Clause 21 - Abolition of minimum period for which an authority is subject to main homelessness duty
Homes Bill
12:45 pm

Mr Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)

I thought that the Committee should tease a little more detail out of the Minister before accepting the clause, because it represents a significant change to the 1996 Act, in its abolition of the minimum 24-month period and the changes that it imposes on section 193 of that Act.

At the time the 24-month criterion was established, various fallback positions were provided. It was a controversial measure. Under that Act, local authorities are required to provide accommodation for the households they accept as statutorily homeless for a minimum of two years. As long as they confirm every two years that the household remains entitled to assistance, they may provide accommodation on a continuing basis; and if they cease to provide accommodation after two years, the household may reapply for assistance under the legislation. In short, it was not as though families—or whoever—were set adrift after the minimum two-year period had expired. Fallbacks and a route for reapplication were built into the legislation.

I have a briefings from two local authorities that state what has happened in practice. The first comments:

``The two-year limit has never really been implemented. In reality, homeless people are not able to find private rented accommodations and local authorities will assist until they can be placed in social housing.''

The other says:

``The two-year duty is to be repealed. However, in practice, in London authorities either deal with cases within two years or continue to deal with them after two years have expired.''

Shelter freely admits

``In practice, most authorities usually provide settled accommodation within the 24-month minimum period set out in the 1996 Housing Act, and continue to provide temporary accommodation where this is not possible.''

Therefore, I query why the Government feel that it is necessary to change the legislative terminology, given that, in practice, the fears expressed by many of their colleagues during the Committee stage of the 1996 Act have not come to fruition, and a number of fallbacks and safety nets were enshrined in that Act. I am genuinely curious to learn what has changed, or how that section of the 1996 Act has gone wrong and so prejudiced people that the changes proposed in clause 21 are necessary.

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman has a curious way of putting his argument. The first authority he quoted in his defence was someone saying that the two-year duty has never been implemented; if that is true, he should understand that it is entirely appropriate to remove from statute a provision that has clearly fallen into disrepute because more than two years have passed since it came into force. I accept that in many areas it has not been applied because it is inappropriate: local authorities know it is not the right way to handle their responsibilities toward homeless people. Unfortunately, however, in some areas there has been a belief that it is a statutory requirement and therefore the authority has to go through the curious bureaucratic treadmill of reviewing people's cases after a two-year period has elapsed.

Of course, problems can arise. Consider the problems that may surround a family that has been accepted as a homeless family with children if, in the course of two years, the children have passed the age of 16 and are no longer children; the family might have ceased to be regarded as being in priority need. All sorts of things could happen that could have an adverse impact on the individuals involved. In the ``No Place Like Home'' report the LGA makes the point very clearly that:

Reviewing the circumstances of priority homeless households after two years has created additional bureaucracy without uncovering, in the majority of cases, any significant change in the applicants' eligibility for rehousing.

On very simple grounds, the provision is undesirable because it is based on a completely erroneous conception of the nature of homelessness, it is ineffective and it imposes unreasonable bureaucratic burden. I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees with the Government that it is high time that it was swept away by clause 21.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.