Vulnerable people are increasingly provided with poor quality supported housing and suffer ‘significant, detrimental’ impacts due to inadequate support, a report has found.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found a sector ‘riddled with long-standing challenges’, with government actions to improve matters falling ‘woefully short’.
Supported housing is provided to people with additional needs, including care leavers and people with disabilities and mental health or addiction issues.
Exempt accommodation, mostly short-term supported housing that is exempt from locally set housing benefit caps, has little regulation or oversight, leaving it open to ‘unscrupulous providers’, the PAC found.
The parliamentary committee also found that the Government has ‘no reliable data’ about the sector, leaving it unable to assess or resolve problems.
New duties mean councils will provide annual data in future, but because some of this work has no timetable for completion and other parts are non-mandatory, the Government’s understanding of supported housing is at risk of remaining ‘inconsistent and incomplete’.
The PAC found that supply of supported housing is not meeting demand, but a lack of data again means the Government is unable to act effectively to improve supply.
The parliamentary committee also said it was disappointed to see that fraud is going ‘largely unaddressed’, with many councils lacking the resources to check individual housing benefit claims for fraud.
PAC chair Meg Hillier said: ‘The sector is in desperate need of root-and-branch reform – wide open to fraud and the predations of unscrupulous landlords, and badly letting down the people who need it most.
‘But our report finds a Government unprepared to even assess the problem, let alone address it.
She added: ‘We are concerned that Whitehall will be leaning on an under-resourced local government to achieve change.’
