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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Housing costs  →  Thread

Rent Cuts and ‘Specialised Supported Housing’

Lostdog
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Income Team, Framework

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Total Posts: 27

Joined: 24 November 2014

Hello all

With regard to the recent DWP announcement around rent cuts being applied to supported housing from April 2017 – ‘Specialised Supported Housing’ has been made exempt.  The definition of ‘Specialised Supported Housing’ is I think found in the Rent Standard guidance:

1. the scheme offers a high level of support for clients, for whom the only
acceptable alternative public or voluntary sector options are care
homes, and
2. no, or negligible, public subsidy has been received, whether in the
form of grant or free land, and
3. the scheme has been commissioned in line with local health, social
services or Supporting People strategies and priorities, (but which are
not of sufficiently high priority as to receive SHG)

It seems there is some interpretation to be done here on the part of landlords/support providers – and also LAs with regard to agreeing eligibility.  Does anyone have a view on:

What is the definition of ‘a high level of support’?

The section ‘….for whom the only acceptable alternative public or voluntary sector options are care Homes’.  Does this mean alternative care home accommodation must be available in the local area and, if not, would this restriction be waived? (a bit like the ‘suitable alternative accommodation’ clause in the exempt accommodation rules)

How much is ‘negligible public subsidy’?

How would the above be policed and what supporting evidence will be required?  Are LAs likely to have to gather an audit trail for every specialised supported housing scheme to justify HB eligibility if rents are not reduced?

Many thanks!

HB Anorak
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Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

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My view is that social sector rent reductions are not a social security measure and should not be policed by benefit decision makers.  It’s up to the HCA to ensure that social landlords are complying with regulatory requirements.  When it comes to HB, the Council should take the rent as a fait accompli and not try to go behind it.  The only controls HB officers should be applying are the same ones that apply to all social tenancies generally: bedroom tax and rarely used reserve power to refer to the Rent Officer, plus the rules on unreasonably high rents in exempt accommodation.  The 1% annual rent reduction doesn’t really change the way these HB mechanisms operate.

A comparable situation sometimes arises with care homes: HB officers want to refuse HB on the basis that they think a certain establishment is a care home according to the definition in s3 of the Care Standards Act, but it isn’t registered.  My advice is: don’t go there! Either it’s registered or it’s not, never mind whether you think it should be, there are people whose job it is to decide these things.

Same applies to specialised supported housing: the people best placed to judge whether a scheme is SSH are the provider and the regulator.  These schemes should already be identified anyway because they are exempt from the existing regulation of social sector rents - target rents etc.

Neil
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Debt & Benefits, Aster Communities

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Unless I missed read the Bulletin doesn’t the exemption only run until April 2019. Then they will be subject to the LHA Cap.

HB Anorak
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Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

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The OP is asking about the 1% annual rent reduction that applies to all social sector tenants whether on HB or not.  That policy runs up to and including 2019/20, but specialised supported housing is exempt from it.

Entirely separate from that are two benefit policies:

- LHA for general needs social tenants from 2018, and
- Some kind of replacement for part of the current HB funding in all kinds of supported accommodation, both in and outside the social sector, from perhaps 2019, you never know.  Superficially it might resemble LHA caps but that is very much only half the story.  The thinking seems to be that providers will be commissioned to provide intensive management, specialised accommodation and support in much the same way as they are currently commissioned to provide support only, with a simplified benefits system providing flat rate accommodation allowances - very likely based on LHA.  If that’s what we end up with there won’t be much point in providers making service users liable for rent/licence charges above the LHA as the claimants won’t have the means to pay it, so instead providers will bid for contracts to meet all the additional costs.  “Son of SP” as some have called it.

In the meantime specialised supported housing can carry on as if the 2016-20 rent reduction policy never happened, and it’s up to HCA to make sure providers don’t step out of line.