Blog by Holly Dagnall, Director of Homes and Wellbeing at NCHA.
Every year, through the Starts at Home campaign, we shine a spotlight on what is often a forgotten part of the social care and social housing offer. Supported housing provides a lifeline for our most vulnerable communities. It serves those with learning disabilities or mental health needs, young people leaving care and others experiencing severe and multiple disadvantages, including those who are experiencing homelessness, rough sleepers and those escaping domestic abuse.
I have worked in the social housing sector for over 20 years, starting my career working in supported housing in 2002. I was there in the days when local authorities worked collaboratively with the social housing sector to identify the needs of the local community’s most vulnerable. We would jointly consider how people could be supported into recovery and/or independence. If full independence was not possible, we would ensure that people had choices and control over their lives and were safeguarded from harm. At its best, supported housing is both a safety net and a stepping stone, easing pressures on the NHS, the criminal justice system and our social care systems. The evidence of the benefits of supported housing, both for the public purse and for those who need it the most, is clearly articulated in several reports, including the Imogen Blood and Associates report, commissioned by the NHF in 2023.
However, since the demise of ring-fenced local government funding, ‘Supporting People’, the supported housing offer in England, has been in perpetual decline. Rescue attempts in the form of the Single Housing Accommodation Programme (SHAP) or the Rough Sleeper Accommodation Programme (RSAP) have simply put a plaster on a gaping wound. Over the last 15 years, services which were once delivering innovative and life-changing support have been cut to the bone or closed completely. This has left vulnerable people adrift, contributing to the staggering increase in rough sleeping and homelessness which is now a national scandal crippling local authorities.
The condition of supported housing properties has worsened, both through wear and tear, and due to pressure put on services to achieve a ‘throughput’ of vulnerable people out of supported housing. This, alongside the escalating costs of repairs and maintenance and increased building safety, environmental and fire safety costs, has eaten into rent budgets. Any rent surpluses have been spent trying to keep services open, rather than investing in the long-term quality of accommodation. Supply of new supported housing has all but ceased in the social rented sector. Social landlords are reluctant to build properties for vulnerable adults without the revenue support to ensure that services can be delivered to meet the needs of those residents. This is especially prominent where there is huge demand for other housing which takes up the borrowing and development capacity of providers.
This has left a gap in the market for the non-regulated supported housing offer to grow – hitting the Housing Benefit Bill and leading to a troubling rise in poor-quality provision. The increase of the ‘exempt accommodation’ solution for housing our most vulnerable communities has led to the Supported Housing Regulatory Oversight Act. Whilst the Act will introduce regulations to bring quality and accountability to the non-regulated supported housing sector, it also brings a significant administrative and financial burden to housing associations which are registered providers. This all adds to the pressure of delivering our services.
The new government must commit to a long-term plan for supported housing. Housing associations can provide the appropriate housing management, care and support to meet the needs of our society’s most vulnerable, either directly or through a commissioned care and support provider. But we need certainty, and we need funding. We need a ring-fenced support fund which ensures the appropriate housing and wrap-around care and support to enable positive outcomes, both for the individual and for the public purse. Local authorities need to develop the strategic housing and social care commissioning and planning capacity to work effectively and proactively with the sector as trusted partners, recognising our shared ambition to give people better lives.