Clause 3 - Homelessness strategies
Homelessness Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire, Conservative)
I am pleased to be a member of this Standing Committee discussing homelessness, on which I made my maiden speech. I referred in that speech to some of the homeless charities that deal with rough sleepers, a subject dealt with in this amendment and the proposed new clause.
First, I should declare an interest to the Committee. Some time ago, Mr. Lee, one of our distinguished Clerks, was a tenant of mine. I hope that he would confirm that I was in the model landlord category.
The amendment and the new clause would make certain that local housing authorities ensure that their strategy specifically includes the prevention of rough sleeping. That would render the rough sleepers unit redundant. The responsibility for dealing with rough sleepers should be transferred to local authorities—they are more in touch with the problems in their districts than the rough sleepers unit can hope to be.
The amendment is important because I know from my constituency surgery, that little provision is available for families who face possible eviction and sleeping on the streets after they have been evicted from private rented accommodation and offered 28 days bed-and-breakfast accommodation. I would be interested to hear the Minister's comments on a case of that kind in my constituency. A lady in the circumstances that I have described came to see me. She has been evicted from private rented accommodation and offered 28 days bed-and-breakfast accommodation. She is expecting her fifth child on the day before she will be forced out of the bed-and-breakfast accommodation, so she came to ask me what would happen. I understand that, in the eyes of the law, she is considered to be intentionally homeless. However, that still leaves me in a difficult position as to how I should advise her. Will the Bill make a difference in her case?
District councils and their metropolitan or unitary counterparts should be able to put applicants in contact with sufficient numbers of providers of emergency accommodation to meet their local needs. That is what I would have expected to happen in the case of the lady who came to my surgery. In Committee this morning, the Minister spoke about local authorities having telephone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses of organisations in their locality who could provide such emergency housing services. However, a senior officer of the council involved in the case I have mentioned told me that that was not the case. A database needs to be created containing such information nationally, so that we can give the best possible advice to people in such circumstances.
New clause 1 would bring to an end the rough sleepers unit and allow that budget of some £198 million to be transferred to the local housing authorities in proportion to the level of rough sleeping in their areas. That was envisaged by the then Under-Secretary in part II of the Homes Bill. It would allow the budget of £198 million to go directly to the local authorities over three years. The administration budget of £3.6 million is included in that, as are the salaries of the senior staff: I gather that Louise Casey has earned between £70,000 and £75,000, that her deputy earned about £54,000, and that the third most senior member of staff earned between £45,000 and £60,000. All that money would then become available to go directly to the local authorities that assist rough sleepers in their areas.
In the previous Parliament, when the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) was the Minister, he told the Committee that he envisaged that responsibility for rough sleeping would be returned to local housing authorities. I trust that that is still the Government's position.