The case for supported housing to feature as essential infrastructure in planning applications
While Supported Housing needs to grow with the expansion of the population, research shows that the numbers have in fact fallen by over 1,500 units between 2007 and 2022. This is building up a crisis for the future, not only in terms of unmet need, but financially as well.
Supported Housing doesn’t cost a great deal extra to build, depending on the level of need it is catering for. There are additional running costs, but this needs to be offset against the costs of not having supported housing as well as the many potential financial advantages from this provision.
Causes of the Supported Housing Crisis:
In 2003 the then Labour Government streamlined the funding for supported housing and amalgamated seven funding streams into one called the Supporting People programme with a ring-fenced allocation of £1.8 billion per year, at its start.
This seemed a positive step forward, but it became one of the first casualties of the ‘austerity’ coalition government in 2010 when it removed the ringfencing of what had become a smaller budget than the one originally set in 2003. Supported Housing funding became part of the formula grant which meant that the funds could be spent on other services, and of course they were!
While the statistical information on Supported Housing is not easy to compile, extensive research by the National Housing Federation has identified the dangers of not resourcing supported housing. The Government would be well advised to take this seriously for a range of reasons.
Cross Community Benefits:
While the benefits of supported housing to the elderly is easily understood, through ‘sheltered’ and ‘extra care’ accommodation to maintain independence, it can also be an important source of support for people with physical and learning disabilities, mental health problems, drug or alcohol issues, ex-offenders, teenage parents and those escaping domestic violence.
Some wrap around housing support would help to develop independence, reducing welfare benefit and health service costs and at the same time help produce better life chances and outcomes. One example of how day-to-day support can make a real difference to lives.
Some sections of the community that need support, but do not get it, (even if they are ‘lucky’ enough to be in unsupported general needs housing), can also become a cost to society. For some it could be by delayed discharge from hospital; for others a failure to cope without support can lead to costly and unsatisfactory temporary accommodation; for those whose lives have become chaotic perhaps due to drug addiction the impact this can have on neighbourhoods when they do not have that bit of day-to-day guidance.
So many of the households with multiple problems live in flatted estates, where anti-social behaviour quickly impacts on others, intensified due often to poor building standards that have been an unnecessary feature of many flatted estates.
This ends up costing councils and housing associations more money than they would spend on supported housing: having to deal with the anti-social behaviour problems that can so easily arise; and in turn inevitably adds to police costs as well.
Of course, we need a significant and sustained increase in the number of ‘general needs’ homes at traditional council social rent levels, but everyone can be ‘winners’ if within those numbers there is an adequate supply of supported homes to help meet the needs of the groups of people who are currently being failed.
Return to Ring Fenced Allocation and Link it to Planning and Infrastructure:
The problem is that against the background of the falling numbers of supported housing it has been estimated that it likely that there will need to be a 33% increase in numbers by 2040, around 170,000 units.
The failure to provide this, just in relation to older people, could be very costly to the health and care services.
So here are my two key asks to improve the situation, and they relate to finance and planning. The government must reintroduce ring-fenced grant for supported housing, and in terms of planning, provision of supported housing should also be a compulsory feature of all development plans.
Supported housing is as much a part of creating a healthy balanced community as having schools, doctors and shops.
Margaret Mullane is the Labour Member of Parliament for Dagenham and Rainham, first elected in 2024.
