cant be the case as Phoenix alludes to that council budgets override the law - the it will cost you more in the long run so just sit back and get on with it argument - and they need to be brought to task by similar actions to those above.
And finally, sheltered housing saves the public purse massively as do all forms of supported housing by the governments own figures. So any argument that it will cost more in the long run is similarly flawed. The real 'criminal' and 'immoral' cost to the public purse is councils paying legal costs to defend their illegality and attempts to shaft vulnerable people.
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Bill Caddick | 17/12/2009 3:17 pm
A hollow victory as it will potentially lead to the demolition of sheltered housing . All sheltered housing support and care costs should now be borne by the receivers of the service and not spread across all tenants. I bet no-one would pay out of their own pocket for a resident warden.
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Tatty | 17/12/2009 3:24 pm
Pheonix I totally agree with you. This whole thing has been a waste of time and money and the outcome will not change. Resident wardens are not sustainable and all this is doing is drawing out the inevitable. Unless people are prepared to pay for this 'insurance' support then it should only be for those who have a proven need if the onus is on the public purse to pay for it.
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Joe Halewood | 17/12/2009 5:12 pm
Nobody has said that resident wardens dont provide a good service or is against the model per se. The only arguments against the resident warden model (RWM) is its not sustainable. Is that the case though?
The costs of a full RWM include warden salary, rent loss of accommodation, and all other costs (pens paper % of provider back-office costs such as Hr etc etc) come to somewhere in the region of £30-40k per annum, or £600 to £800 per week.
So in a 50 unit sheltered scheme each resident needs to pay (directly or thru SP) about £12 - 16 per week. The Circle 33 Garbet case had this at £22.32 per person for 50 residents so was distinctly affordable and sustainable - and the residents paid and the service was not cross-subsidised by other general needs tenants.
Yet the national average SP payment is or was in the only official figures released just under £12 per person per week.
Hence if any RSL is only paid £12 per week by each resident and the scheme has less than 50 residents then the costs dont add up and becomes unsustainable. The only options are increase the service charge or replace the warden. That dilemma has been known since 1999 and is a systemic fault with SP and SP levels are the problem (whether the RSL initially charged enough, or was allowed to because of stock transfer agreements, or because local council SP team wont pay any more than that).
BUT, and its a huge BUT, if council landlords / providers have to pay the existing levels of SP because the law says the alternative course of action is unlawful then they have to pay!
Councils are not above the law. The argument that this will mean savings elsewhere is a nonsense as sheltered housing does save the publi purse. Moreover, this argument is like me saying "I knew I had to pay income tax your honour but I had other priorities" - it simply doesnt wash and is frankly offensive.
SP had and has as a key aim that all services should be transprently funded and be able to stand on their own two feet - a laudable and correct aim. Yet as the above figures show its largely down to economics of scale. If the sheltered scheme has 40 or more units then its likely to be sustainable, less than this and its not.
Yet - the alternative in visiting support costs more per hour of support delivered and again actual and official costs demonstrate this. So visiting support (erroneously named floating support or FS in sheltered housing case) buys less support from the cash limited pot and is more expensive.
FS is also a poorer service quality as it is less proactive and takes longer to reach what can be life or death support. The councils that advocate it as some form of panacea or better-targetted support or more equitable support in that it can be cross tenure fail to see that it is both costlier and less qualitative as a model.
The fact that councils and RSLs in Circle 33 case have acted unlawfully and spent significant sums defending those unlawful decisions seems by some to be inconsequential in the above arguments!
Bill Caddicks last sentence is plainly wrong. He says "I bet no-one would pay out of their own pocket for a resident warden" - Yet they do. Look at the Garbet case and all 50 residents not only have a legal right to a resident wearden they also have a legal responsibility to pay for it. I dont know how many are self-payers and how many (of the 50) receive SP funding - yet either way they are legally responsible through the tenancy contract to pay for it.
That system is the same all over the country that has the RWM. If they are not pay the full costs then that is because of one of the following: -
- the costs have not been calculated correctly, or
- the landlord is unable to increase for any reason, or
- the landlord is still trying to cross-subsidise, or
- the council SP teams wont pay enough, or
a combination of the above.
Yet, it is standard that tenancy contracts say or very strongly imply that residents have a legal and contractual responsibilty to pay. So to say no-one will pay is wrong.
I agree fully that residents should pay for the services and not be cross-subsidised and this is largely because that principle applies to all other forms of (long-term) supported housing. Sheltered housing tenants are no more morally worthy than other vulnerable residents with mental health or learning difficulties etc.
Yet, in terms of the public purse, the official figures do show that for every £1 spent on sheltered housing saves the public purse about £6 (http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/financialbenefitsresearch - is the link for those who wish to know more).
So, local and central government agree that sheltered housing saves the public purse not costs it, yet disingenuously claim it is not sustainable. That is simply bad economics - the provision of sheletered housign and supported housing is an 'economic good' - something we all collectively share the benefit of. Or in as plain a way as possible, remove it and we all end up paying more in taxes for the effects of that - higher and longer hospital admissions, higher costs of care etc.
One final point - another go at IH. This is not about Yvonne Hossack and sensationalist headlines of a personal nature. Its a significant legal case that will have far-reaching effects and not about the cult of personality. Tens of thousands of vulnerable sheltered tenants have been wronged by unlawful landlords and IH fails to see this and chooses to make this about one individual. Thats just plain wrong and offensive to those vulnerable people involved.
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kass | 17/12/2009 11:00 pm
This is a great victory... I do not see why a country which can find money to wage continuous war overseas year after year should not find money for vulnerable tenants. Surely between the choice of spending billions on chinook choppers and keeping resident wardens, the British public will overwhelmingly support keeping the wardens.
Anyone who blames Ms Hossack for wasting public money does not realise that the people wasting money are the senseless landlords who embarked in cutting the wardens in the first place. Therefore any cost of these cases should come from cut in salaries of the landlords departmennt directors who instigated the abolition of warders.
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Jim Paton | 17/12/2009 11:56 pm
Congratulations to all the tenants fighting their contemptuous, arrogant landlords, to Yvonne Hossak, and to Joe Halewood for so comprehensively demolishing the "unsustainable" nonsense.
Nothing is sustainable if artificial conditions are imposed which makes its continuance impossible, whether that was the intention of the conditions or an unintended consequence. I would not be sustainable if someone had their hands round my neck and was squeezing ever tighter. Should they stop strangling me or should I just give up and stop breathing? Phoenix and Tatty should submit their answers on a postcard, please.
There are several stranglers in this case, but one of themain ones is the misconceived SP system, which was a ramshackle machine at the outset and has become more dysfunctional, counter-productive and bodged together with string and gaff tape ever since.
Setting arcane conditions which fail to sustain something do not make it unsustainable. Joe's most telling point is that every pound spent on sheltered housing saves £6 in public expenditure from other budgets. I hope anyone still stuck in the "unsustainable" groove will check the reference he gives and consider the breadth and complexity of care for vulnerable people, rather than just their own very narrow segment of it.
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