Universal Credit (Housing Issues)
Agenda item 2 is an evidence session on the housing issues that are expected to arise following the introduction of universal credit, such as issues relating to direct payment of housing benefit to tenants and the introduction of new rules on underoccupancy in the social rented sector.
I welcome to the meeting our witnesses: Ken Milroy, the chief executive of Aberdeen Foyer; Helen Barton, customer services director at Albyn Housing Society; and Ian Ballantyne, the chief executive of the Scottish Veterans Housing Association. I invite each witness to introduce themselves and provide a summary of the key issues for their organisation in relation to the forthcoming welfare reforms. After that, I will invite committee members to ask questions and we will discuss the points that have been raised.
I do not know whether the witnesses have agreed who will go first. Will it be ladies first?
Helen Barton (Albyn Housing Society)
We did not agree on who would start, but I will take the opportunity to do so. Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to speak to the committee. As members have heard, I work for Albyn Housing Society, which is a housing association that works in the north of Scotland. We operate across most of Highland Council’s area and part of Moray Council’s area and we are coming up to our 40th anniversary.
To give members a little context, we have more than 2,700 rented homes in more than 60 towns and villages in the Highlands. They are in a mixture of urban areas, some of which are in the top 15 per cent of deprived areas, and in fragile and remote rural communities. Characteristics are a relatively low level of housing benefit claimants but very low incomes, very high fuel and transport costs—fuel poverty is a significant issue across our area—and limited housing options in most of our area. To travel from one end of our area of operation to the other takes roughly three hours by car, so simply moving people from one house to another house in another community is not an option.
Our three main concerns are the underoccupation changes, direct payments and the digital claims process.
The geographic context brings me to my first point, which is that the underoccupation issue is a particular concern for rural associations such as ours. As I said, our level of benefit claimants is relatively low—about 50 per cent of our tenants receive full or partial housing benefit—but we are exposed to the underoccupancy rules, because a high proportion of our tenants underoccupy properties.
Most of our stock is two or three-bedroom properties; only a quarter is one-bedroom or bedsit properties. The rules will be applied retrospectively, and a high proportion of our tenants already underoccupy homes, for a wide variety of reasons. One reason is that we were encouraged to and wanted to build in our communities properties that had at least two bedrooms, to provide more flexibility, especially in smaller areas, where the opportunities for moving when circumstances change are more limited. We have older stock—as I said, our association is coming up to being 40 years old—that people entered with families. When family circumstances have changed, people have been left in family houses. A high proportion of the people on our housing list—more than half—are single people. If we did not allow them to apply for two-bedroom properties, we would be unable to meet needs. If we were to make all our smaller properties available to deal with underoccupation and for the transfer of people from underoccupied properties it would undoubtedly have a severe impact on our ability as a partner to the Highland housing register to meet homelessness need across the Highlands. There is a shared concern among all the landlords there.
Our second concern relates to direct payments. For us, that is the great unknown.
More than a third of our tenants will have to make payments that they currently do not make. We simply do not know what access they have to bank accounts that could facilitate standing orders and direct debits. Access to credit unions is limited: one credit union operates across the Western Isles and the Highlands. We do not know how many of our tenants already have accounts with that credit union or whether it will be able to gear up quickly enough to provide the sorts of facilities that our tenants might need.
The shift is likely to be extremely time-consuming for our staff, with the onus on them to provide support and guidance to tenants on setting up accounts and managing if payments do not come through. We are expecting a major additional resource requirement for personal contact and helping people to work their way through the change process.
Last but not least, digital claims are of particular concern to us in a rural area. Again, we have limited information about the exact availability of personal internet access to our tenants, although we ask about it in our resident satisfaction surveys. Among those who choose to reply to us, the indications are that it is, at best, around 50 per cent and that the figure decreases with age. Given that our profiling of the working age population tends to show that that population is older, that is a concern for us. There are also serious infrastructure obstacles, such as internet access not being consistent across the whole of the rural area, public access points being limited, and the particular issue of confidentiality in public access points in small communities and rural areas. Colleagues who have set up internet access availability in their offices have found uptake to be very low because of those sorts of issues.
The overall impact is, we perceive, to shunt the cost of making the system work—of providing support and helping tenants though the process—on to landlords such as us. We have an ethos of a very high level of customer care and we will do everything that we can to support the most vulnerable members of our communities, but this comes at a time of converging pressures: increased loan costs; reducing support for development costs; reduced ability to build new smaller houses; Scottish housing quality standard requirements; and high levels of fuel poverty.
That is my outline of the main issues for us. I will be happy to discuss the things that we have done and to answer particular questions.
Gentlemen, would you like to make a contribution?
Ken Milroy MBE (Aberdeen Foyer)
Yes, thank you. Thank you for the invitation to address the committee.
I am the chief executive of Aberdeen Foyer. Among other activities, we are a registered housing support provider that works in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. I also chair a Scottish Government supported accommodation group. The group was set up at the request of Scottish ministers to provide recommendations to a cross-sectoral group of stakeholders on supported accommodation in Scotland and specifically to consider implementation of recommendations of a report on supported accommodation by a group that was chaired by Linda McTavish, who is principal of Anniesland College in Glasgow. I was also a member of that working group.
As a housing support provider, the Aberdeen Foyer operates 80 supported tenancies in seven sites across our region. We target 16 to 25-year-olds, all of whom have been homeless, have presented to the local authority and have been referred to us. Access to our services is now 100 per cent through local authority nominations. Our service is very much tied in with the local authority and it meeting its statutory responsibilities on homelessness.
We opened our first housing support service in Aberdeen in 1998. Aberdeen Foyer is one of hundreds of housing support services that are operated across Scotland by third-sector organisations such as us, housing associations or councils. Although our service is focused on those who have been homeless, I note that housing support is also provided in a number of other key policy areas of interest to the Scottish Government, including care leavers, people with addiction issues, people with an offending history and veterans, all of whom will be affected to a greater or lesser extent by changes in the welfare system.
We are concerned that at a Scottish level we do not know the number of people living in supported accommodation. The last information that I could get hold of was for 2007-08 on the implementation of the supporting people regime and showed that, at that time, 9,300 people were in supported accommodation. I have no doubt that the sector has evolved since 2007-08, but I think that the Scottish Government should try to take forward that area of work with local authorities and the regulator to ensure that we have a national handle on the numbers and the different groups who are residing in supported accommodation and that we have a broader planning framework that takes account of the welfare reform changes.
Linked to that is the definition of supported accommodation. The supported accommodation group that I chair is of the view that any such definition should include housing support within mainstream tenancies—accommodation with floating support, if you like—not just support that is provided in dedicated accommodation. It would be a matter of concern if the Department for Work and Pensions were overly restrictive in this respect and excluded some of the models that we have considered as best practice, and we must ensure that the definitions that are adopted reflect the good practice that we have seen across Scotland.
The initial activity of housing support providers through the former supporting people funding regime was overly prescriptive and limited and not at all in line with the person-centred approach favoured by providers and commissioners today. As previously defined, housing support omitted, for example, employability support and wellbeing, both of which have to move centre stage if we are to mitigate certain welfare reform issues. Definition is certainly an important aspect that needs to be clarified.
The committee will be aware that the DWP has not included supported accommodation in the initial universal credit implementation arrangements but is seeking to put in place a new system for 2014-15. Any new system must recognise the costs of operating supported accommodation and ideally should pass associated funds to the Scottish Government, which will then most likely pass them on to local authorities. Again, a clear definition of supported accommodation will be essential in sizing the pot correctly—if indeed that is how things go.
We in the sector should be proactive in developing any new system, work with the DWP to test out projects and ways of working and help to shape the new system to ensure that the sector in Scotland continues. If the system is focused on supported accommodation and if we can ensure that any changes are understood by service commissioners and regulators, we will be able to ensure that the differing legal and policy framework is being taken fully into account. I am sure that the supported accommodation group will be happy to give some guidance on the matter.
As for those moving on from supported accommodation, I share my colleague’s concerns about the so-called bedroom tax and the additional costs on the individual. In order to avoid repeat homelessness, we should be looking at transitional arrangements for those moving on from accommodation-based services. Preparing individuals to move on should be a critical part of their housing support service. It should be planned and multiagency.
As has already been mentioned, there will be restrictions on area choice and a limited amount of single-person accommodation. That might mean that there will only be two-bedroomed properties available, which might mean additional costs for the individual. The discretionary housing payment fund is being devolved to local authorities and that could be used to assist in such cases, but it will be under a considerable amount of pressure. Guidance might be issued to local authorities on specific groups and priorities over and above anything that the DWP provides.
Those are all the key issues that I want to highlight at this stage.
10:15
Ian Ballantyne (Scottish Veterans Housing Association)
My role is chief executive of the Scottish Veterans Housing Association, and I thank the committee for inviting me along. The majority of the points that I was going to raise have been raised by my colleagues on the panel. However, there are some specific points about veterans.
The Scottish Veterans Housing Association has a narrow field. We look after homeless vulnerable veterans. We only do it in Edinburgh and Broughty Ferry in Dundee. We aim to transition vulnerable veterans into mainstream accommodation through two hostels, although, over the past few years, we have spent several millions of pounds transferring to better-quality accommodation—we have tried to take the “s” out of hostel. When people come to us, the first thing that we must do is to make them feel safe and secure and that they have a future. That is why we have the new accommodation.
At the moment, the key issue is getting people into our accommodation. We can provide the service that they need, but it comes at a considerable cost, because we have to meet all the qualifications required by organisations such as the care commission. We have to make sure that we have the correct staff at the correct levels and that they provide the correct service to our veterans.
Once we have got them into the accommodation, we are trying to move them on. Where do we move them to? As my colleagues on the panel have already said, there is no single accommodation around these days. We are concerned about people on jobseekers allowance who are trying to survive on £68 a week, or so. Where do they go?
When veterans get together, they find solace in companionship and in being able to discuss their problems with other veterans and people who are veterans oriented. We get them to the point of transition and get them ready to move on, but there are serious issues around where they move to. Our organisation has developed some flats in Edinburgh and Dundee, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. To help the transition, we are about to start building 51 flats in Edinburgh but, once again, they will be transition flats. We will move people through them, but problems arise at the end of the process. We have to move them out of hostels—where do we move them to? There is simply no appropriate accommodation out there.
So my key concern is about the current situation. Housing benefit is being paid directly to the tenant, and while someone is in supported accommodation, that will not be a problem. However, when people move out of accommodation that we provide, they will have to meet those costs themselves, which puts an extra strain on people who have just been through transition. Where do we put them?
My other concern is about the availability of accommodation to support veterans and how that is paid for, because £60-odd a week does not pay for anything. I would be loth to put such people into accommodation that they have to share with total strangers, because there is a danger that they will revert to their perpetual homelessness.
Those are our, very limited, areas of concern.
Thank you, Mr Ballantyne, and thanks to the panel members for bringing those points to our attention. I will open up the meeting to members to ask some questions and develop your points a bit further, but I will kick off by asking about something that occurred to me when I spoke to the organisation that was involved in the pilot programme that highlighted the point to the committee.
Information sharing is key to identifying each individual’s needs and the support and assistance that they might require from your organisations. Can you give us an idea of the current situation as regards information sharing and what practical difficulties you envisage coming about as we move towards universal credit? It would be helpful, at the outset, to know what concerns you have about that.
We have a number of data-sharing arrangements in place. We have arrangements with the local authority in relation to the nominations that are made to us, and with other external agencies such as Skills Development Scotland, for which we provide employability services. The fact that there are already data-sharing models in place will avoid our having to reinvent the wheel. I hope that we can build on the existing models. My experience is that, once such arrangements are in place, they work well.
We have some experience of data sharing. We are a partner in a common housing register, which is jointly operated with the Highland Council and the other housing associations that are based in the Highlands, so we already have an ethos of data sharing when it comes to applicants, housing stock and housing need.
In addition, on the whole we have good working relationships with housing benefit staff at the Highland Council, who have a willingness to share data. We have had early meetings with them to discuss what sort of data we will need to exchange. There is a practical difficulty in that the housing benefit department is extremely pressured and its systems are not set up to allow its staff simply to press a button and provide us with the information that we need. Although the willingness is there, it is taking some time for the practical availability of information to come through. All the time, the clock is ticking and we are getting closer and closer to implementation.
We have sourced a lot of the information on underoccupation from our own household details. Although we try to keep that information up to date, we have no guarantee that it is entirely up to date. We are having to do a lot of work through household audits, telephone censuses and so on, to ensure that we have up-to-date details, because we cannot afford to wait for the information on housing benefit household details to come through to us. We need to start work on that now, and we need to be able to start making personal contact with the tenants whom we think are at risk. The willingness to provide information is there, but its practical availability is limited.
We have concerns about the implications of the eventual move to the universal credit system and how and where that system will be operated. Although we have a good working relationship with our colleagues at the local authority, that will not be there once universal credit is fully implemented. We have major concerns about how we will be able to operate and with whom we will operate. The information on how that will work, and on what access we as a landlord will have to check details so that we can provide assistance and support tenants who are having difficulties with claims through that process, is simply not available to us yet.
Our situation mirrors that. We have a very good working relationship with the local authorities. Certainly, data transfer from them is not a problem. We are extremely fortunate in that we see our residents and tenants—although we have only 25 tenants, we have 128 residents in our hospitals—on a daily basis, so we can keep the information flow going.
As we have said, an area of concern is how the initial signing-on to the new universal credit system will be done and what the link will be. At present, if we have an issue with housing benefit, we phone Susie in housing benefit, get an answer and the problem is solved. The new system is an online system, so one day people will be online to Belfast, the next day to Cardiff and the day after to London. My concern is continuity. In addition, as a provider, we will not have direct access to that information; the individual will have to access it. The individual will ask us and we will tell them to go back. Hopefully, we can get that loophole squared off.
I believe that, in many cases, our residents will not be fit to do that task. That is linked to the issue that Helen Barton raised, which is that many of our residents will simply not have the capacity to open a bank account. That is a fact today, and I do not see the situation changing.
One thing that has come through strongly is that the move to place responsibility on the individual benefit recipient to keep people advised and informed might create a disconnect between those people, housing associations and housing departments. You have identified that there is potential for that, which confirms the concerns that have been raised with us.
My question relates to matching housing stock to demand. One characteristic in recent decades has been a massive shift towards single-occupancy households. I think that Helen Barton said that that applies to half of all her tenants.
Half of those on our housing list are single applicants, and probably about half our tenants are single households.
How did we get to a situation in which single-occupancy households have become such a high proportion of households who require support and yet the housing stock does not match that demand? Have we been making the wrong decisions on the houses that we provide, or have we simply failed to respond to markets?
I do not think that we have made the wrong decisions. The decision to provide accommodation that is flexible enough to meet people’s changing circumstances has been the right one, particularly in areas where availability of social housing stock is limited and there are simply no opportunities to move to other accommodation. For example, in many rural areas, other housing options are limited. There is a low proportion of private rented accommodation in areas outwith Inverness city and, where rented stock is available, it is geared towards the holiday market rather than long-term private rentals. Houses that come up for sale are generally not affordable to the local population, whose incomes are based on tourism and local service industries. On the whole, I think that the decisions to build two-bedroom-plus stock have been the right ones.
It is difficult for me to answer the question about why we have so many single households. However, my gut instinct is that it is because of a mixture of demographic and social changes that have happened progressively over a number of years. With the best will in the world and even while our development programmes were buoyant, we have simply never been able to build enough houses to meet the growing demand. The positive changes in homelessness legislation that the Parliament has introduced in the past 10 years have played a part, in that single people now have better access to housing and the housing list than they had in the past. That is a welcome change, not a negative one, but we cannot build sufficient stock in the right places to keep pace with that. A combination of factors has led us to the current situation.
If we took a snapshot of what you are doing right now, would we find that you are responding to the increased demand for single accommodation by planning to provide more single accommodation?
We are doing that where we can, but our development programme has reduced. We will go from developing slightly more than 300 properties in the past year or so to less than 30 next year. Therefore, our ability to do that is extremely limited.
I welcome our witnesses and thank them for giving evidence. I will start by asking about supported accommodation. I put on record my thanks to Ken Milroy and his staff at the Foyer, as well as many other people in Aberdeen, for helping me to get my head round some of the issues. Ken Milroy wrote to me recently saying that he has great concern about the safety and wellbeing of individuals with addiction issues if they are to be paid four-weekly in arrears. I ask him to expand on that.
10:30
The major concern is the inability to manage the finances. For instance, when people with addiction issues come out of prison, they can have low tolerance, which can result in drug deaths. If funds come not to a landlord but to an individual who might be in a vulnerable situation, we might see an increase in the number of overdoses in those with addiction issues.
This is by no means scientific but when we carried out a straw poll of the people with whom we are working in recovery programmes and asked them whether they would have spent the money on their rent or on drugs, the answer we got was that they would have bought drugs. I do not know why we would want to put clearly vulnerable individuals into a more difficult situation through that payment mechanism. That fear is grounded in our experience in working with that client group.
Under the current set-up, much of the housing benefit for the accommodation that you provide goes directly to you guys but—if I remember rightly—you charge individual residents £5 a week for their fuel and electricity. Your staff said that it is sometimes very difficult to get that £5. How difficult will it be to get housing benefit money from folks if it is paid directly to them?
To be honest, I think that it will be nigh on impossible. We are not only the support provider but the landlord, which we think is the right arrangement; however, we might be able to mitigate things by passing the landlord responsibility back to the housing association. Whether the housing association would want such a responsibility is another question. Generally, we are providing what is in effect a probationary tenancy and supported environment for people who then move on to mainstream tenancies.
As I have said, however, it will be impossible to get that money. Our focus has to be on working with individuals who are in need of support; after all, that is the service that the local authority has commissioned. Again, as I have said, one way of mitigating things would be to pass the landlord responsibility back to the housing association.
Speaking as someone at the coalface who deals with people from the age of 17 up to whatever, I point out that those people come to us with at least one issue; indeed, the majority have more than one. We charge a high rent because we provide a support service in our accommodation—in other words, we are a landlord and support provider. Housing benefit comprises the majority of that rent, but it is difficult enough to get from some of our residents the small amount that they have to pay. If they were suddenly to get the full whack every four or eight weeks—we must also remember that there might be a delay in getting housing benefit under the new universal credit arrangements and that, as a result, things might go at the speed of the last credit before they got the whole amount—it would be frightening. A gross alcoholic—we have quite a few of them—might receive a huge amount of money, providing of course that he can get a bank account to put the money into.
As a result, I support Ken Milroy’s comments. What do I do? Do I say, “I must pay my rent to the Scottish Veterans Housing Association” or do I go to Jenny’s across the road and think about it for a while? The move will have serious implications because the organisation will not get the cash flow. If the cash is not coming in, we cannot pay the staff or run the facility and, if the facility has to close, where do those people go?
A number of housing support providers are small organisations. Finances are tight and any impact on their cash flow from late or delayed payments will have serious consequences. I would hate that kind of situation to affect some of the smaller organisations.
If small organisations such as yourselves do not get that regular rent or cash flow, they will very quickly be put at risk and the service will disappear.
Yes.
Yes.
The United Kingdom Government has said that there might be some direct payments for vulnerable people, but it has not actually defined the term “vulnerable person”. How difficult would it be to define such vulnerability?
There are two elements to that. One is what is called exempt accommodation. If someone lives in exempt accommodation, we would think that, by definition, they must be vulnerable. However, neither of the two elements has been agreed. There is a provision in the DWP rules that might count as an exemption, but nobody has said exactly what that exemption will be for property, and nobody has defined exactly what the word “vulnerable” means. How do you define a vulnerable person?
It is potentially a subjective judgment that needs to be made. I am not sure how we would define vulnerable. Most of our tenants are vulnerable at some point during their tenancy, but some people are vulnerable in the long term. A large number of our tenants have physical and mental health issues or addiction issues or have come through particularly stressful circumstances, but we also have a lot of tenants who are vulnerable at certain points in their tenancy because they hit a crisis—for example, their life circumstances change, a relationship breaks down or their employment changes.
People go in and out of vulnerability, so it is difficult and complicated to define it. One of our concerns about direct payments is about what the triggers will be and when people will come in and out, because we could find people falling through the net very easily.
People are referred to our service because they are homeless, so they meet the requirements. We undertake an in-depth assessment of their needs and try to address them either directly or by engaging with other agencies. That includes mental health issues, learning, training and employability—a wide range of different needs that I would relate to vulnerability. However, Kevin Stewart is right. There is no clear definition of a vulnerable person.
Given that it is difficult for you guys at the coalface to define who is vulnerable, could the Government ever come up with a definition?
There has been a shift towards the provision of person-centred services that engage with individuals and work directly with them, and the Scottish Parliament is considering the Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Bill. In the work that is being done, there is a focus on individuals and attempts to work with them. To put a straitjacket on it would be problematic, because it is important to respond to the individual’s needs and look at their potential and opportunities to get out of the circumstances that they are in.
My last question on the topic is about finding out how many people live in supported accommodation. I asked the minister about that recently, and I understand from the answer and from Mr Milroy’s evidence that that information is now being put together.
I have been asking councils how many folk are in supported accommodation in their area, but again it comes down to the definition. I wonder whether you, from your various fields, can give us a definition and tell us what you think supported accommodation is. Does it include supported accommodation for elderly folks, be it sheltered housing or extra supported accommodation?
The legacy arrangement is that which was implemented through the supporting people fund. I mentioned that in my opening statement, and it is probably a useful starting point. It is then a question of looking at the arrangements for commissioning, which is done mainly through local authorities. The position will vary between local authorities depending on the services that are commissioned. We should not be overly prescriptive about the definition.
As I said, there is a useful starting point, but services have moved on significantly in the past few years. The work that we have been doing through the supported accommodation group can assist with that; it will bring out some useful examples of practice. I do not think that there is a straight answer to Kevin Stewart’s question, but there is a starting point to getting to it.
I agree. As a landlord, our definition of supported accommodation is accommodation that is designated for particular client groups for whom support is provided as part of the tenancy conditions. We have some of that, although less than we had a few years ago. Models have moved on and the trend is for support to be provided on a floating basis, so it comes in and out and is not strictly linked to the tenancy.
Although a proportion of our stock is still let as supported accommodation for particular client groups, we have a range of tenants who receive support packages at different times during their tenancies; often, we do not even know about them because we do not need to know—the arrangements are personal between the tenant, the commissioners and the support providers. I agree that a definition of supported accommodation can be difficult to pin down.
I agree with that, too. When we went through the ramifications of transitional housing benefit and supporting people funding came on board, things were okay. Over the years, the ring fencing of supporting people funding has been taken away so local authorities use the money as they see fit. The level of support, and the point at which the local authorities want to input funding into that support, varies by local authority. Some local authorities look at the more extreme ends of support, whereas others look at the narrower end. That has always been a concern.
I am very fortunate—although that might not be the right word—because I have narrow guidance. We provide only two hostels and some outreach support. The total support in the accommodation is part of the occupancy agreement. If a person does not need support, there is no point in them coming to us because we deal with people who need support. We try to transition people and we use occupancy agreements, not the Scottish secure tenancy, which is another area of concern when it comes to support.
I have a question for each panel member. I will start with Ken Milroy. It is many years since I visited the Aberdeen Foyer, but I remember that employment initiatives were tied to the accommodation. I was struck by your saying that your best-practice models could be at risk. Could implementation of the holistic approach that has been taken by Aberdeen Foyer be at risk, with possible knock-on effects on all sorts of areas?
That could be at risk, especially because a way of mitigating the risk around rent is to give up being the landlord. In dealing with young people who have been homeless, it is important that we are the landlord and the support provider. Such a view is not common across the sector, but it has worked effectively for us in terms of separation of the two functions.
It is right to say that we should not think about housing support just in terms of maintaining a tenancy but should also think about how people move on into education, training and employment. We have always put employability at the centre of the action-planning process on which we have embarked. We have not always had the means of responding to it through new deal or other welfare to work activities, but we always tried to put employability at the heart of our activity. Anything that threatens to erode that would severely damage our model.
While Ian Ballantyne was speaking, I was thinking that the Scottish Government has put in place a veterans policy that seems to have been highly regarded by different groups. Will any aspects of that policy be put at risk because of the introduction of universal credit and what goes with it?
It really comes down to who is going to pay the piper. That is the bottom line. Our organisation has used outside sources to provide the service. We provide support up to a point by giving people a secure base and getting them ready to move on, and one of the key issues for them is to get work. We are very fortunate to be able to bring in the Regular Forces Employment Association to help with that. We use organisations such as Shelter and citizens advice bureaux. We bring in many agencies to help us with people’s transitions. My only concern, which I raised earlier, is that, if direct payments do not go to landlords for rents and no money goes in to do the basic tasks, they may all close down. That is a bit drastic, but it could be the outcome.
10:45
I whole-heartedly support the initiatives that have been put forward. I certainly support one that is not necessarily to do with employment, which looks forward to how we move people on. I said before that we simply do not have accommodation for single people. We do not always deal with single people, of course; we also have couples, some of whom have children, who are making the transition. There are other issues.
Through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Scottish Association of Landlords, we are trying to bring into being protocols to get people to move on, and we have found that there is willingness to do that. Before a person can truly make the transition, he or she must be in a particular place. They will want to be in a particular area, in a house in which they feel safe, and with a job. We are working to get the first two; we are working hard to get the third as well, but we must use outside sources. It is about data sharing, as Ken Milroy said, and linking with other organisations that can support us. I must admit that we have come a long way in the past few years.
Helen Barton talked about the profile of the Albyn Housing Society stock. Would I be right in thinking that that broadly reflects the Highland Council stock?
Yes—it reflects it broadly.
It struck me very much that although it is easier to talk about stock, figures and other such things, we should get down to people, including people who are not necessarily in supported accommodation. I was thinking, for example, of someone who had perhaps lived in the family home for 40 or 50 years, had cared for elderly parents, and was then left alone in a house with a spare bedroom. Basically, we would be saying, “That’s not your home any more because you can’t afford it, so we’ll have to find you something else.” If we have to do that, it will be a terrible indictment of our society.
There is huge concern about the viability of all the small housing associations, but there is also terrible concern that we will lose the ethos of our housing providers through being directed from elsewhere on how we treat people. Have housing organisations, support organisations, community-based housing associations and regionally based housing associations taken that on board? Are voluntary management committees talking about that?
Yes, they are very much talking about that. The matter is a cause for concern among management committees, our communities and our residents.
We have done a lot of work on proactive publicity and issuing press releases, newsletters and targeted mailshots but, despite our best efforts, the general understanding among our tenants is still very low. I do not think that there will be general understanding until we are able to have a one-to-one conversation with every tenant who could be affected.
One of our tenants in Inverness—Mr Gair—has developed a proactive YouTube and Facebook campaign, which has hundreds of members across the United Kingdom. That campaign has given us the opportunity to provide very good case studies to the local press, which has taken up the matter very constructively, to make exactly the points that Linda Fabiani is making.
The matter affects a whole range of people and will seriously impact on our ethos to build good, mixed, sustainable and stable communities across our areas over a number of years. I think that we have had a lot of success in doing that, but we have men who have arrangements for access to their children and who are trying to maintain relationships with those children and to have rooms for them to stay in, and we have people whose homes we have bought under the mortgage-to-rent scheme. We have received Government funding to help people not to have their homes repossessed, and they are now finding that they are “underoccupying”.
We also have people with severe disabilities in properties that have been heavily invested in—and specially built for them, in some circumstances—who have been left with spare bedrooms. Children have grown up and left home; people come and go. There is a wide range of situations. In our lobbying, we have provided a number of case studies to MPs and MSPs. A range of circumstances place people in such situations through no deliberate ploy on their or our part; that is simply how people’s lives and communities have evolved.
In some cases, the new arrangements will mean that people are uprooted from communities in which they have lived for a long time and where they have all their support networks and family networks. For example, we have a case of a tenant in the north Highlands—a woman with a grown-up child. She is now underoccupying and is most likely to get different-sized accommodation and will move 20 or 30 miles away, nearer to Inverness. That is a huge upheaval for someone from a small community.
She will lose her family home and her community.
Yes—and the community is disrupted by the inevitable turnover and churn that takes place. The changes will have a big impact.
My question is about supported accommodation, so it might be for Ken Milroy or Ian Ballantyne.
When Ken Milroy talked about indications that the Government will introduce a new system of support, I thought that he was quite optimistic about there being an opportunity to improve the situation. Not much seems to be happening in that direction, but I might be missing something.
You said that you do not know how the new system will be constructed or administered and you said that it is expected to be in place for 2014-15. However, other changes, including the cap on local housing allowance rates and the underoccupancy rules, will come in sooner. Will there be a gap into which organisations that provide supported accommodation could fall? Will there be a period before the new system comes in but after the general changes have been made, when it will be impossible for you to continue?
I understand that the exemption of supported accommodation from the universal credit arrangements is short term and that in the longer term a system will be put in place. I understand that the timescale is 2014-15, but that is for the DWP to determine.
Maybe I am being over-optimistic about the opportunity to influence thinking about the new system. We can but attempt to do so, because we understand the sector in Scotland and how it has developed over the years. The definition is hard to grapple with, but we should be grappling with it and trying to get our heads around the number of people who will be affected.
On the point about the impact of other changes, the key impact will be when people move on. At least in the short term, we provide a relatively safe haven for vulnerable young people; the question is what happens when they move on, and there is limited and sometimes no choice about what to move on to. That is my concern at this stage. I do not know how the situation will evolve.
My interpretation of what is happening is that a new system will not be brought in until about 2015. As Ken Milroy said, that gives us a chance to lobby. The trouble is that we are not quite sure what we are lobbying for and against. There is a great grey area. For example, there are currently no rules on what qualifies as support for vulnerability. It is thought that the current exemptions will continue, but what are they? Hostels are technically exempt in the short term, which is great, but we do not know whether that will continue. When will we be told? How do we plan for the future? I know that it is all about definitions, but we do not accept that there cannot be a definition somewhere.
We need to know, and we need to be involved. Ken Milroy’s organisation and the committees in which Ken is involved are important and we will certainly feed into them, but we need advice and decisions on how things will go forward. The burning issue is the current plan on implementing direct payments and online registration. That is a very serious issue for my organisation and, more important, for individuals. We are talking about people, not buildings, and it is people who will suffer. If organisations collapse, people will suffer. The bottom line is that we deal with people across the road from this building who say, “I cannae possibly fill in a form on a computer; will you do it for me?” Of course we will. “Will you phone up?” Well, we can today, but we may not be able to next week.
I know that there will be an interim period in which housing benefit offices—certainly in Edinburgh, Dundee and the areas that I deal primarily with—will have staff who can continue that conversation, which is good. However, what happens when the day comes when, for example, there is no continuation of housing benefit controlled at local level for vulnerable people? That gives me serious concerns. I do not know where it is going.
My second question follows on from that, in that it is about how prepared tenants are. What has the Albyn Housing Society done to ensure that people know the reform is coming? How have you tried to work with them to enable them to prepare for some pretty difficult circumstances that you have described and which are coming their way?
We have done a range of things. As I have mentioned, we have issued various press releases and newsletters. We have sent out targeted mailshots to people whom we have identified as being likely to be underoccupying or who are likely to be affected by things such as increases in non-dependant charges. We have sent targeted mailshots to those people, and I have a staff team who are busily working away to see who has got back to us and who has not. Only a very small number of tenants have got back to us—most people have not—so we must now start phoning round people and sending staff out to knock on doors and say “We’ve sent you this letter. Do you realise the implication of what’s happening?” Quite often, the answer is “No” and we have to have conversations with people to check whether their household circumstances are what we think they are. We do not always know when people’s circumstances change—family members move in and out of their families, and we do not always know who has come in and out.
We then look with them at what their options are and whether we can provide a transfer or match them up with another tenant on an exchange list. We work in close partnership with other landlords in the area and with the private sector—where there is one—to see where we can match people up and where there is potential for mutual exchanges. We also seek to work with other social enterprises and voluntary sector partners to create training and employability programmes to help to move people into work and off benefits, where that is possible. In some cases, people are unable to move and we have to go through their finances with them and help them to re-budget their household finances. Some people say, “I simply can’t move. I can’t leave this area,” or “I have to stay in this house so that my children can still visit.” They will have to meet a shortfall of 14 or 25 per cent, and we will work with them to work out the finances that they need to do that.
All of that is going to be extremely time consuming and resource intensive. I am starting to have discussions with my executive team and our board about whether we can make additional staffing resources available to us to help our tenants through that process. Otherwise, we will be extremely stretched. Some tenants will simply be unable to make up the difference because their incomes are marginal, and that presents a risk to our rental income. At least 95 per cent of our income comes from rent, and if that starts to go down it will put pressures on our budgets, we will be within the regulator’s sights and it will want to know what we are doing about the situation. Our board will potentially have some difficult decisions to make, as we expect arrears to increase as well.
You are saying that, to get people to be aware of and to understand the implications of the changes that are coming, your staff are having to knock on their doors and speak to them face to face. Nothing else is really having an impact.
Yes. It is about personal contact.
Thank you.
I want to pick up on something that Helen Barton alluded to a wee while ago, on the wider societal impacts. I have heard anecdotally that the UK Government has made two suggestions, neither of which I could describe as being helpful. It has suggested that people could move to smaller accommodation, which we have seen is not necessarily easy, or that they could take in a lodger. What do you feel about those suggestions—particularly the latter—given the reality of people’s lives, especially with respect to kinship carers and parents who have, as you mentioned, contact orders in their favour?
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We have looked at our policy on lodgers to ensure that it is flexible enough. Of course, all our tenants have the right to take in a lodger if they get our permission. We take a permissive rather than proactive approach to this issue, and we and our partners have taken another look at whether there should be some sort of matching service to help people to find lodgers. However, we are not keen on that approach because it could place us in a very difficult position. If a tenant asks us whether they can take in a lodger, we will agree, but we will also ask whether they know the person, whether they have thought about the consequences of having someone whom they do not know living in their house and whether they have considered the risks, especially if there are children in the household or if they have access to their children.
The single parent whom I mentioned earlier who has started a Facebook campaign is in exactly that situation—his children regularly visit him at the weekend. We have discussed with him the option of putting a lodger in his spare room but, of course, it is not an option unless the lodger is a student or someone else who is away at the weekends; after all, he simply would not want to expose his children to any risk from someone whom he did not know. Although we discuss such options with our tenants and although they work for some people, they are not viable options in all circumstances or the solution in all cases.
I have some final questions. You have all talked about the additional work that you are having to carry out with your clients and others. Have you assessed the cost of and the additional resources that are required for one-to-ones, leafleting and whatever else you do to keep in touch with people?
We are very fortunate in that respect, because we deal and interact with our people every day. However, our field is very narrow. We would not do any more than we do at the moment; for a start, we talk people through all the support mechanisms such as housing benefit. However, if we do not get our rent, we will have to rethink how we go about our business. We have put together a worst-case scenario in which we provide only accommodation or hotel services; of course, that raises the additional problem of who would pay for the imported services. We have looked at lots of scenarios but, as I have said, we are very fortunate in that we interact with people every day.
We have not managed to quantify the additional work that we are carrying out, but we are continuing to work with individuals on a one-to-one basis—
Are you finding that the work has resource implications?
Resource use has been more at management level in our attempts to understand the implications of the changes and to mitigate the risk to the service. The discussions about risk management are being had at boardroom level.
Most of our contact with tenants is being carried out using existing resources. However, as we are only starting to look at additional resource requirements, I am not sure that I can quantify that element yet. We are certainly moving in that direction. We have not yet put a figure on the cost of mailshots. I guess that we could work it out, but so far they, too, are covered by existing resources.
You have all mentioned either directly or indirectly the knowledge gap and the information—or lack thereof—coming from the DWP. Are you in regular discussion with the DWP? What information are you getting from it to try to close the gaps? After all, a lot of what you are saying seems to be predicated on what you think might be happening; you do not know and have received no confirmation of whether it is happening. For example, in response to Iain Gray, Mr Ballantyne talked about whether his organisation would be exempt; although there appears to be some information from the DWP about exemptions, the situation has not been clarified for you and you are still working on the basis that you are not quite sure where things stand. What sort of dialogue have you had with the DWP?
I have had no personal direct dialogue with the DWP. We tend to do that through the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, because there are common themes. We have attended quite a few of the meetings that the DWP has organised in Edinburgh, but we never get direct answers to direct questions. At one meeting that I went to, the person who came up from the DWP did not have the answers and freely admitted that there were concerns, not the least of which was about the information technology system that will supposedly run the whole process. I await the next DWP briefing here in Edinburgh. However, we feed in our questions primarily through the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, because it is running a tally—for want of a better expression—to see how far we can push things and what the answers are.
On that point, there is a UK housing benefit and supported housing working group that involves UK housing, homelessness and support representatives meeting Lord Freud on what we are told is a regular basis, although it does not seem very regular to me. Have you guys had any feedback from that working group on the issues that we are discussing today? That should give an insight into the mind of the minister, if nothing else. Has there been contact between that group and your organisations?
There has been no direct contact. We are in a similar situation to Ian Ballantyne’s organisation, in that we have not had direct contact, but we have had contact through our membership organisation, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. We are in close contact with SFHA policy officers, who produce regular briefings for the sector as they get information. We also get information through the Chartered Institute of Housing.
Yes, but information is lacking in that regard.
The supported accommodation implementation group has representation from Community Care Providers Scotland through Yvette Burgess, who has been excellent at providing information on the discussions at UK and Scotland levels. That has been an important source of information for us. Scottish Government officials have also given advice to that group.
At local level, my experience has been that the DWP has not been proactive. Local authorities have been proactive and have tried to pull together working groups to consider the implications and to mitigate the worst effects. The DWP has been involved in that, but through a local point of contact, not through somebody from further afield. The issue is that the DWP has not been particularly proactive. It has been reactive, when asked.
So, the picture is that you get some information through the SFHA, some through Community Care Providers and some through local authorities, but very little through the DWP.
Yes.
We have found that to be a recurring theme. I think that I speak on behalf of the committee when I say that we are not at all satisfied that the Department for Work and Pensions is engaging in the process in a way that informs and helps individuals who will transfer to universal credit or organisations such as those that are represented here, which will have to deal with the consequences of the changes. We appealed to DWP ministers to come to talk to us about the issues, but they refused to do so. Therefore, I understand your frustration at not having the information.
We must be absolutely clear that, unless the DWP starts to engage in the process and to openly and actively talk to us and others, there will be a huge problem. We already know about some of the practical difficulties, but there will be a huge problem when the system kicks in. If all the warnings that have been given are not heeded, many vulnerable people will be affected and important organisations will not be able to function properly under the new system. However, the DWP seems to be ploughing ahead regardless and not taking cognisance of the information that is coming to us from the organisations. That is just not acceptable.
I welcome the evidence that you have given us this morning, which has been helpful and has enlightened us about the situation for you. Thank you very much for coming and for having a dialogue with us. If you have anything to pass on to us, if something occurs to you or if something develops that the committee might find useful, please keep in touch and let us know about it. Thanks once again to you all for your contributions.
I suspend the meeting for five minutes to allow the witnesses to change.
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Meeting suspended.
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On resuming—