Prevention Or Cure (Part 2)
Prevention or Cure (Part 2)
In Adviser 111, Mark Robinson analysed the legal framework within which Local Authorities seek to prevent homelessness; here he & Mathew Cunningham highlight a further development in the tale, which has potentially significant implications for the advice sector.
In its new homelessness strategy document – ‘Sustainable Communities: settled homes; changing lives’[i], the government set itself the challenge of reducing by half the numbers of households living in temporary accommodation by 2010, by finding new ways to tackle homelessness.
As part and parcel of this drive, increased investment in homelessness prevention services has been announced by government – increasing from £60 million this year to £74 million by 2007/08 and we are promised that more new homes will be built – an extra 10,000 new social homes a year by 2008, an increase of 50% on current activity.
This of course is all welcome, but to reinforce the government’s homelessness prevention agenda, a widely acknowledged (at least by advisers) consequence of which has been homelessness application prevention – see Adviser 111 - a new Best Value Performance Indicator is in place to monitor housing advice provided by, or on behalf of, local authorities.
This article will look at the implications for local authorities in trying to improve their performance in delivering housing advice and ponders whether there are opportunities – financial or otherwise - for the independent advice sector to work more closely with local authorities, by sharing its expertise.
Preventing homelessness
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) has issued guidance to English local authorities about how they can comply with Best Value Performance Indicator 213 (BVPI 213), which measures the prevention of homelessness through housing advice.[ii]
Under s.179 of the Housing Act 1996 (HA 96), all local authorities have a duty to ensure that advice and information about homelessness are available free of charge to anyone in their district. The BVPI throws a spotlight on the degree of compliance with that duty by making authorities set performance indicators for this area of work, against which the effectiveness of their housing advice provision can then be judged by the Government.
As is often the case, the sanctions are not spelt out, but are likely to revolve around funding – a bigger slice of the cake for the better performing councils.
BVPI 213 is only one of many sources of information and guidance from the Government relating to homelessness prevention. It does nothing to alter the basic legal framework for homelessness applications under Part 7 of the HA 96, which was set out in the previous article. However, it is significant because it makes the s.179 duty referred to above more enforceable, albeit not by individual homeless people.
What’s it all about?
BVPI 213 measures the number of households who considered themselves to be homeless or threatened with homelessness, where that situation was then resolved by housing advice casework intervention.
Each local authority can set its own target, but will need to show that the target is challenging and promotes continuous improvement. The requirement to set a target extends to those local authorities that have no housing stock.
Of particular interest to the advice sector is the requirement that the advice work must be carried out by a dedicated housing advice service, which can be an independent service funded by a local authority, or an in-house advice service.
Cases will count towards this target whether or not the household was in priority need and whether or not a formal homelessness investigation was started under s. 184 HA96. However, a local authority can still deploy housing advice as part of a homelessness investigation to produce a not homeless outcome.
What kind of housing advice counts?
The guidance anticipates that there will be casework involving detailed file based case recording, the outcome of which is subject to a system of quality checking and control by a senior officer.
The guidance is quite specific in detailing what will not count:
- One off telephone advice through an advice line will not count.
- The guidance makes it clear that telling the client what s/he can do and leaving them to sort it out for themselves does not count, nor does signposting or referring to third parties.
- Giving the client a letter to give to his her landlord.
- Merely telling a landlord that a notice is invalid.
- A mere referral to a CAB for money advice is not to be included, however if the local authority refers the debt “bit” of the case to the CAB for them to resolve, but retains control of the case and its outcome, for example as there is a homeless application under investigation, that would appear to count.
- Generic advice/information services provided by the council or others will not count, nor will work done by independent housing advice centres which receive no council grant funding (BVPI 213 itself states this).
What’s casework?
The Government is clear that what it wants to see is detailed, file-based case recording, plus a system of objectively checking and verifying case outcomes/resolutions by either a senior officer or another officer who was not involved in the original case.
Until the recent shift in emphasis to prevention, the provision of housing advice has not been seen as a priority area for developing service provision by many local authorities and as a consequence practice across the country is patchy to say the least. Many local authorities lack the expertise in delivering advice services that match the standards now employed by the independent advice sector, especially those advice services that are quality marked. Certainly the Audit Commission was critical of the standard of local authority practice with regards to recording of housing advice in its report, ‘Homelessness – responding to the new agenda’[iii].
The CLS Quality Mark is suggested as a good practice reference point in the BVPI guidance and it is in developing practice and systems that many local authorities may be able to learn from the independent sector, particularly in regard to setting service standards, record keeping, reporting and monitoring of housing advice outcomes.
Six months
Many local authorities have expressed concerns about the “6 month resolution” which is the basic requirement of any outcome that is going to count towards the BVPI. A “resolution” is defined in both the guidance and the BVPI itself as:
“An outcome where casework intervention has resolved the immediate homelessness or threat of homelessness and it is likely that this will be sustainable for a period of at least 6 months.”
Some local authorities believe that, for example, sustaining an individual in an existing assured shorthold tenancy will only count if the landlord puts something in writing to confirm that the tenant can remain for a further 6 months, which may be hard to obtain in practice.
However the guidance tells authorities that “once a case has been checked and signed off, the local authority is not required to go back over the 6 month period to check that homelessness is still being prevented as this might be considered too time consuming.”
Notes of caution
Violence and sanctuary schemes
Improved security as outlined in option (g) above is an approach which is set out in Harrow LBC’s “Good Practice Guide”[iv]; the ODPM would like all local authorities to have such a scheme.
However, such schemes are voluntary as far as the client is concerned and often unpopular, and Code 6.21[v] makes it clear that if the applicant does not want to go down the sanctuary road, the authority must treat the applicant as homeless if there would be a probability of violence if s/he remained in the property.
Violence and injunctions
Code of Guidance 6.20[vi] reminds authorities that they can advise applicants about the availability of legal remedies such as injunctions.
However in Bond v Leicester City Council[vii] the Court of Appeal took a strong line on injunctions and homelessness, ruling that the applicant could not be penalised in homelessness terms for failing to apply for an injunction, and that if there was a probability of violence if the applicant continued to occupy the property, then the applicant was homeless.
Opportunities
The difficulty for many local authorities is that they do not have the in-house case recording systems, file review procedures or wider housing/debt/benefits knowledge that underpins much of what is being urged upon them by the ODPM. What they do have is a duty, the performance of which is going to be measured for the first time.
The advice sector has much, if not all, that the local authority may require, but is unlikely to have spare capacity to take up active referrals from the local authority within existing resources, even where the authority retains the overall case to make it count - the guidance is clear that the BVPI is restricted to grant funded and directly provided services only.
Therefore, it seems that there may be an opportunity for advice agencies and local authorities to work together in a variety of ways to deliver homelessness prevention, ranging from sharing knowledge and expertise, to authorities paying advice providers to file review their cases, or perhaps even seeking consultancy support on how to set service standards and run case recording, file management and outcome monitoring systems to CLS Quality Mark standards.
There may even be a successful argument in some areas for greater local authority funding of independent housing advice!
[i] ODPM, March 2005
[ii] “Best Value Performance Indicator 213 Housing Advice Service: Preventing Homelessness” July 2005, ODPM reference 05HHS03074, available from 0870 1226 236, or at
[iii] Audit Commission, January 2003 – para 3.2.3
[iv] “Tackling Homelessness: A Good Practice Guide for Local Authorities” 2nd ed November 2003, Andy Gale Harrow LBC p62
[v] Homelessness Code of Guidance to Local Authorities, July 2002, ODPM/Dept of Health
[vi] ibid
[vii] (2001) EWCA Civ 1544
Mark Robinson is a solicitor and works for Shelter in South West Yorkshire. Mathew Cunningham works for Shelter’s Quality Team. Both are members of the Adviser’s Editorial Board.