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Comprehensive Spending Review 2007
This year we have an opportunity to influence the future direction of government funding. The 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) will set the budget from 2008 to 2011. To ensure that the crucial work already underway in the housing support sector is built on, rather than undermined Homeless Link has joined forces with SITRA and the National Housing Federation to make a joint submission to the CSR.
Download the full CSR 07 submission
Read our initial response to the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007.
The submission evidences the need for support for housing support services. As part of the development of the submission we conducted a memberhsip survey looking at a range of issues, including the prevalence of multiple needs, specific support needs and the adequacy of services available to address these support needs. We would like to thank all members that took part in the survey.
Key outcomes
We consider that settled homes should be the basis of government strategy to tackle social exclusion. Adequate housing, together with support for people who need it, is essential to secure the effectiveness of many other interventions to change the lives of vulnerable and excluded people. In order to ensure that our member organisations can provide effective, good quality services to deeply excluded, vulnerable and often challenging individuals, we would like to see three headline outcomes of the Spending Review:
Supporting People
The Supporting People programme (SP) is one of the Government’s great successes, supporting 1.2 million people across the UK. It brought together a number of previous funding streams into one pot to provide housing related support for vulnerable people. The third sector provides two thirds of SP services, and almost all of those delivered to socially excluded groups. Each year 6,000 third sector providers receive £1bn in SP contracts, making this one of the Government’s largest revenue investments in the third sector. To maintain the achievements of Supporting People and to ensure existing services are available to vulnerable people without compromising standards, SP funding should, as a minimum, be maintained at its current level with allowance made for inflation. We would argue for a further increase to address areas of unmet need.
Meeting the needs of individuals with multiple disadvantage
Vulnerable individuals with multiple disadvantage often face real challenges in accessing the full range of services they need. The Government has committed to meet the needs of this deeply excluded group. The new Social Exclusion Action Plan offers a framework for making a difference to the lives of vulnerable people with multiple needs. It identifies the need ‘to personalise services, be more persistent and co-ordinated and fit them around the needs of individuals’. A cross cutting national and local government Public Service Agreement (PSA) on multiple needs should be introduced, to focus public sector services and investment on helping people move out of deep exclusion.
Capital investment in supported housing, move on and hostels
For many years Britain has failed to build enough homes to keep up with demand. In the last three decades the number of households increased by 30% while the level of house building fell by 50%. The lack of affordable housing has a direct impact on homelessness. It contributes to overcrowding, forces people to remain in temporary or unsuitable accommodation and in the worse cases means that people end up sleeping on the streets. The National Affordable Housing Development Programme should include provision for suitable move on accommodation for those moving out of supported accommodation and the programme to invest in improving hostels so they can be places of change should be continued.
Housing and housing related support is a key aspect of building and retaining sustainable communities. It has the potential to truly achieve social inclusion of the most vulnerable members of our society and ensure that we are able to adapt and meet their needs.