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Getting in on the act

Martin Hilditch speaks to Sarah Rowe, senior policy officer at Crisis, about the new Homelessness Reduction Act

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Exclusive interview with Sarah Rowe of Crisis

Crisis’ campaigning saw the development of the Homelessness Reduction Bill (now an act passed into law) last year. How did it come about?

Crisis is very strongly committed to an evidence-based approach to doing things. We carried out this mystery shopping exercise before we started to think about legislation. It generated some quite shocking evidence about what happens to single homeless people when they approach a local authority for assistance.

In 50 out of 87 approaches to local authorities by trained volunteers presenting as having relatively significant support needs, people were turned away with no help or limited help. We had also commissioned research to look at the cost of homelessness. What the organisation then did was pull together a panel of experts to review the legislation and consider the changes that we needed but without undermining the protections for existing priority groups.

 

How did Conservative MP Bob Blackman get involved in tabling the Homeless Reduction Bill as a private members’ bill?

He received lobbying from a number of organisations, including Crisis, and was persuaded by the very strong arguments that Jon Sparkes [chief executive of Crisis] and Matt Downie [director of policy] were able to present [because of the research]. There was a ready-made piece of legislation.


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What was the atmosphere like as it became apparent this would move forward quickly?

In the summer, it became apparent that we may move forward with legislation sooner rather than later. It was very rewarding. There was a sense of a real moment building. It felt very positive and pushed us into focusing our campaign on pushing the bill forward.

 

There have been concerns from councils about the cost that putting the measures in the act into effect will have on them. Are they valid?

We think the government has gone some way towards addressing those concerns. It has committed £61m to the implementation. Part of the issue is the extent to which a move towards a stronger focus on prevention will deliver the kind of savings that one might expect may be delivered from the experience in Wales. Our approach at the moment is let’s get on. But also to make sure that we are gathering data to make sure we are measuring the impact.

I think the expectation is that [implementation] will take place in the next financial year.

 

What are the next steps? Is the campaigning now over?

Lots of local authorities are already out there developing best practice. We need to learn from local authorities that are already actively developing prevention approaches and share their learning.

One of our objectives is to promote the implementation of the spirit of the act, if you like. Moving towards prevention [away] from the gatekeeping approach that to some extent has been in place because of the way that the current legislation works.

 

What’s next for Crisis?

We are doing quite a lot of work around shared housing for single people. We will continue to roll out our work to get the message through that there are undoubted viability challenges. We are also starting to do some working around allocations policies in social housing to make sure that they are not disproportionately affecting single people.

 

Sarah Rowe is speaking at a session on homelessness prevention at 2pm on Wednesday 28 June in Charter 3

 

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