You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Theresa May is now making amends on supported housing
Following the scrapping of the ‘crazy’ Local Housing Allowance cap plan, we are now having a proper dialogue about supported housing funding, says Tony Stacey
I have friends in AA. There’s a lot of it about – alcoholism that is, not car breakdowns.
A fundamental principle of AA’s 12-step programme is that when you make a mistake, you need to make amends quickly. If you don’t, the guilt can take you back to the bottle.
When the prime minister announced in the House of Commons on 25 October that the Local Housing Allowance cap should not apply to care and support – indeed to any social housing – she was making amends for the intransigence her predecessors had shown.
“The LHA cap plan made no sense in terms of value for the public purse, the devastation for residents and the damage to supply.”
The idea was clearly crazy from the start.
It made no sense in terms of value for the public purse, the devastation for residents and the damage to existing and new supply. And it was rank bad politics.
And let’s not forget the silver livings for the housing world.
We reminded ourselves that effective lobbying can work when faced with ill-conceived policies.
Also, that we cannot afford to fall asleep on the job again – we must keep telling the stories of our customers, how great support changes lives and what a valuable asset our nation has in its supported housing stock.
READ MORE
But we are now in a good place.
Ministers and civil servants share the same objectives as associations, local authorities and residents.
We agree, don’t we, that the new framework should provide great services, customers protected, value for money assured, local needs and strategies shape the system and that new supply should be encouraged.
We haven’t yet cracked how these objectives will be delivered, but we are now in a proper dialogue at last.
“Commissioning should not be restricted to local authorities.”
The consultation process has worked well. So often consultations are badly designed, and we end up trying to jemmy key points into answers to the wrong questions and resort to picking up the rest through lengthy conclusions. Not this time.
I have just clicked send on our response. I have seen the responses submitted by the NHF, PlaceShapers (and many of their members) and the Sheffield City Regions. They all say pretty much the same thing. If government is to achieve its objectives:
- The arrangements for short-term services need to be overhauled.
- In particular, the residency period should be substantially reduced – to, say, eight weeks – so that the number of people removed from the welfare system should be kept to a minimum.
- As currently formulated the two-year rule would take the welfare safety net away from more than a quarter of South Yorkshire Housing Association’s supported housing customers.
- Why would we want to remove this right from so many people?
- Service charges should be removed from the cap for rents in sheltered schemes; they are already heavily regulated anyway and a cap can’t take account of real cost variations due to for example, to enhancements in fire safety.
Commissioning should not be restricted to local authorities. Health and wellbeing boards are better placed. At the very least, health should have a seat at the table.
Planning for future services and the ring fences need statutory frameworks. Ringfences must be long-term.
The new framework should be properly piloted. Implementation should be pushed back to 2020.
There is lots more, of course, but these are the five key points.
We have wasted two years. Now let’s talk and get this right. Hello, my name is Tony and I….
Tony Stacey, chief executive, South Yorkshire Housing Association
