Clause 16 - Duty of local housing authority to formulate a homelessness strategy
Homes Bill
4:00 pm
Mr David Curry (Skipton and Ripon, Conservative)
Following Mr. Stevenson's guidance this morning, I want to make a couple of points about the relationship between the housing department and social services. I am worried that there is a new danger that social services departments will be nibbled away or taken over by the health authorities or trusts on one side and housing departments on the other, and that they are now becoming a bit of a punchball in the middle of local government.
The clause uses three wonderful words—``may'', ``reasonably'' and ``require''. Those are three special words. The word ``may'' could easily be read as ``shall'', or ``must'', as the notes make clear. ``Reasonableness'' is a concept with which we are all familiar, and no one has found anything that does the job better. I am interested in the word ``require''. It has two meanings. There are things that need to be done that one can ``require'', or one can demand or ``require'' that something be done. I want to know whether ``require'' is facultative or imperative in this case, because that is important.
Social service departments are asked to take homelessness strategies into account. That is all very well in a unitary authority, but problems arise in two-tier authorities in which seven or eight district councils are pursuing different homeless strategies. Some will have had transferred stock and some will not. At the same time, social services departments that have an upper-tier responsibility in a two-tier system are under a great deal of pressure, especially financially. The pressure to passport through education and other spending has meant that social service departments tend to be caught in the middle feeling the pinch. I am anxious that the Minister should recognise who takes the lead in such cases.
In a sense, social services ought to be the more important partner. After all, social services departments are increasingly being expected to become important partners in health provision, and there seems to be a seamlessness between the provision of primary health care and looking after people in their own homes or in residential nursing homes. At the same time, housing authorities must also be taken into account. If we are not careful, social services departments will be taking account of what everyone else is doing and have no account of their own functions or any initiative left for what they are doing.
How does the Minister see the relationship, and how much does he expect social service departments to be able to knock a few heads together in local authorities, so that the strategy is not merely a local one? Over a county area there start to be many more common elements. If there is to be an effective interface between social services and homelessness, the greater the commonality in homelessness strategies, the more effective it will be to have that sensible relationship. It is that area that I want to explore, knowing how difficult life is in many social services departments and how vulnerable those who work in them are feeling.