Government responds to ‘significant’ risks posed by supported housing proposals

Lee Buss-Blair, director of operations – care and support at Riverside, said that while the landlord “very much” supports the purpose of act, there are some proposals contained in the government’s live consultation that give it “significant cause for concern”.

Outlining his concerns in a comment piece for Inside Housing, he said one relates to the question of who holds the licence, therefore the liability for the quality of support, in cases when the landlord and the support provider are two different organisations. 

Riverside has a significant portfolio of supported housing where third parties deliver support from its properties.

In one of its models, managing agents are responsible for the support, repairs and upkeep of the accommodation, with Riverside solely responsible for the fabric of the building. In this case, Riverside contracts the managing agents through management agreements.

In another model, Riverside has all housing management and repairs responsibility, and the third party delivers the support through a Service Level Agreement. 

In neither model does Riverside commission the support being delivered.

“Rather, we work with local authorities to meet their strategic needs by allowing organisations commissioned by councils to deliver services from our buildings,” Mr Buss-Blair said. 

“However, the consultation suggests landlords could become licensees and have to assume new burdens for the quality of support provided as part of the new licensing regime, along with the risk of penalties and legal action.”

Mr Buss-Blair argues that this risks landlords becoming “quasi-regulators” of supported housing providers because alongside looking after the building and monitoring compliance of the management agreement, “we also need to monitor the quality of support provided and then work with the provider to improve areas of concern”. 

He said the unintended consequences of this would be “significant”, including a need to hire extra staff with the skill level to monitor providers.

Mr Buss-Blair said: “This would also place additional costs and burden on landlords to introduce systems to monitor provider complaints, safeguarding alerts, and customer and staff incidents etc, which will be a duplication of the support provider’s own processes and that of the commissioner.

“This comes at a time where the registered provider sector is already facing significant financial pressure.”

In response, a spokesperson for MHCLG said: “We are currently consulting on the measures in the act and will carefully consider all responses before implementing any reforms.”

The spokesperson also pointed to a proposal in the consultation that councils should have discretion to treat support services commissioned by a public body as complying with the National Supported Housing Standards.

However, Mr Buss-Blair said: “While passporting a commissioned provider will provide significant benefit when it comes to securing a licence, this will not mitigate the risk to the landlord of enforcement action if the commissioned provider delivering support from their property then subsequently failed to meet the National Support Standards.”