MINUTES
Meeting: Housing Committee Date: Tuesday 22 January 2019 Time: 10.00 am Place: Committee Room 5, City Hall, The Queen's Walk, London, SE1 2AA
Copies of the minutes may be found at: www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/london-assembly/housing
Present:
Sian Berry AM (Chair) Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair) Jennette Arnold OBE AM Andrew Boff AM Leonie Cooper AM David Kurten AM
1 Apologies for Absence and Chair's Announcements (Item 1)
1.1 Apologies for absence were received from Nicky Gavron AM, for whom Jennette Arnold OBE AM substituted, and Tony Devenish AM.
2 Declarations of Interests (Item 2)
2.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.
2.2 Resolved:
That the list of offices held by Assembly Members, as set out in the table at Agenda Item 2, be noted as disclosable pecuniary interests.
City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA Enquiries: 020 7983 4100 minicom: 020 7983 4458 www.london.gov.uk Greater London Authority Housing Committee Tuesday 22 January 2019
3 Minutes (Item 3)
3.1 Resolved:
That the minutes of the meeting held on 28 November 2018 be signed by the Chair as a correct record.
4 Summary List of Actions (Item 4)
4.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.
4.2 Resolved:
That the completed and outstanding actions arising from previous meetings of the Committee be noted.
5 Housing Monitoring Report (Item 5)
5.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.
5.2 Resolved:
That the Housing Monitoring Report be noted.
6 Temporary Accommodation in the Era of Welfare Reform (Item 6)
6.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat as background to putting questions on temporary accommodation in the era of welfare reform to the invited guests set out below.
Panel A: Natalie Williamson, Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association (RLA); Lee Georgiou, Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham; Julia Pitt, Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon; and Matt Campion, Chief Executive, Shepherd’s Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy.
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Greater London Authority Housing Committee Tuesday 22 January 2019
Panel B: Deborah Halling, Senior Policy Officer for Homelessness, Housing and Land, Greater London Authority (GLA); Richard d’Souza, Head of Universal Credit Engagement Division, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP); Sidonie Edey, Homelessness Policy Lead, DWP; and Mark Baigent, Director of PLACE Limited, Interim Divisional Director, Housing and Regeneration, London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
6.2 A transcript of the discussion with Panel A is attached at Appendix 1. A transcript of the discussion with Panel B is attached at Appendix 2.
6.3 Following a video being shown, interviewing a member of the public placed in temporary accommodation describing their experiences, a Member of the Committee requested that the right of reply be provided to the London Borough of Hackney, where the particular case was based.
6.4 During the course of the discussion Natalie Williams, Senior Policy Officer, RLA undertook to provide; RLA research reports on the impact of Universal Credit and other welfare benefit reforms on the Private Rented Sector letting to homeless tenants and benefit recipients; and Information on what would make RLA members more likely to rent to those who are homeless or on benefits.
6.5 During the course of the discussion, Julia Pitt, Director of Gateway, London Borough of Croydon and Lee Georgiou, Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham, undertook to provide further information on the number of out-of-borough placements from other London Boroughs that are placed within the London Boroughs of Croydon and Lewisham, respectively.
6.6 Following the discussion regarding out-of-borough placements, Members of the Committee suggested that the Chair write to all London Boroughs to request information on the number of out-of-borough placements that have been placed in another London Borough, and to specify which London Borough the out-of-borough placements are located.
6.7 During the course of the discussions, Julia Pitt, Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon, undertook to provide further information as to the experience and process, from the perspective of a London Borough, of inputting landlords onto the rogue landlord database.
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Greater London Authority Housing Committee Tuesday 22 January 2019
6.8 The Chair suggested writing to the DWP and Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) for more information on work taking place regarding the quality of temporary accommodation and selective landlord licensing.
6.9 Following a discussion on the reduction in the number of acceptances under the main homelessness duty of people in priority need since the Homelessness Reduction Act came into force, Members suggested that clarification be sought on whether this was a concern for the DWP and the MHCLG.
6.10 During the course of the discussions, Richard d’Souza, Head of Universal Credit Engagement Division, DWP, and Sidonie Edey, Homelessness Policy Lead, DWP undertook to provide clarification on whether the work coach, provided under Universal Credit, remains the same if the individual moves to a different Borough and how continuing of support is provided.
6.11 During the course of the discussions, Deborah Halling, Senior Policy Officer for Homelessness, Housing and Land, GLA undertook to provide further information about Real Lettings and whether further funding would be provided under the current Affordable Homes programme.
6.12 At the end of the discussion the Chair thanked the guests for their attendance and helpful contributions.
6.13 Resolved: (a) That the report and discussion be noted; and (b) That authority be delegated to the Chair, in consultation with party Group Lead Members, to agree any output from the discussion.
7 Housing Committee Work Programme (Item 7)
7.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.
7.2 Resolved:
That the work programme for the remainder of the 2018/2019 Assembly year be agreed.
8 Date of Next Meeting (Item 8)
8.1 The next meeting of the Committee was scheduled for Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 10.00 am in Committee Room 5, City Hall.
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Greater London Authority Housing Committee Tuesday 22 January 2019
9 Any Other Business the Chair Considers Urgent (Item 9)
9.1 There were no items of business that the Chair considered to be urgent.
10 Close of Meeting
10.1 The meeting ended at 12.32pm.
Chair Date
Contact Officer: Jonathan Baker, Committee Officer; telephone: 020 7084 2825; email: [email protected]; minicom: 020 7983 4458
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Appendix 1
London Assembly Housing Committee – Tuesday, 22 January 2019
Transcript of Item 6 – Panel A - Temporary Accommodation in the Era of Welfare Reform
Sian Berry AM (Chair): We are moving on to our main item, which is our investigation into the effects of welfare reform on councils’ ability to provide temporary accommodation. We have a Members’ briefing, which has much more detail, and lots of questions for our guests, but before I introduce our guests we are going to show a short video of one of the cases that we have met in the course of our investigation, which is Sarah.
(Video starts)
Sian Berry AM (Chair): I’m Sian Berry. I’m Chair of the London Assembly Housing Committee and we’re investigating the impact of changes to welfare and changes to the housing market on councils’ ability to provide temporary accommodation and help to people who come to them in need of housing. I’m here today to speak to Sarah, who’s just one of many, many cases we’ve been hearing about.
Sarah: So I was living in my new property in East Village, which I bid for with my first daughter, and we were only there for three months before we received the Section 21 [notice]. So I went back to the Council I was residing in to tell them I was getting evicted. They gave me other hostel-type emergency accommodation for about two weeks when they were doing investigations. Then they said I made myself intentionally homeless and I had to go back to the Council I bid from again. The only thing left that I haven’t really done is literally slept on the street with my kids, but we have literally had to, for one or two days, sleep in cars.
This has been an ongoing situation for going on four years now. So I’ve been back and forth with Hackney Council for over three years, three different assessments, three different approaches, three different circumstances and even a greater need, and still been turned down. So they just handed me - just pushed on the table - a relocation package, but it just seems like a homelessness application form for Durham. They gave me one. It was about September [2018]. They handed me another one for Bradford. I then started, you know, learning about who to go to and where to get advice from because that was something else the social services weren’t giving me or letting me know exactly what organisations I can go to. It was just Shelter.
Councils should assess people properly and very carefully with a fine-tooth comb instead of finding excuses for not housing them. My life’s been on hold for four years.
(Video ends)
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Thank you so much to Sarah for letting us --
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: A point of information. I am not being territorial here but I do represent Hackney, the borough mentioned. Have you sought comments from the borough, given that it was quoted in this?
Sian Berry AM (Chair): About this individual case?
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Jennette Arnold OBE AM: About their policies or this --
Sian Berry AM (Chair): We can do that if you are asking us to, in order to give right of reply to the video. I am just looking over at the Communications Officers.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: We are talking about scrutiny here. In the name of balanced scrutiny, you should never name an individual or an organisation without giving them an opportunity to make their case.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Assembly Member Arnold [OBE], I was about to say that we have in the course of this investigation spoken with a large number of people. The Law Centres, first of all, came in for a roundtable with us and they deal with an awful lot of cases and an awful lot of councils. We also did a roundtable with the Greater London Authority (GLA) peer outreach team, some of whom have experienced homelessness, again, across a range of councils. We held a focus group with people who were living in temporary accommodation about their journeys through.
I have to say we are not particularly accusing [London Borough of] Hackney of this just because that was the case in the video. This appears to be a problem right across London and we will be hearing from a number of different councils today. Just to reassure you that because Hackney was named in that video, we will hear more about other councils in our report and in other things.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: [London Borough of] Hackney was named and so I am keen we do show them the respect to get back to them, and in your report, given that this will be part of that.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Yes. We have noticed things, for example, in some of the statistics that have raised big questions and we have been back to individual councils to ask them about that.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: Thanks.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Can ask our guests to come up and join us? We have two panels of guests today. First of all, we will be talking to councils and the Residential Landlords Association (RLA). One of the reasons we are doing that is because an awful lot of temporary accommodation in London in particular - not so much in the rest of the country - is provided through private landlords.
If I can run through the guests, we have Natalie Williamson, who is the Senior Policy Officer from the RLA; Lee Georgiou, who is the Housing Needs Manager from the London Borough of Lewisham; Julia Pitt, who is the Director of Gateway Services from the London Borough of Croydon; and Matt Campion, who is from the Shepherds Bush Housing Group and a Member of Homes for Cathy.
We have lots of questions for you today about the difficulties being faced with providing temporary accommodation, but if I can start with asking about demand, one of the things we are considering is the impact of benefit changes over the years and the impact of what is available to people to help with housing.
People are getting in more rent arrears, particularly tenants who are dependent on benefits to pay their rent. What changes to welfare have driven these changes and have had most effect, do you think?
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): A number of things have made an impact. General welfare reforms such as things like the bedroom tax and the
2 Page 2 benefit cap overall have made an impact, as has Universal Credit, particularly with the delays that some people receive in getting their first payments and sometimes the complications people can have with their claims.
Also, the shortfall in available social housing is also causing a problem with that. At Shepherds Bush [Housing Group] we have around 500 properties that are temporary accommodation. We have deals with private landlords where they allow us to use their accommodation for housing people who have been nominated by the local authority for temporary accommodation. We are finding that because those people are being pushed into accommodation with much higher levels of rent but at a time when they have lower levels of benefit, it is almost a perfect storm for those residents.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): You are saying that it is a revolving door: people get put into expensive temporary options but then they do not last because arrears build up.
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): They do not have the means to pay them because their benefits just do not cover that.
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): I would echo what Matt has just said, really. It is exactly the same from my point of view. In addition for Croydon, the residents who live there, whether they are on benefits or whether they are actually earning their own money and perhaps getting a top-up, earn very low wages in comparison to the rest of London and so of course that also assists, if you like, with this issue that we have.
One of the things to say, though, is that in the face of all of this, we have to really look at the issues and see how we adopt a different approach. Croydon was one of the forerunners in terms of taking forward welfare reforms and so what we have had to do is really think differently and look at the way that we organise ourselves as a local authority to ensure that we put early intervention and prevention right at the heart of what we do. That means realigning resources so that we are helping people before they even get to that position. Interestingly, from the video that we just saw, one of the things that sparked in my head was that around about a year ago some of these issues were coming to the fore within Croydon even as well. What we do now within Gateway Services is we have a team that works with people who are found intentionally homeless. We do not necessarily provide accommodation, but what we are in the business of doing is helping people to help themselves by helping with things like rent in advance and deposits and information so that people can find accommodation so that they are not in this position such as the lady who was on the video for four years of her life being stuck.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Your team that comes in at the stage of people getting into trouble with the arrears quite early on. How do you deal with that other than helping them to pay the arrears?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): What we do is we do some targeted work through the use of data. We use data to identify residents in Croydon, both in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) and also within social housing, to identify their debt. One of the real crucial bits of this, which I should raise, is Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data. DWP data is absolutely integral to this piece of work. Of course, at the moment we do not have a full sharing agreement and that is something that we will need to enable us to continue to do this in the future.
Andrew Boff AM: Could I just ask on that if you can give an example of the data that you are not getting?
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Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): Of course. Because we have moved away from Housing Benefit to Universal Credit, there is all the data that we used to have, the Housing Benefit data, and now Universal Credit has that information. It is about us getting that information so that we know who is getting paid Universal Credit, when, where and how so that we can work with that as well.
What we do within Croydon to assist us with this is we do some targeted work, but of course we also get the phone calls, the same as any other local authority. We work in a holistic way to work around the whole family or the vulnerable adult around personal budgeting support, debt advice and support, income maximisation, making sure people are getting the right benefits that they are entitled to. We are finding that this approach is indeed having an impact on the numbers of people who are presenting because we are helping them earlier on in the journey. There is still more for us to do, but the way that we are working is one where we are doing our very best with the tools we have.
Also really importantly, it is cutting across organisations, adult social care and children’s social care, through their front doors. What we have done as well is we have officers now within the front doors of both adult social care and children’s social care so that, when people are coming through, we are picking up issues early and they are not being diverted off and then the crisis becomes bigger and bigger. By having people co-located within that front door, some of those issues can be tied up a lot more quickly.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Thank you very much. I might come back to you in a minute, but I will move on to Lee [Georgiou] from Lewisham. How are you dealing with all of this?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): The main demand: most people are approaching from the PRS, which is being driven by unaffordable rents. We are seeing fewer intentionally homeless decisions because, in order to find someone intentionally homeless, the accommodation must be affordable. A lot of the time we are doing assessments and they just cannot afford to meet the shortfall between the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) and the rents charged.
We are also trying to get involved much earlier and take a collaborative approach around finding solutions and that is a huge barrier. When we cannot keep people in their own homes as a result of some of the policy decisions around welfare reform, it is much more difficult to find alternative accommodation that is sustainable and affordable. We are getting it from both ends: one, in people who are becoming homeless and two, in finding solutions to move people on from there.
Single specifically is very challenging. The under-35 cohort rough sleeping is more visible now than probably ever before.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Can you explain that a bit more about the under-35s? What is the change in welfare that has happened there?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): They are entitled to only a shared-room rate rather than the one-bedroom LHA and it is nearly impossible to find accommodation that is affordable within the LHA at the rates that have been set. The rates have been set since 2011 and there was a small uplift last year [2018] but it does not go anywhere near to addressing the actual difference between the market rents and the rents that are being charged.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): That gap is bigger for the single-room rate than it is for the non-single-room rate?
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Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): I would not say that it is bigger. It is just that you can be more creative in terms of the larger households in the way in which the LHA is calculated. It is often on the size of the family rather than the size of the property. There are other things that you can do and also, in terms of meeting the shortfall, there is more income. For single people who are claiming just the Jobseeker’s Allowance, the income that they are getting is so small that to expect them to pay anything and pay their gas, electric, water and everything else, they cannot afford to pay any kind of top-up, if you sit down and work it out. It is very challenging for them.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): That makes sense. When you say “be creative” about larger households, do you mean putting them into smaller flats --
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): Yes.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): -- than they really should have, essentially?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): We are doing some joint work with Jobcentre Plus. We have employed employment advisers. It is not just around putting them in accommodation that is smaller, but about what we can do to mitigate the impact of welfare reform. If we can get people into work, then they are in a much better place in terms of their options to move them on but also in terms of their health, their wellbeing and their opportunities for the future. Yes, partnership working we think is key.
We have the duty to refer that has come into place following the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act (HRA).
Sian Berry AM (Chair): We will have questions on the HRA later on.
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): We are trying to do what we can, really, in terms of mitigating the problems, but the challenge is huge. It is really around affordability.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Yes. Natalie, you represent the residential landlords. On the one hand we have landlords with high rents, people going into arrears, people being issued with Section 21s because of arrears quite a lot of the time or people just knowing that they cannot afford it any longer and having to move on; and on the other hand we have private landlords providing a lot of the temporary accommodation.
Can you tell us what your members are saying about these two different issues at the moment in terms of the demand and what is happening with homelessness?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Firstly, the RLA represents landlords across England and Wales, not just London, and so I can comment on some of the information that I have about London specifically.
Secondly, our members do not typically rent out temporary accommodation. They are small portfolio-holders of maybe between one and five properties. However, the impact of welfare reform has been huge on our members. We do a welfare quarterly survey and have tracked the impact for the past three years. On the rent arrears reported in 2018 of those who have moved across to Universal Credit, out of 3,000 members, 61% of them reported that their tenants were in rent arrears. That was up from 38% in 2017.
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Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): That is for tenants on Universal Credit?
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Is it for tenants on benefits in general versus Universal Credit compared with the previous benefit?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Compared with LHA, yes. We have monitored that. It was 27% the year before. As the rollout has gathered pace, the arrears seem to have as well.
There is also the issue of the cap, as others have said, and lots of other benefit changes have come into play at the same time. Affordability, I imagine, in London particularly is a big problem and a driver, as you say, to homelessness.
One thing that Julia [Pitt] said which is really important for us as an organisation and for private landlords in general in this environment is to think differently. We are really trying to be more proactive in working with our members and helping them to work with tenants who are struggling. We are working very closely with the DWP. I am sure Richard [d’Souza, Head of Universal Credit Engagement Division, DWP] will be able to explain more in the next panel. We have identified parts of the process that are going quite badly wrong when people are applying for direct payment from the private sector for vulnerable claimants. That is potentially a real driver for homelessness.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): One of the things about Universal Credit is that there is one payment made in most cases and the recipient has to then pay the rent themselves and budget for that rather than the rent going to the landlord. Your members are making applications? Is it the landlord who makes the application for a direct payment if someone is vulnerable? Is that correct?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Yes. It is quite different from the social sector because there is no portal. It is a UC47 form that sits on gov.uk and there are criteria that need to be met before the private landlord can make the application. There has to be two months of arrears existing or what they call tier-one and tier-two vulnerability, which means a lot of engagement that the private landlord might not have been used to. They have to try to get to know the tenant --
Sian Berry AM (Chair): The landlord has to collect quite confidential information from tenants in order to make this application for direct payment?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Potentially, yes.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Can I just come in quickly? Sorry. You have to wait until they are two months in arrears. Surely a lot of landlords would simply say, “I will evict and get a new tenant”, in those circumstances?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Not necessarily, no. Our research has shown that - you would maybe not expect it - landlords are willing to wait as long as there is some sort of communication, which is a whole other issue, from the DWP that payment will come. It is very expensive and time-consuming and often people who had been on LHA or Housing Benefit and have moved on to Universal Credit could have had quite successful tenancies before they migrated across.
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There are many cases I deal with where the landlord just does not want to have to go down that process but they are taking a financial loss themselves. Many of them have mortgages. They are small landlords who cannot necessarily take a big financial loss themselves, but they are quite far behind. They are one of the biggest providers of housing to vulnerable people, but the tools to try to secure what they need in terms of direct payment or the communication about the claimant is not there.
Things are starting to improve. There was the announcement last week that the UC47 is, hopefully, going to go online and that will make things a little bit easier. We were finding that on top of the two months arrears, landlords were waiting another 9.3 weeks for an Alternative Payment Arrangement (APA) to be processed. You are looking at potentially up to four months of arrears before any payment starts to come to the landlord. It is a substantial problem.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Just to confirm, that is the main change you would like to see made: just getting this process of direct payments sorted out?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Yes, notification. The other thing that Julia [Pitt] said about the data sharing, that is key. We have been doing some user research and our landlords have been told - this is not London-specific but just generally - that, understandably, local authorities are keen when the tenant says, “We are going to move across to Universal Credit”. Because there is no data sharing there, they are saying, “Put your UC47 in at the same time as the claim”, but that will not work because there is no claim live for the UC47 direct payment to be deducted from, and so the application is just lost. It delays things further and that is something that needs communicating well to local authorities. It is our job as well to make sure that private landlords know how to do that and that is what we are trying to do differently.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): We will put that question to the DWP later.
Leonie Cooper AM: You were talking about private landlords and saying that there are people who have only a small portfolio, maybe one or two, maybe three or four properties. One of the things that has come to my attention is that one of the ways to ameliorate the problem of having a small portfolio and having to wait for new tenants to be able to claim is by absolutely stuffing the property so that you have one person in every room. That has come to my attention not just by talking to people who come to my surgery and saying, “There are ten of us squeezed into a house with four bedrooms. There are couples in each room”, and so on and so forth, but it has also come up through the police when there are properties where people are virtually in slavery and are being employed on quite low wages. The landlord has given them accommodation and almost all of the money is being charged for their accommodation. By the time the police might go around and carry out a raid, sometimes everyone in the house has gone. I can give you various examples of where this is going on.
I appreciate what you are saying about small landlords and how it is tough out there having to wait and so on and so forth, but there is some really bad practice going on in various parts of London. I would hope that local authorities are completely steering clear of that, but could you just talk us through what your RLA is doing to stamp out that kind of thing? It becomes temporary accommodation because people simply cannot afford it.
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Yes. We would never defend that kind of practice. We are a professional organisation and, in fact, we have supported Karen Buck’s [MP] Fitness for Human Habitation Bill, as have the National Landlords Association (NLA) and the Association of Rental Letting Agents. 7 Page 7
There are criminal landlords and there is absolutely no place for them in the private sector anywhere in the country. London does have a terrible problem. We know because our Chairman [Alan Ward] went to Newham and went on a raid. I would never deny that that happens, but we want to see the Housing Court that is currently being consulted on. We are in support of that.
We want to see the crooks driven out, but the councils do have the civil penalties and the rent repayment orders. It needs stronger enforcement and funding and the skills needed within councils to effectively enforce against these landlords. You have the Rogue Landlords Register in London. You are pioneering more than other parts of the country.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: There is nobody on it.
Leonie Cooper AM: It is not enough. Given that councils have had 60% of all their money taken away from them by central Government, they do not exactly have staff lazing around and falling over themselves to do this kind of enforcement. I take your point about the enforcement where there is disrepair as well, but in certain cases I have had people coming to me and talking about this appalling overcrowding. They are desperate. They are moving quite frequently. It is very temporary accommodation, but they are not necessarily cases where you could enforce in terms of poor-quality accommodation. It has been done up to a certain kind of standard, but people are then being --
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): With the house in multiple occupation (HMO) licensing that it is in place, they should --
Leonie Cooper AM: They are not registered, are they?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): There is licensing in place. There are powers now. I truly understand. We know. We are in support of councils and environmental health. They have this thankless and awful task. You can selectively licence somewhere, but the criminals will still flout the law. We all have a responsibility. To polarise the argument is not necessarily helpful --
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Assembly Member Cooper, I am really sorry. You may have missed the meeting where we discussed how tight we are for time in this meeting. It is an important issue.
Leonie Cooper AM: Natalie has completely answered my question, which is that you are strongly in favour, as we are, in terms of HMOs, proper enforcement and also enforcement around standards. That is absolutely fine. That is the end of my question.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Thank you very much. That was helpful. Thank you.
Andrew Boff AM: May I say? Is it fair to say that it tends to be honest landlords who join the RLA and it is the dishonest ones whom the council should be enforcing against? Is that not the case? It is not the duty of the RLA to enforce HMOs.
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): We do not have the powers.
Andrew Boff AM: You do not have the powers and it is the councils that do. Is that the case? 8 Page 8
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Yes, that is right.
Andrew Boff AM: Thank you very much.
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): We run accreditation, which is a different thing. We do not have a fit-and-proper person test in that sense to join an association. What some councils will do is, if a landlord can say that they are a member of a landlords association, whether it is us or the NLA, they may offer a discount for licensing. No, we do not have any powers to enforce.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Just very quickly, if one of your landlords is found to be a bad landlord and put on the Mayor’s database, would you expel them from your association?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Yes, I can say that confidently. Also, we have gone a little bit further ourselves. In our conversations with UK Finance about other issues such as the ‘no-DSS’ (Department of Social Security) conditions, they have asked if there would be a way that they can talk to their members about not lending to landlords who have been put on a rogue database. No, we do not believe there is any place for these people in the market whatsoever.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Thank you. We are behind time now, but I do want to go back to the councils and to Matt [Campion] as well to ask about this issue of Universal Credit and arrears. As landlords yourselves, you will also be having this problem. As I understand it, you have an easier way to apply for direct payments, but if you could - maybe starting with Lee - let us know about what is happening there?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): I do not have the exact figures, but the arrears in temporary accommodation have increased significantly as a result of Universal Credit.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Is that also the case in your regular council accommodation?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): Yes, generally, but it has only recently been rolled out in Lewisham and so the impact is not as great at the moment because it is only when people are making new claims rather than old historic claims.
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): In Croydon, again, the picture is very much similar to Lewisham. We have had an increase in terms of arrears for temporary accommodation. In fact, due to the early rollout of Universal Credit within Croydon, that saw us really almost in a position where we have lost over £2 million.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): What percentage of tenants being in arrears does that represent?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): At the moment our collection rates for social housing are quite high at around about 97%. I do not have the figure - I am really sorry - in terms of the temporary accommodation number, but I know that in terms of the proportionality, those who are affected by Universal Credit are a significant proportion. That statistic I gave you earlier is real: over £2 million.
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): At Shepherds Bush [Housing Group] we are part of the Trusted Partnership status and so we have access to the portal. We are a housing association with about 5,000 properties in west London, but it is worth saying 9 Page 9 that we had to fight really hard to get even that Trusted Partnership status. There are lots of associations of our size that do not have that. It does have an impact on how we can share information.
In our temporary accommodation, the arrears there are higher than any other type of tenure we have. We have social rent, we have affordable rents and then we have our temporary accommodation, and the arrears are much higher there. 75% of our residents in temporary accommodation are in arrears. If we look at the whole of our general needs portfolio, probably 10% of our residents are claiming Universal Credit but 25% of all of our arrears are due to Universal Credit. The amount of arrears of each resident in Universal Credit houses are much higher. In our non-temporary accommodation, general needs, the average Universal Credit arrears is about £1,000. In our temporary accommodation, it is often three or four times that, although the rents are much higher and so that is a driver of that.
Our general needs social rents in London are about £125 a week. Our temporary accommodation on average is £317 a week. For someone on a very low income, you may as well ask them for the moon. They just do not have £317 a week.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Thank you. Just finally, the gap between the Housing Benefits able to be claimed, the LHA able to be claimed and rents is going up quite a lot. I cannot imagine anyone can claim £317 a week.
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): It is worth saying that the £317 a week is also below the general market rents. That is where we have negotiated with the private landlord that we will take a long-term lease on their property and charge a slightly lower rent so that they get that security. In the private sector that would be more.
Yes, certainly we are finding residents who are impacted by the total benefit cap and so cannot claim that or just the amount of their benefits is otherwise less than it would need to be. Right from the start, they are often building up arrears.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Do you have an idea of how big that gap is per week?
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): I am sorry. I do not have that.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): I am sure we can find statistics to cover it, but I am getting the feeling that it is tens and tens of pounds a week.
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): Yes, sorry. It is not £2 or £3. It is £10 and £20.
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): We have done some analysis and the median for the different bedroom sizes from one to four bedrooms is between about £30 a week and £70 a week. A lot of people will be relying on benefits as their main source of income and making a contribution of anything more than about £50 a month from all the income and expenditure is really just not sustainable.
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): That is exactly the same position in Croydon. We also have the issue that, really, the gap between the LHA and market rents is so much that affordability for people who are either in work or benefit-dependent is beyond reach. Even if people are 10 Page 10 in lower-paid work and they need a top-up, they are just not getting there. It is often a choice between rent or food. We are not talking luxuries. It is purely and simply rent or food.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Thank you. Natalie [Williamson], landlords choose what rents they set and the amount that people can claim in benefits is being squeezed. From the discussions we have had, the landlords in the RLA are likely to be the more responsible kind, the kind who might have specialised, in a way, in housing people who would receive Housing Benefit that would previously have covered their rent but now does not. What sorts of gaps are you seeing opening up and is there anything that the RLA can do to try to broker these long-term deals where people pay less, maybe? I do not know. What are you working on?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): It is quite complex. There are landlords who have used it as their business model. There are parts of the country where you do not have the choice. You rent to people on Housing Benefit and therefore you have a responsibility, in our opinion, to look at the market, see things like Universal Credit, and know that it is coming down the line. Unfortunately, there are areas where our members have seen such losses and have tried, have gone down all the routes that they have been told to by the DWP. There are landlords with £15,000-plus arrears and they have had to close the business.
There is also wider economical - and it is not saying, “Poor landlords” - surtax changes and increased regulation. Some are just turning away from buy-to-let altogether. It is not just one market. It is generally. Buy-to-let is becoming less of an attractive investment option. The supply could potentially be lost. In areas in London where the demand is so high, it is the case, like Matt [Campion] was saying, that now the HRA has come in and it really depends on the PRS.
How is it going to look when landlords potentially cannot plug the gap and the LHA or the housing costs within Universal Credit cannot and the tenant cannot? We have joined other partners and we do support the LHA freeze being lifted but, beyond that, where will the extra money come from to bring it up to potential market rents in London? That is an argument for the [HM] Treasury.
We need to really look together at trying to attract the best landlords who are willing to look at longer-term tenancies and incentives and not give Housing Benefits to those criminal landlords where the most vulnerable are perhaps most in danger.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): That is useful to hear. It is a difficult one to square. As a private renter myself, I look at some of the rents and I think, “How is that fair?”
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): It is very hard, especially in somewhere like London where the rents are just inflated. It is almost like its own microclimate in that sense. I am in the north and it is a different situation.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Yes, it is much more rational in some places around the country. These are London rents. They seem to me way higher than they need to be, but we will see. Assembly Member Arnold [OBE], you had a question?
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: Yes. Natalie, can you just answer this briefly for me? The evidence we have seen and what we have heard would then suggest that private landlords, following introduction of Universal Credit and other welfare benefit reforms, are going to be in a position where they are going to be put off letting to homeless tenants and benefit recipients. Do you have evidence to show this in your association? 11 Page 11
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): I can certainly send our research reports. We have just commissioned Manchester Metropolitan University to produce a report into homelessness and what is driving homelessness in the PRS. Welfare reform is a key driver.
Unfortunately, the reputation of Universal Credit has almost preceded any kind of productive working. Now we are working very productively and collaboratively with the DWP. A few years ago, the position was that direct payment will never go to the landlords, and so this system has been designed in a way that it is quite difficult to get these changes. There are people who will know for themselves whether it is in their right interests to have the rent paid directly to the landlord, in which case that should be --
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: In terms of your members, these forces are leading them to be less likely to be in the rental market for homeless tenants?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): Unfortunately, I would agree with that, yes.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: That makes sense from a business point of view, does it not, as far as your members are concerned?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): I guess from a business point of view, especially within Universal Credit, there are expectations that they will provide a wider welfare support role that they perhaps have not previously had to do. Otherwise, they are just simply not going to get their rent paid. Some are more than willing to do that. For some perhaps it has been a shock and in that case - and I have seen examples of it myself - maybe it is not the right market for you. If you are going to progress within Universal Credit successfully, you need to operate perhaps a little more like a social landlord in the sense that you will have to work with your tenant. A lot of them do. You would be surprised but, because they do not have the defined welfare role within any legislation, when it comes to Universal Credit they are miles behind in terms of what they can access in terms of information and direct payment where needed, even if that is to safeguard the tenancy.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): That is really useful. We have asked the landlords a lot of questions and we do need to move on to the next question, which probably may touch on what you were about to tell us. Tom, you were going to ask about availability.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Yes. I will start with you, Julia. First of all, why is there a deficit of decent quality temporary accommodation to house those in need in your borough?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): The main reason is affordability. In Croydon itself, we have a large PRS market, but when you are looking at the average household incomes of our residents and indeed those who are on benefits and the things that we have already described as being things that are pushing people away and not able to access it - such as the LHA rates, Universal Credit, the benefit cap - that really does paint a different picture.
Also, there is the thing that landlords do have perceptions, as do the general public, around what a homeless family looks like and how a homeless family will behave. It is our role to try to change that and bust those myths. One of the things that we have started on as a journey was in October [2018] when we established a pilot project around a social lettings agency called Croydon Lettings. We are already seeing relationships 12 Page 12 building with landlords. What we are doing is we are applying the ‘gateway approach’, as we call it, the whole wraparound support around the personal budgeting, the debt, the links to employment, etc, to try to ensure that landlords who are coming over to us have the support of us but also the confidence. We are running a training programme for tenants as well. Some of those who are really vulnerable may need some help with some basic skills and so we are working on that journey. Hopefully by us working in these ways, by trying new things, we can try to build the confidence. There is a wider responsibility for us all.
There is a thing as well across the market. All of us at local authorities are all trying and we are in a race for temporary accommodation. Often we are procuring in each other’s areas and landlords know this. Therefore, they are pushing the prices up and incentives are being raised; hence why we need an agreement pan-London across incentives so that none of us are outbidding each other and we try to ensure that residents remain within their own local boundaries with their own infrastructure and the support networks.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): This is partly what the Capital Letters project is about. Is that right?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): That is right, yes.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Are you part of that?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): We are, yes. We are part of the Capital Letters project and hopefully that will assist in that, but of course, because we have embarked on this social lettings agency project at the same time, we have to be in it, basically, with those. We will try both and see. The social lettings agency at the moment is focusing very much on early intervention and linking up with children’s social care, etc, rather than on the temporary accommodation duties, but who knows for the future?
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): There is a double whammy as well in the sense that you have more people coming to you homeless whom you have a duty towards but also that people, once they are in temporary accommodation, are living in temporary accommodation for longer because you are unable to discharge your duty. Is that right?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): Yes, that is right but, again, I keep talking about just having to work differently. We are working differently. My colleague Mr Aston [Paul Aston, Head of Housing Needs and Assessments, London Borough of Croydon] over there heads up the homelessness service. Within that area we have had to realign resources and think differently. When we have families in temporary accommodation, they are not just there without a worker working with them. We have created a whole new team called the Interventions Team and we created a thing called Your Home, Your Move, again helping people to help themselves. We have the evidence that that approach works, again putting in the whole wraparound service around the individuals to enable them to move on to their own accommodation where they choose for it to be and not being forced, “There is a property here to take”, putting them in control. We are finding again that that is really working and has benefits for not only the families but also the local authority in terms of resources. It is a much better use of public sector resources.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Thank you. Lee [Georgiou], can I put the same question to you about why there is this lack of decent temporary accommodation in Lewisham?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): The main issue is the market and, as I said earlier, the main driver of people who are approaching the local authority is the PRS. We are 13 Page 13 looking to the PRS in terms of solving the problem. The demand is just so much higher than the supply of accommodation and so landlords - not all landlords - are looking to get as much rent as possible.
The issue across London in terms of competition is a huge issue and the Capital Letters programme is really interesting. It is just a shame that not more London boroughs have taken it up because the more people are involved, the more power there will be in terms of having an impact on the market.
We are, again, looking at what else we can do. There are financial and resource issues for us. It is not like we can just keep throwing money at it and so we are looking at how else we can work with the PRS. Is there a landlord offer in terms of making sure they have someone to come and speak to at a much earlier point around resolving issues or difficulties with tenants, be it arrears or be it --
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): That is essential. From what you have said there, the person is the most important thing. It should not be the tenure. Where you have people with quite complex needs, just because they have been put in private accommodation, sometimes very vulnerable people are just left. We would wholly support that wraparound support if landlords knew that they had somewhere to go and could pick up the phone. This is exactly the problem with Universal Credit. Landlords have no one to turn to. It is digital in many cases. They are faced with the data protection issues that come with that. The social lettings are a good way of giving that more welfare offer that a private landlord might not necessarily want to have to take themselves.
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): Yes, there are huge cultural issues. It is really interesting to hear about the perception. I have to say that that works on both sides. There is a perception that the people who are coming in who have become homeless are - and there are - very vulnerable people who come through. Actually, there are a lot of people who are working and who are quite successful but they just cannot afford to purchase a property and cannot afford to privately rent. Landlords are often perceived as people who just want to make as much money as possible. There is work that needs to be done in terms of both ends of the spectrum and bringing us together to enable us to work and overcome some of that.
We are doing some accreditation stuff in terms some of our applicants who are prepared to go on a course. They want to show that they are responsible so that we can say to landlords, “This is someone who is going to look after the property. They are going to pay their rent”. We are trying to change.
Just generally as well, we have a programme where we are looking at consistent messaging within the Council’s internal departments and going out externally around trying to change some of the ways in which our customers are perceived and also our relationships with people because we think that is a big issue. Even for local authorities, a lot of landlords go, “I do not want to rent a property via a local authority. I would rather go private”.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): How are you looking to reduce your reliance on nightly-paid accommodation and out-of-borough placements? Could you also explain what nightly-paid accommodation is and how it differs from bed-and-breakfasts and hostels as well?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): The majority of our nightly-paid accommodation is self-contained. It is effectively what we are doing indirectly because of the challenges we face and the demand. We are taking properties that would be used as private rented accommodation and we are paying above the LHA. A lot of landlords will know that, which will mean, “Do you 14 Page 14 want to rent the property as local housing to a family as an assured shorthold tenancy, or do you want to allow the local authority to use it as nightly-paid accommodation when you are going to get a significantly higher rental yield from letting it out?” Again, in terms of the market, the demand issue and the challenges that local authorities are facing in terms of responding to people who are coming in to whom we have statutory duties, in a way what we are doing is not assisting us because the longer-term plan needs to be around delivery or doing something to regulate the PRS so that we have more control over it.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): The reason we are asking about this nightly-paid is because looking at the statistics - we have two big tables of statistics here - the nightly-paid privately-managed self-contained accommodation is almost entirely a London phenomenon. There are 21,000 families across the country in that type of temporary accommodation and 17,470 of them are in London. It is not a phenomenon we are seeing in other places and so it must be a market phenomenon that comes from the high costs in London.
The other thing we are looking at is the fact that every single one of the top ten highest spenders on temporary accommodation is in London and almost all of the boroughs in London have seen huge increases in the amount they are spending. This must be an issue that needs to be solved. If we can crack the problem of not paying for lots of nightly-paid and getting more people into tenancies, it must help to solve the problem, surely.
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): You are absolutely right. We need to be moving away from nightly-paid. We have a bit of a programme of working with our landlords. We know a bit about relationships. If they are going to be paid for nightly-paid, they will keep taking the money. Of course they will, but you have to start somewhere and you have to start having some negotiations around that. That is one thing you can do and it is something that we are on our journey of doing.
The other thing is that realistically, when you are looking at what we are spending on nightly-paid, there is no asset anyway at the end of it and you need to look differently about how you are using your money. Would you be better off investing that money frontend and procuring properties to add to your asset and to own to rent out? Yes, you would. That is something that we have been doing within Croydon as well. We have been buying accommodation for temporary accommodation, which is in turn assisting around a more permanent, if you like, temporary accommodation offer and for us then to work with residents. That is something that we need to be looking at more widely. How are we using our money? Are we putting money in almost like on a revenue basis rather than into capital where it is better all around? That is something that we are doing.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): I want to come on to that in a minute, but first I want to finish off on the point about out-of-borough placements. What is your policy on that and how are you trying to reduce that? I presume Capital Letters would assist with that.
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): Generally within Croydon we try not to move anybody out-of-borough without their prior agreement. As I have mentioned previously, we do have a good supplier of PRS accommodation and we also have a good supply of temporary accommodation of good quality that we have purchased. We have bought a few blocks but also we have a temporary accommodation procurement programme and so --
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Is that what you own out-of-borough, sorry, or in-borough?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): No, that is in-borough. What that is doing is mitigating the numbers that we are having to place. Croydon as a borough, given its size and 15 Page 15 population, places small numbers out-of-borough. We are working very hard to ensure that is it actually with the residents’ wishes. Of course there will be occasions when that has to happen and we have to place out-of-borough, but I am not sure there is much more we can do at this moment in time unless we get additional funding to assist us to provide more permanent accommodation, not just temporary accommodation.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Do you tend to receive from other boroughs as well? Do you receive quite a lot of people in temporary accommodation?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): Yes.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Do you know on what sort of scale that is? They have to notify you, do they not, when they are doing that?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): They are meant to notify. It is the same all around, is it not? They are meant to notify. I believe from the statistics - and I do not know the numbers and so I would have to report in - that we have more people coming in than we do going out, but I do not have those numbers, sorry, in my head.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): That is fine. No problem. Lee [Georgiou], the same question to you?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): Yes, our hope is to place everyone within Lewisham but it is --
Leonie Cooper AM: Chair, is it possible for Julia to send us the figures for that? That would be really -- sorry to interrupt --
Sian Berry AM (Chair): I would like to know that for all the councils, actually. Is it possible we can find out?
Leonie Cooper AM: I completely agree with you and it is not just because you are big and there is a plethora in the PRS, but in some parts of Croydon it is still much cheaper than some other boroughs that are not that far away. The worry is when it is places like, Westminster, for example, placing people in Loughton or Walsall and then people really having to travel. Croydon would always be much better than going all the way to Walsall, obscure places, small cities like Manchester and that sort of thing.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): We have the statistics on each borough’s placements out but not on where they are going.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Perhaps the Chair could write to each borough and request that information, yes. Sorry, Jennette [Arnold OBE AM], did you want to come in?
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: It was that. You read my mind, my comrade.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Excellent.
Leonie Cooper AM: I promise never to do it again.
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Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): We do not want to place anyone out-of-borough and we have been investing in temporary accommodation. We had PLACE/Ladywell, which was the first pop-up village of modular housing units, which provided 24 units for our homeless households. We are hopefully looking at having another, which is PLACE/Deptford and there is another project that we want to deliver on. Also, we have been acquiring properties with our arms-length management organisation and we are working in partnership in terms of - from reading your right-to-buy report [Tom Copley AM, From Right to Buy to Buy to Let, 2014] - buying properties back that had previously been sold and trying to use that because it is in the borough, which we feel is really important.
We do look at what is coming in and who we are placing outside and Capital Letters will go some way to addressing some of those concerns because it seems mad that we have neighbouring boroughs placing within our borough and we are placing within their boroughs. We are causing huge difficulty and challenges for the homeless people that are approaching and so we see that something that is really positive.
We do still and there is a large percentage of people who go into nightly-paid accommodation. It is the interim accommodation, which is normally for a maximum period of six weeks. There are over 50% of our households that we will have to place out-of-borough during that period, but the aim is that we will always do what we can to try to bring them back in as soon as possible.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Thank you for mentioning my report. It does seem quite perverse that boroughs are having to rent back homes they used to own and let out at social rent and rent them out at market rents, supported by Housing Benefit. Croydon came back and I do not think it happened at all in Croydon and I do not think we managed to get the data for Lewisham, but presumably that information that I got was about boroughs renting back their own. Presumably, if you are placing out-of-borough, you could be renting back another borough’s former council home and not know about it.
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): Yes. Common sense tells you that that is what you would be doing because they are going to be in the lower quartile prices. Absolutely, you certainly would be. It is even indeed when you are looking at - we could go back years ago - the Housing Market Package and God knows what. Actually, what we ended up doing was exactly that: buying what were previously social housing units. Again, we repeat the cycle.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Being a Lewisham Councillor as well, I know about Lewisham’s buyback. Are you buying back your former council homes in Croydon as well?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): We are buying properties across a wider portfolio. Again, I cannot tell you in terms of whether 1 Smith Street was a council home off the top of my head, but what I can say is that we are looking at lower quartile markets. My assumption would be that some of those potentially could have been.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): You mentioned earlier, Julia [Pitt], the shift from revenue spending to capital spending. How are the economics of this stacking up? Presumably over the long term you are going to be making a considerable saving, but within the short term you need to have that capital spend?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): Yes, you have hit the nail right on the head. It is really about us investing capital to realise later on - quite a lot later on - in terms of the asset rather than money, if you like, just going through revenue.
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Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): You mentioned that you were building or buying your own temporary accommodation, hostels and things like that as well?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): That is right. What we did a few years ago was buy a number of blocks, if you like, for temporary accommodation specifically for families and we are utilising those rather than, again, them being pepper-potted, which has its issues as well, but what it does also do is it enables the work I talked about on interventions. It means that we can work really hand-in-hand. We do events for those families both at the block outreach but also within central Croydon. We are able to work in a much more close way with them to try to help them to help themselves and get solutions. They do not want to be living in these conditions as much as we do not want them there.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Finally, a question on standards and enforcement. How do you enforce and to what extent do you enforce against landlords who are letting out substandard temporary accommodation? Do you always find out about it?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): We have a landlord licensing scheme within Croydon, which is proving very successful and is driving forward in terms of identifying the rogue landlords.
The good thing around Croydon is that we do have an amazing infrastructure across both the voluntary community sector and faith sector organisations as well, which helps us get information from the grassroots up. When Leonie [Cooper AM] was talking earlier about having ten people in one house, etc, we are getting that information fed through and we are working very closely with our enforcement area, who are amazing, to be honest. They are out there and doing that work.
Of course there will always be, I am sure, some that may be missed, but I am confident that we are driving that agenda forward.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: We have heard about this rogue landlords list and I did some reading prior to coming here deputising for my colleague. The data online suggests that there have been no entries into the rogue landlords database because it is so difficult. Most of you have talked about it as if to say it is some sort of solution. If it has been there, you would know about the desperate situation. I cannot understand, then, why there is no one currently sitting in the rogue landlords database. Are you aware of that?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): I will have to explore that internally.
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): I can maybe help you.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: No, can I stay with the council? You do not have the responsibility. It is the councils who --
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): No, but we do have some figures that show that London is by far -- we did some Freedom of Information requests on enforcement once the civil penalty notices in the Housing and Planning Act [2016] came into force to see how councils were using these new powers.
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In 2017/18, 89% of local authorities reported to us that they had not used civil penalty powers and, of those that had issued a civil penalty notice, 332 were served and 82% of those were served in London. I do not know why they are not going on the register, but, obviously, compared to the rest of the country, London is much further ahead.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: Can I just go back? I understood it was up to councils to enter, but I also in my preparation heard that it is incredibly difficult. Is it the process that is incredibly complicated? We have the DWP coming up and I just wanted us to be clear --
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): Of course. I have to answer honestly because I am not responsible for enforcement in that area and so I would not have information about it. However, I can get that for you and feed back to you.
Jennette Arnold OBE AM: Sorry, Tom. It seems important. It has just been bandied about.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Yes. I just want to finish off quickly with Matt from a housing association’s perspective.
Leonie Cooper AM: Sorry, Tom, I just wanted to ask one question.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): We are getting very behind on this meeting at the moment and so I am going to crack down on the interventions shortly.
Leonie Cooper AM: It is just one question. You were just talking about obtaining leases and building your own. I just wanted to check that in Lewisham and Croydon that would probably be in-borough? You would not be looking to purchase, lease or anything else out-of-borough? OK. Thank you. That was it.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Great. Can you tell us about the temporary accommodation that you provide as a housing association and how it differs from council or private sector temporary accommodation?
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): It is accommodation that is owned by private landlords but managed by us and we have generally managed to procure that on a multiyear deal. It is probably true to say that our portfolio of temporary accommodation has reduced over recent years. Some of that is because landlords are taking their properties away and saying, “Actually, we can get more money elsewhere”. Some of it has been because of us taking a tougher view of properties and saying to landlords, “If you are not prepared to keep it up to this standard or you are being difficult about us doing repairs, we do not want to work with you”.
Generally, they are houses or flats on a street or in small blocks rather than big hostels or nightly-paid accommodation. The local authority will usually nominate somebody to us for temporary accommodation and we will house them for a number of years while the local authority decides whether they can offer them permanent accommodation.
We try to provide the same kinds of services to our temporary accommodation residents as we do to our social general-needs residents and so they get access to our debt and welfare benefit service, our credit union stuff, our apprenticeship schemes and that whole range of things, but we do find within our temporary accommodation take-up of things like the employment work we do is much lower. Some of that probably goes to the woman on the video saying, “My life has been on hold”. If somebody is in temporary accommodation, it 19 Page 19 is much harder for them to think, “OK, what am I going to focus on to move things forward”, rather than just trying to deal with their housing.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Thank you. How do you help people move on from temporary accommodation to permanent accommodation?
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): Generally, we would try to work with them and the local authority. A lot of our people in temporary accommodation will either be bidding for local authority properties on Locata [Homes], a choice-based letting scheme. If they cannot get into that or they do not have enough points to make a realistic bid, then we will help them try to find other private accommodation. However, there is almost a catch-22 because the reason they have been accepted by the local authority and put into temporary accommodation is probably because they cannot compete for market-priced accommodation. If they are not getting nominated for social housing, we cannot move them into our general-needs accommodation and so we do find --
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): You have this gap in the middle of people who fall between the cracks, yes.
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): Yes, and so we find that people are staying there for years because there is nowhere else for them to move on to and the local authority understands that it cannot really do anything else with those people.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): Presumably then, that reduces the overall supply of temporary accommodation you have to offer to people who find themselves newly homeless?
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): Yes. We are really seeing that the residualisation of social housing means that fewer people can access it and the affordability problems with owner-occupied housing means that fewer people can afford that. There is a larger group of people who are being funnelled into this private accommodation. Our temporary accommodation, like Julia [Pitt] was saying, is in the lower quartile and has the least-worst affordability of private accommodation there can be.
Tom Copley AM (Deputy Chair): I remember seeing a graph at a Lewisham Housing Select Committee of a gap of ten years in social lets available versus temporary accommodation. Now the graph has swapped over and the social lets that become available annually are like that and the number of people in temporary accommodation has gone up. I am going to leave it there because the Chair is worried about the time.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Thank you, Assembly Member Copley. Yes, I am very worried about the time. We have explored a lot of the issues and we have gone into some of the further issues we are going to be discussing and so we have gone a long way so far. We have to finish and move on to asking the DWP and the Mayor questions at 11.30am and so we are in desperate trouble.
Assembly Member Kurten has a couple of questions. Assembly Member Boff then has questions about the HRA impact. Assembly Member Cooper will be asking about housing office culture. For this next period, I am just going to let those Assembly Members do all the questioning in their sections and take no interventions just because we cannot afford the time. Thank you.
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David Kurten AM: Yes, sure. I want to ask you, Natalie, just a quick question about your members. What could make your members more likely to want to rent to homeless people or people on benefits?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): That is a good question. It is a confidence issue, like Julia [Pitt] raised before, and the perception, like you said, Lee [Georgiou], that homeless people are necessarily people who are rough sleepers who are coming in. It could be a family.
On the overall thing of ‘no benefits’, Universal Credit is going to be six benefits rolled into one and so people are going to have to be a bit more open-minded because there are going to be eventually 3 million people who will migrate to Universal Credit. It is about doing the foundation work. At the RLA, we have to work with members and inform them of what is coming. With the DWP, we will try to improve communications around education and the processes before managed migration starts because a lot of people will be in the private sector, ultimately, and will be claiming Universal Credit eventually.
In terms of homelessness, I do not really feel in the best position as the other panellists because I do not work frontline. The stories I tend to hear from members are where things have gone wrong and they want our help. It is not necessarily them coming to us and saying, “Where can I find a council that will offer incentives to house”.
We are based in Manchester, and Manchester has a really quite well publicised homelessness problem. The Mayor there, Andy Burnham, wants to look at potentially taking bad-quality housing out of stock in the PRS and for councils to buy it back. There are all sorts of ways that we can look innovatively at providing housing for homeless people. It is just knowing what is right for each region, I guess. What might work in London might not work in other city regions. I could definitely look to our members and we can ask that question.
David Kurten AM: That leads me on nicely to the next one because you were talking about Manchester as a city doing buybacks, which is what you mentioned is happening in Croydon. What about not the boroughs in London but the Mayor as the GLA? Is there anything that any of you think that the Mayor could do to help in improving the quality and availability of temporary accommodation or helping people in temporary accommodation into permanent accommodation? If you think that that is the job of the boroughs in London, that is fine and you can say so, but if you think the Mayor could do anything --
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): If he has any spare cash, then that would be great.
David Kurten AM: I am not sure with Crossrail, unfortunately.
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): When it comes down to it, this is the real world. All local authorities are in austerity measures and we are trying to do our best with the situation and the homelessness demand increasing and the market as it is. As we have talked about, there are different regional variations. There is only so much you can do with that pot of money.
The biggest thing for me - and this is when I do go goosy - is that if we do not sort out the foundations of people’s lives and that means families and vulnerable adults having homes, then the rest of it goes creaky and that is when we have more families going through children’s social care and more people going through adult social care. If we get that bit right - and that is where the money needs to come in - then I believe we can stop spending so much money on these other bits. That is what I really believe. 21 Page 21
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): For me, this is my personal opinion but it may be something quite radical. When you look at the breakdown of what accommodation there is, temporary accommodation and private rented accommodation in terms of the unit is not any different. What is different is in terms of the cost and the impact on local authorities. It is still just a dwelling and the facilities are the same.
David Kurten AM: Is there anything that specifically the Mayor could do?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): In terms of campaigning and in terms of regulation and changing and impacting on the market.
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): He could do the campaign but, also, is there something he could do around a pan-London incentive to ensure that for local authorities, wherever they are, there is an upper level and it does not go beyond that? That takes the competition element away from landlords. There used to be the old gazumping when you were buying a house. It is the same thing when we are talking about rentals. If there was an upper cap that was put across the whole of London, it would stop that gazumping going on.
David Kurten AM: Just suggesting and campaigning, yes?
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): Yes.
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): I wonder if anything could be done to look at how we flip the amount of revenue spend to capital spend. Although I recognise that that means that there is a bit of short-term pain, if you can invest some of that revenue into capital projects to develop new housing, then in the longer term for evermore you would have a lower revenue stream on that.
There must be some things that the Mayor could do around how we might be able to make some of the development work a bit better. For example, with Section 106 agreements, the developer will have said at the time of getting planning how much it is going to cost for those Section 106 units, but when they come to be sold they are usually hawked around in a bidding war and end up getting more money. The Mayor could perhaps say that the amount of money that the planning agreement says the Section 106 unit is worth is all that they can be paid for and so they have to be sold at that price, or he could perhaps look at whether there is some kind of overage clause to say that if you put in your feasibility study that your Section 106 units are worth £100,000 and if you manage to sell them for £200,000, then that money goes back to the local authority so that it can be invested in more affordable housing. That also then reduces the pressure on temporary housing.
There are some creative ways that we can look at how things work at the moment to shift some of that money back to the sector.
David Kurten AM: Thank you very much.
Andrew Boff AM: Of course the Mayor could always build more homes. Just a thought there.
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I am going to talk about HRA and I just want to hear from councils at the moment. There is a number of obligations that local authorities now have that they did not have before. I wonder if the councils could tell me how this has changed your way of working and how you are implementing it.
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): We have been working in line with the ethos behind the HRA for a number of years anyway. In terms of the changes, a huge part of that is the culture change with our frontline officers and trying to move away from what we call ‘processing’ people and just looking at what statutory duties we might have to someone, trying to get underneath and understand the reason for their homelessness, the challenges, the difficulties and what we can do around supporting them and helping them to find solutions. We all know that homelessness is not normally just around housing. There can be other issues. We have invested a lot of money in our staff. We have recruited more staff in terms of the delivery.
The way in which the legislation has been drafted is quite onerous. Whilst we are trying to move away from the process, the legislation is written in such a way that it forces us to go through lots of different processes and issue lots of different decisions at different times. We are spending at the moment far more time on that than we would like rather than preventing and relieving homelessness.
Andrew Boff AM: Are there any of those processes that you feel are redundant?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): They are not helpful for people who are working and who recognise -- most or a lot of local authorities will recognise that early intervention and getting involved and speaking to people at a much earlier point and not at the point of crisis is often going to result in saving councils money and resources and better outcomes for people as well.
The reason that this has been introduced is that there were councils that did not have that approach and were only doing what they had to do from a legislative perspective. I understand why it has been introduced but it is creating more problems for us now. We will feed that in. The legislation is going to be reviewed after two years and so we will provide feedback to the Ministry [of Housing, Communities and Local Government] (MHCLG) in terms of our experience.
The partnership working has been a huge part. We have a Housing Change programme. We have tried to put some officers in different parts of the authority in terms of early intervention. An example is that we have put someone within our multiagency safeguarding hub so that, where housing officers are struggling to get engagement and there are other challenges and issues maybe around safeguarding or there are children and we cannot get people to engage, we are more likely to find solutions or the support that people need in order to enable them to sustain their accommodation where they are approaching it from.
Andrew Boff AM: How is the experience for the families who are turning up or your clients? How has it changed for them?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): We have looked at the front door. We have massively reduced waiting times. We are also running our service from a different location as well and so we are in different parts of the borough. We want to be accessible.
We are also having conversations with some other partners around maybe doing some further outreach. General practitioners (GPs) come to mind. There are a lot of people who will go to the GP and they are the first person that they will speak to about the difficulties and challenges that they are facing around anxiety. 23 Page 23
There may be opportunities around identifying people who may become homeless in the future at a much earlier stage.
Andrew Boff AM: You had the benefit in Lewisham of being a trailblazer borough, which means that you have had a little extra cash to deal with the implementation.
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): The trailblazer was in two parts. Part one was predictive analytics, which is something similar to what Croydon has done. That work was much more complicated than we originally thought and we have not made as much progress as we would have hoped, but we have learned a great deal from the work that we are doing.
The idea is that if there is a way that we could gather information from lots of different sources, we could identify who is likely to approach us in the future so that we can be much more proactive rather than people walking through the door at the point of crisis and we cannot work with a landlord because the arrears are so high that there is no saving that relationship.
Andrew Boff AM: I am very conscious of time and so this is a bit staccato with these questions. Apologies for that. Are you offering those people different forms of accommodation as a result of them coming in earlier or is it just PRS stuff?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): There is a mixture of things. The employment project is part of our wider programme. We have been successful and that has only really been running for the last four or five months. There were at the last count I know ten households that we have managed to get into employment. We specifically work with people who have been impacted by welfare reforms and so there was probably nowhere for those families to go other than social housing because they were benefit capped. Looking in the PRS is just unaffordable. They are just not going to be able to meet the shortfall. By allowing them to and helping them to gain employment, we then can look to the PRS to find solutions.
We are not just looking at them as housing problems. The personal housing plans, which we are required to do now, are around identifying the specific needs of the people who are approaching us. We are looking at it as a personal housing and wellbeing plan and so it is much broader and working with a much wider range of partners around supporting and enabling people to sustain, whether we can keep them in their own home or wherever they are moving on to.
Andrew Boff AM: We have been made aware of statistics from the MHCLG that there has been a fall in the number of acceptances of a main homelessness duty. Can you comment on that?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): The code of guidance says that we should not be accepting people until the end of what is called the ‘relief duty’ and so there will be several months where we are not accepting people and there will be a lag in terms of the overall numbers.
On the point that I was making in terms of the administrative burden and the changes that have come about, lots of local authorities across the country are finding it very challenging in terms of making sure their systems are accurately reflecting the real demand on services. With the MHCLG statistics that have been submitted, there is going to be quite a lot of variation moving forward and so I am not sure how accurately it is reflecting it overall.
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For us, we are looking at what we are accepting and we think that we will probably accept a similar amount to what we previously accepted last year [2018]. In terms of the number of prevention or relief cases, we have prevented or relieved homelessness in 331 cases, which is slightly lower than what we had prevented or relieved in the previous year [2017].
However, bear in mind the huge change that we have had to deliver on the service and the additional work that it has created in terms of systems training, the actual time we are having to spend with people and the administration. We would have probably been much more successful if we could have used our time in a much better way.
Andrew Boff AM: Thank you very much. Just to Shepherds Bush, what has been the impact of the HRA and the provision of temporary accommodation on your advice, guidance and support services? Has it had a measurable impact?
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): I am not sure how far it has had a measurable impact, but certainly we have had some cases where we have been able to work with local authorities differently because of the HRA. We were always, I suppose, minded to try to reduce evictions and reduce homelessness in the first place, but generally I would say that the impact it has had is that we sometimes find local authorities will act in ways that are co-operative with us and help sustain a tenancy, but really you are dealing with a symptom not a cause. Sometimes they will be able to say, “Actually, if we clear the arrears, can you not evict the person or can you let them back in after an eviction”, or find some way to broker the tenant staying, but that has not necessarily dealt with the underlying cause: that person just cannot afford a property.
Andrew Boff AM: Finally, to the RLA, has the HRA made a difference to your members?
Natalie Williamson (Senior Policy Officer, Residential Landlords Association): I am hearing some positive stories, not necessarily from members but from my discussions with local authorities. It is making them think of different ways to work more proactively with good landlords.
One of the key concerns that we have observed going to meetings around Universal Credit was the lack of a strategic link between the HRA and the impact of the housing costs within Universal Credit and how that could impact on the success of that legislation. When so many people are in the private sector claiming as individuals, if that is not working effectively, then you are going to end up with these people back at the local authority and you are just in a vicious cycle.
Our Chairman [Alan Ward] and Vice Chairman [Chris Town] went to speak with [The RT Hon] James Brokenshire [MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government] last week. They have met with the Secretary of State for the DWP. The conversations are happening and joint working is happening now, but we all have a responsibility to work together - without the criminal landlords - to try to keep people in their homes, whether that is through prevention or administrative processes or giving the right advice to our members and preparing them. We do all have a responsibility.
Andrew Boff AM: Thank you very much.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): I have to move on. I am really sorry. Assembly Member Cooper, I know we have heard an awful lot about how people are treated by councils and the culture and a lot of that has come from Lewisham. Fire away and ask some questions about that. 25 Page 25
Leonie Cooper AM: Tom [Copley AM] mentioned earlier on that he is a Lewisham councillor and I am a councillor as well and have also worked in housing. Whilst I would not want to think that this ever happens, I know that it does. I have had to personally go to the housing office with people who are perhaps not very good at explaining their own situation because they do not know the right terminology. Sometimes people are incredibly unrealistic.
I have just been dealing with the woman before Christmas [2018] who had been in temporary accommodation for three years, had then got pregnant and had another baby, and wanted to be reassessed for larger accommodation. All of that happened and she was offered a council flat. That all sounds very successful, does it not? She did not want it because it was on the third floor and there was no lift. I said, “If you refuse it, you are not going to be offered anything else”, and she has now accepted it.
I know that sometimes people come in with very unrealistic views and sometimes cannot necessarily go into the nitty-gritty of the detail, but sometimes staff are pretty horrible to them when they first turn up at the point of asking for assistance or when they have been served with a Section 21 notice or when they need help.
Is there anything that we can do to really improve the culture and the practice? I know there is a big tsunami of people arriving all the time. It is very easy just because of that to become a bit blasé and in some ways you are pushing people away because you know you cannot deal with them. I would like to pose that to Julia [Pitt] and then to Lee [Georgiou].
Julia Pitt (Director of Gateway Services, London Borough of Croydon): We have already touched on quite a bit of it. A lot of what we have been doing in Croydon is a cultural shift as well as, if you like, a whole system change. The way that we work is about helping people to help themselves, but it is also around having honest conversations about what people can and cannot expect. That puts you on a much better footing.
I will always remember going out to one of the temporary accommodation blocks and having one of these conversations. They were underneath a thing having a smoke and I went over and I was talking to them. They were saying how they had been in temporary accommodation for X months. I said, “Where do you want to be?” They went, “I don’t want to be around here, anyway. I’ve got family in the Isle of Wight. I need to get there”. I said, “But you can get there if you want to get there”. Relationships, conversation, listening, then making it happen. She then went with her four children to be near her infrastructure, which hopefully means that she now has a better life and her children do too. Those are the key things.
Also, organisationally, there is a big thing for leaders, chief executives, directors, heads of services and managers to push that culture through an organisation and to enable people to do their role in a way where they feel supported and empowered to make decisions that are around the individuals’ and the families’ needs.
Leonie Cooper AM: Would you agree with that? Do you think there are issues here also about dealing with quite a stressful situation for the staff, a constant flow of people coming in, sometimes in terrible circumstances?
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): It is a cultural issue, which is why it is taking a long time to overcome it. I definitely agree with what Julia [Pitt] was saying in that this has been driven as a result of austerity and as a result of demand on different services. In terms of the performance monitoring of homelessness services, historically it has been around how many people we have accepted as homeless and how many people we have in accommodation. We are forgetting that we are 26 Page 26 dealing with human beings. We should be measuring some of the positive outcomes. What difference have we made to people’s lives? Have we created opportunities for people in the future? They are things that can often get lost. Local authorities are under so much pressure as a result of the huge, significant budget cuts that I think sometimes we lose sight. We are trying to undo that and it is --
Leonie Cooper AM: It is frontline staff. To a certain extent it becomes a sausage machine with statistics rather than dealing with people in crisis.
Lee Georgiou (Housing Needs Manager, London Borough of Lewisham): Even in terms of frontline staff I have some sympathy with that and I have said it in other places where I go and speak to senior managers. We cannot forget, but that has been driven by people who have been overseeing. The reason that it is taking so long is that it is years and years and years. Gradually demand has been getting higher while what we have actually had available and the challenges are getting more and more difficult.
In terms of what we are doing in Lewisham, it is similar. We have recruited people. We do not want people who have traditionally assessed homeless cases. What we want is people who have maybe been working with charities who are there supporting people to help people try to move away, and to embed some of that within the service area. It is the culture change. We have done so much training and you cannot just stop that. It needs to be ongoing, so we continue to invest. We recently did some around a person-centred approach and Mary Gober [Customer Service Expert]. We have had people come in and provide us with training around that.
Consistent messaging is key. I have mentioned that a few times today in terms of people refusing offers of what is suitable accommodation in terms of the law. Sometimes people do not really understand and appreciate that because they are speaking to different professionals, partners and communities. The message is not the same. There is a belief that they may be entitled or they will get something that they are not going to get that changes the decisions they are making, which is going to have a huge impact on their life.
Leonie Cooper AM: Yes. It actually feels a bit of a triumph that I got this lady to accept this flat that she still is not happy with on the third floor because it does not have a lift. She was absolutely going to turn it down and she would have ended up in the street because the temporary accommodation was about to be terminated.
Matt [Campion], can I bring you in? There was an interesting point that Lee [Georgiou] just made about recruiting staff perhaps with more people-centred skills from outside. One of the things that came up with some of the examination and talking to people that has been done by the [London Assembly Housing] Committee is that in some cases people have been going elsewhere for advice and support because they have felt that some of the people they have been talking to at the local authorities have been insufficiently helpful and welcoming and have not been giving them the advice. Is that something that you are aware of and is that something that we can change or improve?
Matt Campion (Chief Executive, Shepherds Bush Housing Group, and Member of Homes for Cathy): If I am being honest, the customer service ethos across the whole housing sector needs to improve. That is probably not true just about housing but across the whole social or voluntary sector. Certainly at Shepherds Bush [Housing Group] we try to recruit staff for some of those frontline roles that are not necessarily housing people but who have customer service skills and want to learn about housing. Because it is a housing association, we know all about housing. If you have the right attitude and the right customer service skills, we can teach the housing bit. That has some success with us.
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Leonie Cooper AM: Thank you. I am going to leave it there, Chair, because I know we are pressed for time.
Sian Berry AM (Chair): Thank you. That was really helpful. Yes, we have had a lot of feedback from our focus groups with residents and examples of just jargon being thrown back at them. The phrase “intentionally homeless” seems to be a real problem for people. That is the reason they get for being turned down and quite often it is because they have had to leave for affordability issues. It really does need sorting out. We will be publishing some of our case studies. It is good to hear you are both working on that issue.
Thank you all for coming.
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