Charities Call On Government To Fix £1bn Hole In Homelessness Services

Nine years of government cuts have left local services for single homeless people with a £1bn a year funding gap, according to research commissioned by St Mungo’s and Homeless Link. The charities are warning that cuts to council budgets are leaving increasing numbers of people at risk on the streets, and calling on the Government to act now to make up the funding shortfall - or face missing its target of ending rough sleeping by 2027. The report, Local Authority Spending on Homelessness,  shows that council spending on support for single homeless people in England fell by 53% between 2008-9 and 2017-18, almost £1bn less a year compared to ten years ago. Download the report from the St Mungos website.

https://www.mungos.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/WPIE-Research-summary-briefing.pdf?x74044

Number Of Shelter Beds For Homeless People Drops By A Fifth Under Conservatives

The number of beds in homeless shelters has plummeted since the Conservatives came to power, despite homelessness having soared in the same period. Bed space for single homeless people in England has dropped by almost a fifth since 2010 amid government funding cuts and local council belt-tightening. There are now significantly fewer places for single homeless people to go, despite the number needing somewhere to spend the night having rocketed. Since 2010, homelessness and rough sleeping have risen in every year. The number of people sleeping rough has risen by 169 per cent, while the figure for people being declared homeless by local councils is up 48 per cent. Read more on the Independent website.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/homeless-shelter-theresa-may-conservatives-beds-housing-statistics-rough-sleeping-a8303391.html

Reverse Universal Credit Cuts, Iain Duncan Smith Tells Chancellor

The former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has warned the chancellor that he risks undermining the whole purpose of welfare reform if he fails to reverse cuts to universal credit (UC) in his spring statement. Philip Hammond is under mounting pressure from across the party to use better than expected tax revenues to reverse cuts made after the 2015 election. Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that 340,000 people could be taken out of poverty by reversing the cuts to work allowances. Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/13/reverse-universal-credit-cuts-iain-duncan-smith-tells-chancellor

Universal Credit Cuts Hit Families With Children Hardest

Families with children are the biggest losers under the cuts made to universal credit since it was first established, with some families left thousands of pounds worse off, according to a new analysis. The study by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) says that a series of cuts and changes have left the government’s flagship welfare overhaul failing to meet its original aims. Lone parent families will be on average £2,380 a year worse off, while families with two children lose £1,100 on average and those with three youngsters lose £2,540. Although universal credit was intended to boost household incomes by strengthening incentives for claimants to move into work or take on more hours, most families will be worse off than under the scheme’s original design, it says. Download the research from the CPAG website.

Councils Fury At New Homes Bonus Cut

The announcement that funding for older people would come out of the New Homes Bonus resulted in an angry response from councils who called it a “sticking plaster” solution. Cllr Neil Clarke, chairman of the District Councils’ Network (DCN) said: “The New Homes Bonus (NHB) scheme has provided a powerful and popular growth incentive in localities, enabling councils to grant more planning permissions, making development more acceptable for local communities – which have seen the benefits of growth through investment in supporting infrastructure and the delivery of homes where they are needed most. Some district councils will receive no New Homes Bonus as a result of this change, contrary to the government’s aspiration to encourage growth, and we call on the government to reduce the level of the baseline, to reduce the impact on all district councils.” Read more on 24housing.

Government Cuts Funding For Making Brownfield Sites Suitable For New Homes

The government has drastically cut funds needed to encourage new building on “brownfield” sites, despite claiming that such sites would be key to solving the housing crisis. Many sites could be used for housing but doing so would require work to remove remaining toxins from the soil, which carries a cost. To date, that cost has often been borne by the government and local authorities, but the MPs on the environmental audit committee found that DEFRA had drastically cut its funding for remediation, and is planning to phase it out in 2017. In richer areas, hopeful developers frequently pay for decontamination themselves, but in poor districts they rely on the council or central government to do so in order to render the site suitable. Read more on the Guardian website.

Charity Criticises Fewer Safe Places for Teenagers in Crisis

Practitioners are struggling to find safe places for vulnerable children due to fewer services, funding cuts and higher thresholds for intervention, according to a report by Railway Children.  An estimated 18,000 children who run away this year will sleep rough or with someone they’ve just met, many because they do not have somewhere safe to go when they need it most. The report follows the closure of all but one refuge for young runaways in the UK and evidence of patchy use of local authority emergency accommodation.  Read more on the Railway Children website.

Half of Councils at Risk of Financial Failure within Five Years

One in six councils are not expected to deliver services within budget this year, and more than half of all councils are at risk of financial failure within the next five years, a report from  the National Audit Office says. As the government pushes ahead with funding cuts of more than a third in local government many single-tier and county councils feared for core services including education and social care. The NAO also said the CLG had no way of monitoring the financial sustainability of councils. In keeping with past reports, it found that the councils hardest hit were those most dependent on government grants. Read more on the NAO website.

DWP Cuts Put Government's Welfare Reforms at Risk

The government's ambitious welfare reform strategy is at risk because of the speed and depth of the cuts imposed on the DWP, according to a leaked internal review. The document reveals that the DWP is struggling to meet "extremely challenging" demands for over £1bn of efficiency savings over the next two years and these pressures could disrupt plans to roll out benefits reforms. Too crude an approach to future cuts would affect the quality and capacity of the DWP's "public-facing" services to vulnerable pensioners, jobseekers and benefit claimants, it warns. It is understood that separate internal DWP modelling shows that, as universal credit is expanded in the months before the general election next year, the cuts will diminish the department's capacity to keep on top of rising customer demand in jobcentres and benefit offices.  Read more on the Guardian website.

Cuts Put Help for Homeless People at Risk

Research by Homeless Link indicates that funding cuts are having an impact on the ability of charities to help those without a home.  With the number of homeless people increasing by 10% in 2012 , the annual ‘Survey of Needs and Provision’ (SNAP), found that nearly five out of ten projects saw their funding fall - by an average of 17%. With most services reliant on local authority funding, the findings indicate that the capacity of the sector to house and help new homeless people has fallen.

    *In the year to November 2012, 58 accommodation projects closed and 1,811 bed spaces were lost.

    *The number of full-time staff has reduced by 16% since 2010.

There has also been a decrease in the number of services offering targeted support to help clients with the most complex problems.  Download a copy of the report from the Homeless Link website.

Warning over Social Housing Cuts

The Government's cuts to social housing funding have led to a situation which may not be workable in the long term, the chairman of the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee has warned.   Labour's Clive Betts told MPs rents were rising, prompting concerns from housing associations that the model would not last much beyond the next general election.   Speaking during a Commons debate on the department's budget and recommendations outlined in the Committee's report on the financing of new housing supply, Mr Betts outlined fears that a number of associations thought they would end up paying more in borrowing costs due to rising rent arrears.  Read more on the Daily Telegraph website.

Shelter Forced To Close Advice Offices

Homelessness charity Shelter is being forced to press ahead with closing 10 of its housing advice offices in England because of legal aid cuts.  The organisation expects this could mean up to 100 redundancies but said it was ‘doing everything we can to keep the numbers as low as possible’. Government cuts to legal aid will mean a 50 per cent reduction in funding for the charity’s face-to-face advice services. The Shelter offices are in Rotherham, Ashford, Chatham, Dover, Milton Keynes, Cheshire, Gloucester, Somerset, Hertfordshire and Cumbria. Read more on Inside Housing.

‘Cut Today, Pay Tomorrow,’ Warns Homeless Charity

As homelessness rises across the country, plans to cut local funding of housing support services by up to 85% will damage lives and communities, Homeless Link warns.  Who is supporting people now? has been published as Homeless Link’s CEO, Rick Henderson, calls on local authorities not to go ahead with disproportionate cuts to housing support services and homelessness budgets following a visit to services that could face closure if cuts of 85% are implemented in their community.  Some deep concerns have been highlighted by the report, which explores the impact of funding changes on local authorities, services and the people they support in seven communities in England.  Download a copy of the report from the Homeless Link website.

Late Changes to Council Tax Benefit Reforms

In a ministerial statement recently the government announced a significant change to its policy to localise Council Tax Benefit (CTB) from next April. The government is proposing to localise support for council tax from 2013–14, abolishing CTB across Britain and giving grants to local to design their own systems for providing support for council tax to low-income families. On top of this, the government planned to cut by 10 per cent the funding it provides for council tax support. This would save around £500 million a year.  The effect is that localisation would create considerable complexity just as Universal Credit is being rolled out with the intention of simplifying things.  Now, new proposals have been announced.  A £100 million package will be available to councils whose schemes meet a particular set of criteria that the government considers “best practice”. It will, apparently, be available for one year only. Councils will be eligible for the money if nobody currently on full CTB ends up paying more than 8.5% of their council tax liability (the costs of collecting such small amounts from very low income households who are not used to paying council tax mean that councils may well prefer to give a full rebate to such households); if the rate at which the benefit is withdrawn as income rises is no higher than 25% (compared with 20% at the moment); and if there are no “cliff edges” in the system.  Read more on the Institute for Fiscal Studies website.

Charity Dealing With 27% Increase In Rough Sleepers

A Notts homeless charity has seen a near 30 per cent rise in the number of rough sleepers and potential homeless people it works with in the city in just two years.  The charity, Framework, says, in the first six months of the year, it worked with 167 rough sleepers and people who are at immediate risk of becoming homeless in Nottingham.  This figure is seven per cent higher than the same period of time the year before, and 27 per cent higher than it was in 2010-11.  The charity says this is partly down to an increase in homelessness as the financial crisis continues, but also because they have expanded in spite of funding cuts.  Read more on the Nottingham Post website.