Page 87 - Solving Housing Disputes

Homelessness remains in scope for legal aid, but advice has evaporated across
large parts of the country, as outlined earlier in this chapter.

3.57 There have been recent attempts to combat the problem. The Homelessness
Reduction Act 2017 (HR Act) introduced a raft of changes to homelessness law,
imposing new duties to proactively address the risk of homelessness for
242
residents. While local authorities are said to generally support the legislation,
243
many struggle for resources to pay for their new preventative duties.
Notwithstanding these initiatives, several tenant lawyers we spoke to expressed
concern that local authorities engage in practices that “gatekeep” by preventing
people from accessing assistance and the duties owed to them by local authorities
when facing homelessness.

3.58 This section of the report considers homelessness. It sets out recommendations
to ensure all relevant information about a person’s circumstances reaches a local

England (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 13 December 2018) available at h
ttps://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/76430
1/Statutory_Homelessness_Statistical_Release_April_-_June_2018.pdf . At the same time, there has
been a 49.1% reduction in government funding for local authorities between 2010-11 and 2017-18, a
45.6% fall in spending by local authorities on housing services overall, and a 69.2% reduction in spending
on the Supporting People programme (which provides housing-related support to vulnerable people): see
th
National Audit Office, Financial sustainability of local authorities 2018 (8 March 2018), p. 4 and 7
respectively, available at https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Financial-sustainabilty-
of-local-authorites-2018.pdf

242 For instance, Section 1(2) of the HR Act 2017 modified s175(4) of the HA to extend the period where
a person was at risk of homelessness from 28 to 56 days. S. 2 of the HR Act modified s. 179 of the
Housing Act 1996 to require more expansive assistance to people facing homelessness in the local
authority area irrespective of priority need status. Other duties include personal plans for those at risk of
homelessness (s. 189A) and taking reasonable steps to avoid that person becoming homeless. One local
authority we spoke to welcomed the HR Act as a way to “professionalise” homelessness prevention,
though we have heard from some tenant lawyers that certain local authorities merely view the
prevention duty as an administrative hurdle, rather than one they must proactively engage with through
a Personal Housing Plan.

243 Butler, ‘Two-thirds of councils say they can’t afford to comply with homelessness law’, (Guardian
Online, 10 April 2019) available at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/10/homeless-
reduction-act-one-year-on In addition, The MHCLG established the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) in
March 2018, which set aside a £30 million fund for local authorities with a high level of rough sleepers
and also established a multi-disciplinary RSI Team within MHCLG to “work with local authorities to
develop capability and deliver interventions to tackle rough sleeping,” MHCLG, ‘Impact evaluation of
the Rough Sleeping Initiative 2018’, para 3.2 available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/gover
nment/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/831133/RSI_Impact_Evaluation.pdf

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