Supported Housing Regulation: Commonweal's View

The Government recently closed the public consultation for the Supported Housing Regulatory Oversight Act. In the preceding weeks, individuals and organisations across the sector have been discussing the intended and unintended consequences of the bill – which seeks to improve standards in supported housing. Commonweal responded with a concise submission, having researched and uncovered illicit, inappropriate provision in the sector in recent years.

This blog summarises the key points from our response, which include reasons for both optimism and concern about the proposed framework. We also stress the importance of enforcement and effective oversight – a fresh challenge for local authorities – which will be crucial in ensuring legislative change is felt in practice.

Background

Supported housing provides support services to individuals in their homes, to allow for an independent a life as possible. Supported housing schemes cater to a range of vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, individuals with disabilities, homeless people, and people who have experienced domestic violence. In 2023, it was estimated that 67% of supported housing units were designated for older people, 20% for short-term or transitional accommodation, with the remaining 13% being used as long-term supported housing for working age people with disabilities. Single people experiencing homelessness and people with learning disabilities – particularly autism - have been identified as the two largest working-age client groups for supported housing.

As it stands, a proportion of landlords are failing to provide necessary support to residents – in accommodation that is not up to standard – resulting in negative outcomes for residents.

Recent media pieces are littered with the accounts of tenants let down by rogue providers. Rhys, who features in a report by the BBC, moved into supported housing due to health problems, was forced to live on the streets for two years following being evicted from his accommodation with an hour’s notice after a fellow resident threw a knife at him.

Unfortunately, Rhys’ story is one of many detailing the horrors of unregulated supported housing. Lauren, featured in this BBC report, whose mental health and back problems motivated her move into supported housing, saw no other alternative than living in a tent in a park for a week when the recurrent drug-fuelled parties in one of the properties she lived in became too unbearable. Whereas Kyle – who has autism and ADHD – had his supported accommodation taken over by drug dealers, his valuables stolen, and ultimately ended up in hospital having been stabbed, as his mother recounted to the BBC. The experiences of Rhys, Lauren, and Kyle highlight the need for legislation to protect vulnerable people from subpar provision and unethical landlords.

The Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 intends to introduce national standards for supported housing and a licensing framework to be enforced and managed respectively by local authorities. Furthermore, this Act aims to place responsibility on local housing authorities to produce supported housing strategies, defining current availability and future need.

Commonweal welcomes the prospect of improved standards in the supported housing ecosystem. The rooting out of substandard, extractive provision must not, however, simultaneously reduce the availability of higher-quality supported schemes.

Specific standards, and our responses to them, are summarised below.

Statement of purpose

We stressed the importance of the outlined ‘Statement of Purpose’ standard – which must situate any supported housing scheme within both a local housing ecosystem and in the resident’s eventual pathway to, for instance, recovery and independent living.

The statement of purpose should, at the very least, be able to answer the following:

• What is the intention of the scheme in question?

• What are the desired outcomes for residents of the scheme?

• Is this a home for life or a transitional destination?

Whether a scheme is either temporary or permanent should be clearly laid out from the beginning. This means including timelines and desired/typical post-scheme destinations, and if move on to independent living is the ambition, how the providers will help facilitate this for individuals. Commonweal believes that this standard serves as a key pillar for the improvement of supported schemes.

In order to allow more concrete monitoring and accountability of what is being provided and by who, Commonweal would urge the Government to include the requirement of competence and experience descriptions in any document providing details of what a service sets out to achieve. The inclusion of such descriptions would allow for future proposals to be evaluated based on previous evidence. As Commonweal has been repeatedly made aware of bad actors rebranding and continuing to profit despite a lack of quality, having such measures in place could prevent poor providers from being able to continue to claim expertise they evidently lack in application by operating under a new name.

Commonweal would also strongly support the government preventing schemes from getting a licence if the care service has been rated as inadequate by the Care Quality Commission. In research piece Commonweal produced with Spring Housing Association in 2019, titled Exempt from Responsibility?, we observed alarming accountability gaps – minimal pre-tenancy checks, a weak regulatory framework, and a harmful lack of monitoring in many of the schemes that were examined. We are calling for these accountability gaps to be closed, meaning that schemes found to be inadequate cannot be allowed to continue profiting whilst failing tenants.

Support plans

Within the Act, support plans are highlighted as a crucial tool to ensure that residents receive the correct support and are on track to reach agreed outcomes. Commonweal agrees with every aspect of the suggested support plans, and would propose one last requirement – that the ‘frequency and duration’ aspect of the plan include an ideal anticipated stay duration.

We appreciate that for many residents, this is not a conversation had at the outset of a stay in supported accommodation. However, this should be laid out in a support plan, and for residents for whom support will be transitory, move-on support and ideal destinations should be well defined.

Oversight

Ultimately, oversight of the providers against their stated objectives and timelines (as laid down in the statements of purpose and support plans) is crucial. The likelihood that the National Supported Housing Standards are met is dependent on oversight and enforcement.

This will require dedicated resources in each local or combined authority to have a practical effect. It should be borne in mind that the sector already features observably fraudulent actors. The balance between effective regulation and excessive compliance demands on well-run schemes will be hard to find. So too will it be hard for local authorities to find the resources for supported housing regulation when demands are so great elsewhere. But there is little point in formulating the standards in the first place if schemes are not overseen, regularly assessed, and held against their stated purpose and individual support plans.

It is hoped that the introduction of the Supported Housing Regulatory Oversight Act will, if implemented correctly with appropriate oversight, improve the quality of supported accommodation and prevent the experiences of Rhys, Lauren, and Kyle – and countless others - from being repeated in the future.