Y Pwyllgor Cydraddoldeb, Llywodraeth Leol a Chymunedau Y Bumed Senedd

Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee - Fifth Senedd

08/02/2018

Aelodau'r Pwyllgor a oedd yn bresennol

Committee Members in Attendance

Bethan Jenkins
Gareth Bennett
Janet Finch-Saunders
Jenny Rathbone
John Griffiths Cadeirydd y Pwyllgor
Committee Chair
Mick Antoniw
Rhianon Passmore
Sian Gwenllian

Y rhai eraill a oedd yn bresennol

Others in Attendance

Antony Kendall Cyfarwyddwr Gweithrediadau, The Wallich
Director of Operations, The Wallich
Beth Thomas Rheolwr Gwerthiannau Rhanbarthol, Cymru a De-orllewin Lloegr, y Big Issue
Regional Sales Manager, Wales and South West, The Big Issue
Diana Binding Uwch-reolwr Arweiniol ar Lety, Cwmni Adsefydlu Cymunedol Cymru
Lead Senior Manager on Accommodation, Wales Community Rehabilitation Company
Dr Peter Mackie Uwch-ddarlithydd, Ysgol Daearyddiaeth a Chynllunio, Prifysgol Caerdydd
Senior Lecturer, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University
Dusty Kennedy Cyfarwyddwr, Bwrdd Cyfiawnder Ieuenctid Cymru
Director, Youth Justice Board Cymru
Frances Beecher Prif Weithredwr, Llamau
Chief Executive, Llamau
Ian Barrow Cyfarwyddwr y Gwasanaeth Prawf Cenedlaethol yng Nghymru, Gwasanaeth Carchardai a Phrawf Ei Mawrhydi yng Nghymru
Director for the National Probation Service in Wales, Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service in Wales
Jane Thomas Cyfarwyddwr Cynorthwyol, Tai a Chymunedau, Cyngor Caerdydd
Assistant Director, Housing and Communities, Cardiff Council
Jennie Bibbings Rheolwr Ymgyrchoedd, Shelter Cymru
Campaigns Manager, Shelter Cymru
Jeremy Vaughan Y Prif Gwnstabl Cynorthwyol, Heddlu De Cymru
Assistant Chief Constable, South Wales Police
Jon Sparkes Prif Weithredwr, Crisis
Chief Executive, Crisis
Julie Francis Rheolwr y Gwasanaeth—Tai, Cyngor Bwrdeistref Sirol Wrecsam
Service Manager—Housing, Wrexham County Borough Council
Katie Dalton Cyfarwyddwr, Cymorth Cymru
Director, Cymorth Cymru
Yr Athro Suzanne Fitzpatrick Cyfarwyddwr, Y Sefydliad Ymchwil Polisi Cymdeithasol, Tai a Chydraddoldeb, Prifysgol Heriot-Watt
Director, Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Equalities Research, Heriot-Watt University
Rebecca Jackson Swyddog Polisi ac Ymchwil, Shelter Cymru
Policy and Research Officer, Shelter Cymru
Richard Edwards Prif Weithredwr, Canolfan Huggard
Chief Executive, The Huggard Centre
Simon Inkson Pennaeth Tai, Cyngor Sir Powys
Head of Housing, Powys County Council
Stephen Jones Prif Uwcharolygydd, Heddlu De Cymru
Chief Superintendent, South Wales Police
Tracy Hague Arweinydd Opsiynau Tai Cyfamser, Cyngor Bwrdeistref Sirol Wrecsam
Temporary Housing Options Lead, Wrexham County Borough Council
Yvonne Connolly Rheolwr Rhanbarthol Cymru a'r De-orllewin, Byddin yr Iachawdwriaeth
Regional Manager for Wales and the South West, The Salvation Army

Swyddogion y Senedd a oedd yn bresennol

Senedd Officials in Attendance

Chloe Davies Dirprwy Glerc
Deputy Clerk
Elizabeth Wilkinson Ail Glerc
Second Clerk
Megan Jones Ymchwilydd
Researcher
Stephen Davies Cynghorydd Cyfreithiol
Legal Adviser

Cofnodir y trafodion yn yr iaith y llefarwyd hwy ynddi yn y pwyllgor. Yn ogystal, cynhwysir trawsgrifiad o’r cyfieithu ar y pryd. Lle mae cyfranwyr wedi darparu cywiriadau i’w tystiolaeth, nodir y rheini yn y trawsgrifiad.

The proceedings are reported in the language in which they were spoken in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous interpretation is included. Where contributors have supplied corrections to their evidence, these are noted in the transcript.

Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:16.

The meeting began at 09:16.

1. Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau, Dirprwyon a Datgan Buddiannau
1. Introductions, Apologies, Substitutions and Declarations of Interest

Welcome to today's meeting of the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee. We will begin our evidence taking on our inquiry into rough-sleeping in Wales, but the first item on our agenda today is introductions, apologies, substitutions and declarations of interest. We haven't received any apologies. Are there any declarations of interest? No. 

2. Ymchwiliad i Gysgu ar y Stryd yng Nghymru: Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 1
2. Inquiry into Rough-sleeping in Wales: Evidence Session 1

We will move on to item 2, which is our first evidence session on our inquiry into rough-sleeping in Wales. I'm very pleased to welcome Dr Peter Mackie, senior lecturer, school of geography and planning at Cardiff University, and Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, director of the Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Equalities Research at Heriot-Watt University. Thank you both very much for coming in to give evidence today. Perhaps I might begin with some questions on the Housing (Wales) Act 2014, and, firstly, what impact that legislation has had in your opinion on preventing and alleviating rough-sleeping in Wales.

Good morning. Shall I kick us off? I think the important context is that it's had a very positive impact on prevention and alleviation with the broader homeless population. That's leading to quite a lot of international interest in the legislation; that's what led to England essentially copying the legislation. The Canadians are looking at it. It's been positive in that regard. But, actually, with rough-sleepers, arguably the most vulnerable group of homeless people, it's not been overly effective, in my view. The change in legislation required local authorities to take reasonable steps to basically try and resolve homelessness for everyone, whereas in the past you just worked with folk who were in priority need—a particular group of people that generally excluded single people. So, it was seen as a positive step but, actually, with rough-sleepers they're unlikely to come and approach the local authority for help, and what the legislation requires is that you help people who come and seek assistance. Rough-sleepers aren't coming and necessarily seeking assistance, so there's a problem there in terms of getting people into the system.

There have been some developments of some authorities doing more outreach work to try and get people into the system, but then there's a second problem, which is that when people do then access help, the reasonable steps that local authorities ought to have in place that they ought to take aren't particularly well suited to this group of people who are very vulnerable and in need of a very particular type of assistance. When we were developing the legislation, or informing the development of the legislation, we made quite a strong case to have, for instance, housing first as an intervention, which basically says, 'I'm going to work with an individual. I'm going to get them almost immediate access to settled accommodation and have wraparound support.' We made quite a strong case to have that as a required intervention, a required step, and that didn't take place. That wasn't set out in the legislation on the face of the legislation—it wasn't even in the statutory guidance as an intervention that we ought to have. 

So, the legislation has been positive for the broader population, but for rough-sleepers it's not assertive enough to go and find people, and the sorts of interventions, the sorts of things that local authorities are required to do aren't good enough to meet the needs of this particular group. So, that's my overarching reflection on the legislation.

09:20

Thanks for that, Peter. That's quite clear and useful. Suzanne, would you agree with that, or would you want to add anything?

I'd very much agree with what Pete said. I think the legislation as a whole is a really remarkable success in Wales in terms of offering much more effective, earlier intervention and much more effective support to the homeless population or people at risk of homelessness as a whole. I and colleagues in I-SPHERE write 'The Homelessness Monitor' series for Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I think we've done 11 homelessness monitors now for the different parts of the UK, and the one that we completed on Wales towards the end of last year was by far the most positive one we've been able to write so far, and that was largely because of the great success of the 2014 Act.

So, I'm very much in favour of the model as a whole. But, as Pete says, of all of the homeless groups, the one it's done least for—. Certainly, what our key informants—who we interviewed during the process of putting the monitor together—told us is the group it's done least for is rough-sleepers, for the reasons Pete says. But also, what I would add is that the priority need criterion is of course still part of the legislation, and it is the case that certainly at least some, if not most, rough-sleepers are not necessarily found to be in priority need, which means that, even if they do apply as homeless, if efforts to relieve their homelessness aren't successful, they may still find themselves at the end of the process without a solution.

So, what our key informants told us and certainly what we picked up from our analysis is that the legislation as a whole has been very successful but rough-sleepers are probably the one group that have benefited less from that new legislative framework.

Okay, thanks for that, Suzanne. Again, that's quite clear. Jenny, did you want to come in?

I just wanted to pick up on what Dr Mackie said, because local authorities can't do everything—they have to work in partnership with other organisations. Certainly in Cardiff and Newport, and I'm sure other cities, we have several voluntary organisations doing what's called the breakfast run, and that is pretty effective outreach and is a way of signposting people to services on offer, if people don't know about it. So, I wondered if you could just convince me that we aren't doing the outreach—

That's a really good question. So, there are two main types of outreach. One is the sort of outreach you're describing there that serves the population where they are—it serves people in situ. So, you're meeting their needs on the street, and that's what breakfast runs tend to do. But assertive outreach is something quite different. Assertive outreach—the bit that defines assertive outreach is your sole goal is to get somebody off the street, not to serve them on the street. It's a real fundamental difference. We don't have many services that are going out there saying, 'Tonight, my job is to try and get you off the street. I'm going to get you into permanent, settled accommodation. It'll be tonight or tomorrow. It's going to be quick. It's going to be swift.' We have very, very few services that do that.

I guess the other point to make is there are some wonderful examples in Cardiff and Newport—particularly in Cardiff there are some really good examples of things that are working—but they're not a requirement. Until we require these things, until we require those types of intervention, then they won't be across the board and there won't be equal access to this sort of assistance that's required, I think.

I'd like to respond to that as well, if I may. I don't actually think the resource implications of assertive outreach are very great at all, in fact—certainly not in the context of somewhere like Wales where you don't have huge numbers of rough-sleepers. It's more a question of culture and orientation of the outreach services, rather than a lot of additional resources. This is a conversation we're having in Scotland at the moment as well, in the context of a homelessness and rough-sleeping action group that the First Minister has set up, and trying to move from, if you like, more passive kind of outreach services towards a more assertive approach. That is about, as Pete says, trying to make sure that the orientation of those outreach services is to bring people indoors, to give them the appropriate accommodation and support options, and to be persistent and directive about that, rather than simply try to sustain them on the streets. I think there's some work to do on that in Scotland, and it sounds like there's some work to do on that in Wales. It's not really so much a resources issue, it's more a service culture issue.

09:25

Okay. Peter, when you mention good practice that is effective, if you haven't already done so, perhaps you could provide the committee with a note of those examples, following today. I mean, we will be hearing from local authorities, including Cardiff, later, but nonetheless it would be good to get a view from you.

Actually, on the same thread, in terms of international research of more assertive intervention from public agencies, that would be a very great note to us. And it is understood that rough-sleepers are that very hard-to-reach group. They have, in a sense, been left out of that circle because of the very nature of how difficult it is to sustain tenancies around alcohol and drug abuse issues as well. So, because of the fact that we know from research that even when we've got tenancies for some of those that are hard to reach, they haven't managed to be maintained. What is the optimum model out there in terms of support for that? I think the committee would be very interested in understanding that.

We'll probably both agree on this. Housing first, which there is an awful lot of discussion around at the moment, and in my written evidence I talk about—. It's not the sole solution, please don't get me wrong, but the evidence tells us housing first works very well with this particular population group, this sub-population of the homeless population, with substance misuse issues, mental health—

The key thing with housing first that I don't think necessarily gets through to Government officials is that when a tenancy fails, and they do fail, that's not the end of housing first—you're into another tenancy. That's the key thing: that we don't give up. You're not intentionally homeless because you haven't paid your bills, or you've behaved in a particular way that led you to lose the tenancy. It's almost accepted that that will happen, or expected that that could happen, and then there's another tenancy set up, and we get very good retention rates, averaging at around 80 per cent, which is very good.

Okay. We will be developing these matters later on in this session. Suzanne.

If I can just add to that, I think that there's a continuity between the questions on assertive outreach and housing first here. I think what the evidence that Pete's recently reviewed in a big study for Crisis, and certainly the international evidence as a whole, tell you is that it's those persistent, sticky kinds of services that work. So, it's not giving up on people, and that's an important part of the culture of housing first as well. As Pete says, sometimes these tenancies will break down, and one of the things that housing providers sometimes get anxious about with housing first is the notion you can't evict people. Yes, you can evict people on the same grounds you would evict anyone else, but if you have got a housing first programme set up, you stay with that person and you find them other accommodation, and you stay with them in and out of prison as well, if that's necessary.

So, I think, again, it's about that culture shift in services—that people don't fail and then you give up on them. It's about staying with them, and I think just yesterday we were sent some materials from the Welsh Government, which talked about moving to—. I think there are some guidance notes on housing first and on the rough-sleeper strategy. I haven't had a chance to examine them in detail because I only received them yesterday, but I did notice—. I was very pleased to see a heavy emphasis on both housing first and on more assertive outreach models. So, I think, to some extent at least, that message seems to have gotten through.

Can I just say on that that, obviously, yes, this week, we had that guidance on housing first and also the action plan from Welsh Government? We will be writing to witnesses giving evidence today after their evidence giving, inviting them to submit further views on those two particular pieces of Welsh Government policy. So, we'd be very grateful if, when you've had an opportunity to perhaps consider them at greater length, you would respond in that way.

Okay, thanks for that. The Welsh Local Government Association have said that many rough-sleepers will be classed as priority need and offered interim accommodation. From what you've both already said, I take it that you wouldn't be in agreement with that view.

There will be people who are offered interim accommodation and may be considered priority need—there will. Some single people, some rough-sleepers, will absolutely be offered that assistance, but there are also lots and lots of people who are not accessing that assistance. And I think we've also got to recognise—and I think the WLGA and Cardiff's submission certainly does recognise this—that if you are in priority need, it entitles you to interim accommodation, and too often the accommodation that rough-sleepers will enter initially is pretty poor-standard temporary accommodation or temporary accommodation that those individuals will time and time again tell you isn't fit for purpose. They don't want to stay there. In fact, they will choose to sleep on the streets as opposed to going into that accommodation. You can stop anyone on the streets in Cardiff and they'll tell you that. I have that conversation many, many a night. And there's evidence; we've done the research with this group of people, and they'll tell you. So, having a duty that puts people in pretty substandard temporary accommodation, and then you wait for far too long a time to find settled accommodation, isn't good enough.

Actually, the international evidence review that Suzanne talked about that I've just done tells us, 'Actually that system is the one that's failing so many rough-sleepers.' If we put people in temporary accommodation, wait for an overly long period of time in a search for more settled, permanent accommodation, just too many people fall out of that system. Cardiff's data that they submitted for the group that end up sleeping on the floor, on floor space, in Cardiff, I think the fall-out rate was about 38 per cent who then don't go on through the system. We need to get access to permanent accommodation much quicker, and this is a comment I'll probably make later on about what priority need actually entitles you to, and that's if you can get into priority need.

09:30

For me, in a way, the most pertinent question is: should they be given priority need? I think that, certainly for the longer term more entrenched rough-sleepers—and I should think that a high proportion of the people sleeping rough in Wales will be of that kind—they almost certainly should be getting priority need because they've got complex support needs. But I think it's quite clear that although, as Pete says, some people will be awarded priority need, clearly there is a significant number of single homeless people who are not awarded priority need, and some of those will either be rough-sleepers or will go on to sleep rough. So, clearly it's not the case that all will, but I don't think either of us would want to argue that no rough-sleepers should get priority need. I'm sure that's not the case.

Maybe this is something that will come up later, but I did read the Welsh Local Government Association's submission to the committee, and I was slightly concerned by some of the, if you like, tone of that submission in terms of it being almost the rough-sleeper's own fault if they chose not to avail themselves of the opportunity to stay in the temporary accommodation. I can understand why, coming from local government's perspective, that it can be frustrating, but I think you have to take account of the points that Pete's just made about the conditions. And this isn't just about Wales. You would have the same conversation in Scotland and in England. It's about the nature of that kind of provision. I would suggest that many of us would choose to sleep rough rather than stay in it. As I say, that's not a specific comment about Wales; that's a general comment about that kind of emergency accommodation for rough-sleepers.

Is there anything you'd like to add in terms of priority need and why ending priority need would be beneficial?

Yes, I'll add something on that one. Under the old system, we had a system that meant that, if you made it into priority need, you got settled accommodation, essentially for life, or you got nothing. That was the old system, and we did fix that system in that, now, everybody should have some reasonable steps. That's why England have copied it and others are looking. But also what it means in the current system is that, if I come into it and I get help, I've got a trained professional, a full-time paid professional, whose sole job it is to try and help me find solutions in our Welsh housing market. And at the end of that process of either trying to prevent and then trying to relieve or just trying to relieve homelessness, they've failed to help me access the market, and they've got at their disposal rent in advance, a bond, or whatever is needed to grease the wheels of the landlords that we're trying to access accommodation from, and we've failed. And then, at the end of that system, we say, 'Cheerio.' Under the old system, we could say, 'Don't worry. I can go back to my bed and I can sleep at night because you're non-priority need, but we haven't really tried to help so you'll be all right, you'll find somewhere in the market.' We can't do that now. We've tried to help with trained professionals and we couldn't find anywhere and we had all this money at our disposal, and then we're shutting the doors and saying, 'Off you go.' So, that's why we've got to get rid of priority need. You can't have that system as far as I'm concerned.

The other thing is: what does priority need entitle you to? As I said before, at the moment, once you get through the system, priority need entitles you to temporary accommodation, or interim accommodation until we can find settled accommodation. For me, what priority need should entitle you to is something much swifter, and much swifter access to permanent accommodation. That's the kind of interesting set of discussions that we need to have, re-framing what priority need entitles you to. It would actually mean aligning it with what prevention and relief entitles you to, which is something more individualised. And also, there's this point about priority need or the duties on local authorities to actually go out and seek to support people rather than waiting for people to come into the system.

09:35

I think, if I may sort of draw a sort of slightly wider context here, in Scotland we abolished priority need. Well, we started to extend it to the point of abolishing it between 2003 and 2012. I know that caused some alarm in Wales when we first started working on the review that provided the backcloth for the change in the legislation, about whether we might recommend to Wales that they follow the Scottish model, because temporary accommodation did treble in use after priority need was abolished in Scotland, and I think that I would make two key points about that. One is that, even though that clearly is problematic—and that's something that Scotland is working on at the moment: how to re-frame how we use temporary accommodation—people in Scotland from across the sectors would still see it—the abolition of priority need—as the right thing to do, because it changed the culture of local authority services in such a way that single people got a much better deal than they did when priority need was still in place. So, despite the problems associated with temporary accommodation, there remains a strong consensus in Scotland that it was still the right thing to do.

The second point I would make is that the trick that Scotland missed, which Wales could get right here, is to have that combination of the strong preventative model and the abolition of priority need. In Scotland, what we did was we abolished priority need without putting in place the stronger prevention model. So, we didn't have that filter to reduce the number of people who needed to avail themselves of the main duty. I think what you have an opportunity to do in Wales is to kind of square that circle and get the best of all worlds, really, by having a very strong, very robust preventative model that enables you to abolish priority need because the number of people then, who get to that point of being owed the main duty, should be that much smaller. So, I think you can have a better experience of it than we had in Scotland.

I'm just concerned that you're looking at this through a prism rather than the overall housing crisis. We've got, in Cardiff, 8,000 families on the housing waiting list for council accommodation, most of whom will wait for years and years. We've got no rent controls on the private sector. The officers who have tried to put people into the private rented sector have failed because there simply isn't any accommodation out there that can be covered by housing benefit, because most homeless people are also without work. So, in an ideal world you'd be right, but in the world that we're currently living in, and local authorities are living in, I don't see how it's possible to implement the system that you are describing.

Could I respond to that? Certainly, you'd have no argument from me or from Peter about the damaging effects of welfare reform and the restrictions that that's placing on local authorities' room for manoeuvre. Again, if I can speak from a slightly wider frame, the problems you have with that in Wales are nowhere near as bad as they are in the south of England and in London. Actually, in Scotland, our problems are nowhere near as bad either, except in Edinburgh. So, Cardiff and Edinburgh have greater problems than other parts of those countries. That said, I completely accept the general point that you're making.

But how I would sort of counter it, I think, is by saying, what we've been asked to speak about today is rough-sleepers specifically, and there are two points about rough-sleepers. One is: there are actually not that many of them. You're talking about in the hundreds across Wales. So, I think you're not talking about a massive displacement in terms of other groups. The second thing I would say is that, if you're talking about people who are literally sleeping rough, then it's difficult to envisage a more intense level of housing need than that. So, even if there's a question of allocation policies and so on, I think there's a very strong argument for saying that certainly people who are verified rough-sleepers, who are sleeping rough for long periods of time, should have a very high degree of priority. I'm not saying absolute overriding priority over everyone else, but I think they should have a very high level of priority.

09:40

As we've said, we both agree on the impacts of welfare reform. It does hamper the solutions available. Have local authorities, housing associations and others been innovative enough in their response to welfare reform? We could all probably have done better in coming up with solutions that made shared accommodation, for instance, available to so-called young people, under 35s—I just missed that category.

There's more we could've done to innovate; there's more we can do to innovate, but I also think it can be lazy for us to say, 'There's not enough accommodation there'. I think it can be, and I've seen it in authorities who've said that exact phrasing, and then you've had a pilot project come in, delivered by a non-housing organisation that has built relationships with landlords who had never engaged with the local authority or any of their key housing partners, and go from a success rate—a housing retention rate—of around 50 per cent up to a success rate of around 85 per cent in terms of securing a solution.

Cardiff is slightly an outlier in this, and perhaps it needs greater thought, but across the rest of Wales, I think that, actually, there are solutions out there, we just need to work a little bit harder to find them and to support people.

Yes. Again, if you haven't already, Peter, it would be useful to have some information, perhaps, on that. We do need to move on, I'm conscious of the time, but quickly, Janet.

Yes. You mentioned that there is some good practice out there and, indeed, we've seen, as a committee, when we went along to the Salvation Army locally, that they work on some fantastic models, like the Bridge programme. Rhianon, you quite rightly mentioned that, sometimes, providing the housing need isn't the only solution because of some of the lifestyles that they've had to—. We're talking about some very vulnerable people. Why is that good practice not being shared, do you think? And, where there is a good model that's working, how do we roll that out across Wales? Is there a reluctance, and are there barriers within local authorities that actually say, 'No, that's not how we want to work'?

There's a really complex answer to that. I don't think I've got the full answer. There are commissioning frameworks that don't always encourage that sort of behaviour. When a third sector organisation develops something that works really effectively, when they're then having to compete with others to win that small amount of Supporting People money, are they likely to want to share their methodologies, their ideas? Probably not. So, I think we could look at the way commissioning frameworks are set up.

There's also the sheer resource issue—Supporting People being a key part of that resource. If you've got no long-term commitment to a Supporting People budget, then how can you plan those sorts of intensive services for long periods of time? And they do take time to develop, to get the right skill sets in, to make sure you've got the right staff. The caveat to the Supporting People comment is at least we have, to some extent, a Supporting People budget and Suzanne—. When you step outside of Wales, they envy us for having that budget in any form—in any form, because I know it's now going into a super grant. At least we have something there; let's try and protect it.

So, there's 'Is there the money?' and there are the commissioning frameworks, but there's also—and this is the point that we made in our report when we recommended the legislative changes ahead of the 2014 Act—the fact that we don't have a regulator in Wales. We were learning from experiences in Scotland, where the regulator played a really key role in the shift towards abolishing priority need and the sorts of services that developed, and it did more than just hold people to account, or hold local authorities to account for their success rate: it was a really important part of sharing good practice. It was both holding people to account and then moving on to an authority that wasn't doing so well and saying, 'Look, here are the lessons.'

And then the other point I would make is that, from experience beyond Wales, where it's not a duty and it's something that's optional, and where local authorities' money is being reduced, the things that aren't required of you are the ones that go. It takes a very strong politician, leader, to say 'I'm going to protect this budget for these activities because I believe in them, even though I haven't got to do them.' So, it might be that, actually, we need to raise the expectation of the duties, and I talk about that later in terms of a support duty, which we don't currently have, to enable those things to happen.

09:45

Okay. And then, finally, on the priority need, I know my own authority was very instrumental in—. And I was here in the Chamber when quite interesting debates would go ahead about whether priority need was an effective lever there, because I know, in my own authority, we would have families promised accommodation and, the day before they were due to go into that accommodation, up would pop a priority need, and then they were pushed right back down again, and so—. I know in my own authority it was a problem, and so I think there was almost a cheer when priority need status went into this legislation. Do you see an appetite from the Welsh Government to abolish priority need?

Yes. So, to make it clear, abolishing priority need is, essentially, like giving everybody who is homeless priority need. It's not saying—. To be absolutely clear, that's what we mean by abolishing priority need. It means, when you come and you're homeless, we will guarantee you your right to housing; we'll get you settled accommodation. That's what abolishing priority need means when we talk about it—unlike the abolition of priority need for prison leavers, which went through on a legislation change, which is removing their access or their right to settled accommodation.

Yes, it's only a couple of very short questions. You mentioned earlier that we're not talking about enormous numbers, and Welsh Government figures—300 or 400 or whatever. How accurate is our assessment for understanding the scale of rough-sleeping and, I suppose, even the definition of it?

Do you want to comment on that?

Yes. Again, I tend to be looking at Wales from a wider perspective. I think the figures aren't bad, to be honest. They're better than you have anywhere else in the UK, apart from London, because you've got the combined homelessness and information network system in London, which I think Pete mentions in his submission and is certainly worth your looking at in Wales. I know there's a project under way that the Wallich is leading on, which is looking at continuous—. I don't know the details of the Wallich project, but I understand that it's looking at continuous recording of data from services that are interacting with rough-sleepers, and I think that is a better model for having in-depth, real-time data, and also a more granular understanding of the ebb and flow of rough-sleeping.

But if you're going to do a street count, which is what happens in England—. We don't have street counts at all in Scotland, but we record rough-sleeping through the statutory homelessness system; we've abolished priority need and, therefore, most single homeless people do go through the statutory homelessness system in Scotland. So, you've got a street count, but you've also got the two-week service statutory and voluntary sector collaboration. I think the combination, the triangulation, between those isn't bad. Is it the best it could be? No—something like the CHAIN system would be better. I think that it—. My sense of it, without having been directly involved in it, is that it does give you a reasonable sense of the overall scale, of the kind of—the order of magnitude, I think, is relatively well captured. What I would never do with a street count, or any kind of short-term thing, is take too literally the absolute number that's generated from it, because, clearly, people will sleep rough in places where they're not visible to those counting them, and they might not be in touch with services.

I think as long as it's done on a relatively consistent basis you can read something meaningful into the trend, but not necessarily the absolute number. But I wouldn't want to criticise the Welsh Government too much on this one. I think, as compared with elsewhere, they've done quite a good job.

So, it could be done better, but you're reasonably happy that this is a fairly fair representation of the scale of rough-sleeping.

Yes. I think it gives us a good indication, as Suzanne says. It gives an indication of ups and downs—well, of ups, unfortunately. But the move towards—. Because we're just doing it on one night, with the two-week observations as well, but the move towards—and this is what the Wallich project is doing—daily data being collected by the outreach teams is a wonderfully positive step. And the knowledge that that will give us to then inform services is really quite something, and would mark us out as a country. I don't know of a country that does that. Across Europe, it's single-night counts—that's what happens. London does this continuous monitoring, and it's really informed the way services are commissioned.

09:50

A lot of the data we have is obviously focused on where the highest concentrations are, as best we know, but, of course, in terms of the all-Wales position—I represent Pontypridd; there's obviously an issue there, and there's a lot of movement backwards and forwards and so on. Is the importance, in terms of the data, where there are large numbers, or how important is it to have that understanding around the other parts of Wales, the other cities and towns?

It would be a real shame if we weren't collecting this data Wales-wide, and the continuous monitoring data system actually ties in with services as well. So, it's the outreach teams, it's the people that are out looking to support and identify homeless people that do the counting and, actually, if, in line with what I'd said earlier about needing to be more assertive and to get out into outreach, and that's across Wales, then the two coalesce quite nicely—that, actually, we should be doing this across Wales. We should be reaching out across Wales, and, when we're doing that, let's collect the data.

Would you be reasonably confident that the figures we have across Wales, then—I understand that there's no perfect system there, but that they're reasonably accurate in terms of the distribution around Wales, as to where the concentrations are, but also where there are other problems? It seems to me one of the questions—you know, why is it so important to try and have accurate figures? It's to be able to identify changes. The fact that you mentioned growth—you know, why are there increasing numbers, and so on? But, in terms of the scale around Wales, do you think we have a reasonable picture as to what is going on, or do you think there are things we could be doing more in other parts of Wales?

I think it's the best we can ask for the moment. On a one-night count, they've worked very hard—local authorities have worked very hard together—to be consistent in their methodology and their approaches. They have shared learning on how they're going to collect the data, so they've worked hard on that. So, I think we can be as confident as you can be on a single-night count.

Troi at yr hyn sy'n achosi cysgu ar y stryd yng Nghymru, mae yna gynnydd wedi bod yn ôl pob golwg. Beth ydy'r rhesymau penodol am y cynnydd diweddar?

Turning to the causes of rough-sleeping in Wales, there has been an apparent increase. What are the specific reasons for this recent increase?

I think I'll pass on to Suzanne to give the monitor reply.

As part of the 'The Homelessness Monitor' report that we did in Wales last year—so, the field work, the main part of the work, was done over the summer of last year—it was one of the key things that we asked people working across Wales that we were speaking to. We also do a survey of all the local authorities in Wales, quite a detailed survey, which gives the local authorities plenty of space to give us a narrative account of what they think's happening, and the rise in rough-sleeping was already apparent. We didn't have the data then, but there was a lot of concern about rises in rough-sleeping at that point. So, we did speak to people about it quite a lot.

To be honest, I don't know that we're entirely sure, or no-one seemed to be entirely sure, exactly what the causes of the increase were. I think there's a number of factors that are likely in play, rather than it being any one factor. I think, certainly, welfare reform is driving up homelessness across the UK, or certainly across Great Britain. I think it's undoubtedly the case that that is playing a role; the extent to which that accounts for the rise is another matter. I think the other issue that people raised was European Economic Area migrants, to some extent—people were seeing more people who were non-UK nationals on the streets—but that doesn't entirely tie in with what we can see happening more broadly, because, actually the numbers of people from the European Union sleeping rough in London are actually going down now, because the overall migration is going down. So, that's a bit trickier to see why the pattern would be going up.

I think the other, more specific thing that's happened in Wales, of course, is the removal of priority need for people leaving prison. There is undoubtedly, and this is true across the UK and, indeed, further afield, a very strong overlap between particularly people who sleep rough on a longer term basis and those that have had some engagement with the criminal justice system. So, you'd expect that there might be a connection there between increased rough-sleeping and the weakening of housing duties towards prisoners. I'm not saying that that necessarily accounts for the increase, and I'm not saying it was the wrong thing to do to remove priority need from prisoners—I happen to support that move—but I do think it might be something that contributed to it.

The other things that people mentioned were things that happen all the time—relationship breakdown, domestic violence and tenancy breakdown. There wasn't really a pattern of what's new in terms of pushing it up, other than the prisoners issue and the ongoing impact of welfare reform.

09:55

And I think that, Dr Mackie, you've—

—rydych chi wedi sôn bod eisiau mwy o ymchwil, ymchwil mwy soffistigedig, yn enwedig, efallai, i'r cysylltiad efo pobl yn gadael carchar, y sector gofal ac ysbytai, ac yn y blaen. Pam fod angen mwy o ymchwil? Nid ydym ni yn gwybod beth sy'n digwydd, mewn ffordd, rydym ni'n gwybod, ac eisiau—. A ddylai'r pwyslais fod ar ffeindio'r ateb yn hytrach na fwy o ymchwil?

—mentioned that there is a need for additional research, more sophisticated research, particularly perhaps on the relationship between homelessness and people leaving prison and the care sector, hospitals and so on. Why is there a need for more research? We don't know what's happening, really, we know, and want—. Should the emphasis be, therefore, on finding a solution rather than research?

You can't ask that question to an academic. [Laughter.] You ask an academic for advice, they're going to say you need more research. That's the way we work.

Let me just firstly put on record: Suzanne and I don't often disagree, but we disagree on the prison leaver point. Just so that's there.

It's just that I believe that prison leavers should have priority need. I think everybody should have priority need. But the point about the data is we abolished—. And it comes from the fact that we removed priority need for prison leavers, and we did it on the basis of ignorance, because we didn't have the data. Everyone, when you spoke to local authorities, said, 'Well, we have prison leavers coming in, and they disappear out of the system, and we put them in temporary accommodation for 28 days, and then they disappear'. What would have happened otherwise? We don't have the counter-factual. Maybe we're realising the counter-factual now, that they'll end up on the streets.

We didn't have the data, and that's what I'm arguing for. Let's look at the relationship between these institutions that we know have a strong relationship with homelessness. There aren't many places—in the US you can go and they've got these wonderful bits of work on this; we've got good colleagues out there doing it, but we don't have it in the UK. So, looking at the relationship between these institutions that we think, and actually we do know, can cause homelessness. So, a spell in prison can cause homelessness—you lose your tenancy—but it also works in reverse. So, for instance, if we leave it three weeks before we get a Supporting People intervention with somebody, is that more likely to lead to them reoffending? If we leave it one week, does that reduce reoffending rates by 20 per cent amongst that population? We don't know the answers to those questions, and they are questions, if we can just—. All they need is the data. I'll find you the researchers. In fact I've got one. But if we could just get hold of the data, and we can start asking those questions of the data, we can start to answer some of those questions that might then change our services, that say, 'Hang on, giving a prison leaver priority need status and putting them in temporary accommodation for 28 days isn't the solution', but, actually, giving them priority need and saying, 'You have to have found settled accommodation within a week or else the consequence is—'. Wouldn't it be really powerful in terms of us then developing our services? That's really where that comes from, that recommendation.

Just having been involved in shaping the legislation—I think I'm the only person who was—and having had this debate with Carl Sargeant, how much do you think the fact that the ex-prisoners are falling between the cracks is to do with the privatised probation services? Because Carl Sargeant's argument was that practically every prisoner would meet the priority need category, but what we have happening is that the probation service is simply not ensuring that they get the public service they're entitled to.

My comment would be that, for a while, when we had the priority need status, I absolutely agree, I think prisons felt, 'It's not our duty to deal with the accommodation needs of this group of the population. That's dealt with by the local authority'. And that was the case made by local authorities, and I agree that we need probation services doing more, and prison services doing more, to address housing needs. But we, essentially, devolved responsibility, and we've gone the other way from housing to offending services, probation. I think we have questions around it later on, but the protocol that was set up to spell out exactly how local authorities, the prison service and probation—

The pathway, how they would work with each other, from my view, hasn't yet embedded effectively. I don't think the roles are clear. I don't think the duties and responsibilities are clear. It probably comes back to my point that if there's an absolute duty that you can be challenged on for not doing then it's more likely to get done. But I totally agree that it cannot be the sole responsibility of housing services to address this particular issue.  

10:00

The next questions are a bit general. Have we covered them already? Do you want me to keep going?

Okay. How effective are services for rough-sleepers in Wales, and how could they be improved? Do you want to go first, Peter, and then Suzanne?  

As you say, we have covered some of it, Gareth, so it's if there's anything further you'd like to add, really. 

Okay, great. Sorry—apologies if we do repeat. I think the starting point is there is a lot of very good practice there, and we absolutely can't deny that there's a lot of money that goes into it. We've got front-line workers going beyond their pay grades to do an awful lot of positive stuff, and that's both in local authorities and third sector. That's my context. But we can always do better and, actually, we should and must do better. It's why this inquiry exists.

Hostels as a mainstay of intervention aren't effective. Large-scale hostels with lots of beds in them, which were perhaps intended to be temporary but end up playing a more permanent role, are not part of or are not the solution. If we have hostels, they should be small and they should play a very, very temporary role in the solution—very temporary—weeks, not more. 

Support is perhaps the additional bit. So, we need housing first as a solution with rough-sleepers, we need personalised budgets, but the bit that I think is crucial here is support. Unlike many of the other homeless families—where, actually, the issue is a housing issue and maybe it's a housing affordability issue and it's the insecurity of our private rented sector, et cetera—with this group of people, a lot more is to do with the nature of the support that comes along.

We have no duty to provide support for these individuals. We don't have that duty. We've got a duty, if they make it into priority need, to accommodate, and we've got a duty to try and find accommodation, but there's no duty to put this wraparound support in place. And that's not to deny that it exists and there are some really good examples of it working well, but there's no requirement to do that support. So, that's the bit that I think is the least effective bit.

The bit where we've got most opportunity to improve is to shift towards earlier housing, permanent housing through housing first, and a duty to provide wraparound support. If we're worrying about budgets, that may well not come from a housing budget, that might come from a health budget, from criminal justice, or wherever else, because it has knock-on effects on those service areas.   

Yes. I would definitely reinforce those points about health and criminal justice having a role to play here. This shouldn't just be left to the housing budget and local authorities, because, when you're talking about this group, often what you're talking about is actually a social care issue, or certainly a set of social support issues that people have, which shouldn't come from the housing budget. 

If I may, just a couple of things I want to add that I think are related to this: I did look briefly at the housing first guidance that was issued as well—the guidelines from the Welsh Government—and I thought largely they were really good. But the one thing that really concerned me in it was the comment about congregate or communal housing first—this notion that you can turn hostels into something that you call housing first by giving people a permanent tenancy of their hostel room. There is a debate within the homelessness world on this, but certainly I would want on the record that my view would be that that is not housing first. It may be a better hostel environment, because people have got more security and more control, but it is still a hostel.

So, I thought most of what the Welsh Government had to say on housing first was good. I think perhaps they've been overly influenced by the Finnish model, which, to my mind, is not the best model of housing first out there. I think, if you're talking about housing first, what you should be talking about is people being re-housed and dispersed in housing first. In other words, they're re-housed in ordinary housing in ordinary communities, because we know that's where people do best. 

The other thing that links with that for me is one of the comments the Welsh Local Government Association said in its submission to the committee was, 'Well, we offer people bed and breakfast or a hostel place'. Well, that's kind of what the problem is, because neither a bed and breakfast nor a hostel place—for most people, certainly for rough-sleepers with complex needs—is going to meet their needs. So, this kind of model of more assertive outreach, more rapid rehousing, with that wraparound support that people need to sustain that accommodation, I think is where—not just Wales, this is also true in England and Scotland—policy and practice ought to be going. 

10:05

Thank you. You mentioned the Finnish model, and also other areas that you think are better, and this issue around permanent accommodation in terms of hostels being potentially a permanent home. Now, this really exemplifies to me the difference between where we could be and the realities, which have been touched upon earlier, in terms of how local government is currently managing in terms of austerity—whether you lay off a social worker or not.

So, how do you, as academics, then, state your case to a country like Wales, which is suffering from year-on-year cuts from Westminster, facing the issues around welfare reform, where increasingly people are being asked for a guarantor to pick up tenancies, and whereby we know that we have to produce more housing nationally across Wales?

What is your response to the reality on the ground in terms of the fact that what we're talking about really is people-heavy, people-heavy support for those that are most in need, and that's nothing to do with the ideological argument that we should be doing that? How would you place your argument?

It's a good one. It would be nice if I had the data and I could really make the case. 

But, in the absence of the data, just trust me on it. You're working—. It's the easiest group to make the case for, because rough-sleepers are the most expensive group for us as a society. If we just want to make the financial case—and let me caveat it; we brought in the legislation in Wales not on a financial case. I go internationally talking about this, and it's wonderful to be able to say that we did it on a moral basis and on a just basis. That's how we got it through. That's not how things went through in England. I had to do a whole load of cost calculations for them in England to make the case.

So, we can change things on a just basis, but there's a financial case too. This group costs the criminal justice sector, the health sector, and an awful number of other sectors, huge amounts of money. And then you've got implications perhaps for the next generations as well, of having parents who've been homeless and have hit the streets, et cetera. So, the costs, if we actually sat down and costed it, are immense. The cost of a support worker is minimal. It's miniscule, relative to the wider societal cost.

The problem—and this is one that, as academics, we can't solve for you—is how do you guys get one department cross-funding with another, to actually realise those funds, because you've got to realise it. You've got to take it from the health service. You've got to take it from criminal justice. And that's a big challenge. 

Okay, thanks for that, Peter. I know these are potentially big questions and we've got very limited time, and I think Suzanne wanted to add. 

Yes. I think the other point I would make in terms of the political argument is that my colleague, Steve Wilcox, who works with us on 'The Homelessness Monitor', would say, 'Yes, of course, there's pressure on the Welsh Government budget, there's certainly pressure on local authorities throughout the UK. But, Wales, until recently, did not prioritise, within that shrinking budget, housing.' Housing was relatively deprioritised as compared with, for example, the proportion of the budget that went on housing in Scotland. So, some of these things are about political choices, and those political choices are not for academics to make. We make the case for what we—. We're asked the question, 'What would work for this group?', and we tell you what the evidence tells us, and then it's for the politicians to make the political case. But housing has not been given the priority that it ought to be. 

And one specific sector I think you might want to look at is the housing association sector in Wales, because the proportion of housing association lets that are given to homeless people is not only a lot lower than it used to be, it's actually lower than it is in England, which is quite something given that it's really plummeted in England. I think it has jumped up a little bit just over the last year, but, for some reason, the proportion of Welsh social landlord lets that go to homeless people is lower than anywhere else in the UK. When we were doing 'The Homelessness Monitor', we couldn't really get an answer as to why that was the case, but I think it might be something that you'd want to look at. 

Thanks for that, Suzanne. That's very useful. We do have to move on. Gareth. 

Again, we might have covered a lot of this, but, if there's anything you want to add, how do services in Wales compare to those in Scotland and England?

For rough-sleepers, specifically?

Well, perhaps I'll focus on Scotland, in a way, because it's more comparable in terms of size and in a number of other ways. I do think that we have some of the same challenges in Scotland and in Wales, in the sense that we haven’t developed a set of outreach services to the extent that they have in London, particularly. So, I think that both countries have something to learn from London.

I think that the housing-first model has really taken off in both Wales and in Scotland, at least in terms of people’s thinking, in tandem. I think there's an awful lot that Wales and Scotland could learn from each other right now, because we’re both developing. We're both, at national level—because this is happening in Scotland as well—talking about moving from bed and breakfast and hostels and those kinds of provisions to a much more housing-first-orientated model. We're doing it at the same time, so we should be talking to each other about how we can—. Because, in England, although there are some very interesting developments in housing first, there isn't a national push towards it in the way that you have, in different ways, in Scotland and Wales. I don't have time to go into the details, but I do think there's something really interesting happening there. There is a big national programme in housing first being part funded, actually, by some very large-scale charitable fundraising in Scotland, and I think that it would be very useful and interesting for colleagues in Wales perhaps to have some engagement with that.

I think that the abolition of priority need in Scotland does make the context really quite different. It means that we've had—. Because it was gradually expanded before it was abolished, it means that—. Well, basically, most single homeless people in Scotland have been entitled to re-housing for quite a long time now, and I think that there are both pros and cons in that that we should learn from each other on.

But one point—I want to just make this point about priority need, going forward—is that, yes, Pete and I might not agree on the prisoners point, but my position, to be clear, is that, if possible, you should abolish priority need for all single people—not just prisoners, but all single people. That was my concern about it, but I think it has to be allied with this very strong emphasis on prevention, which you already have in Wales. I think that's what would work.

The final point I would make on priority need is to say that you abolish priority need is not the same as saying that you give that group absolute priority over everyone else in housing need—so, families being pushed down because the priority person pops up. To abolish priority need is not the same as saying that the allocation policy of all social landlords has to be that rough-sleepers get absolute priority over everyone else. That isn't what it says. So, let's just be clear that you can recommend the abolition of priority need without saying that they always get absolute priority.

10:10

Yes, thanks. Local connection criteria—to what extent do you think that local connection criteria and reconnection policies are impacting on rough-sleeping?

This is a contentious one, I think, and one where there may be some disagreement between the folk giving evidence. The main place where this is an issue is in Cardiff, where they have a much higher proportion of folk who come from other local authorities and from outside of Wales. I think the figure was about 25 per cent of rough-sleepers—

It's in the submission. My memory is not very good. I read it just before I came in here. I thought it was the other way around. But, anyway, relative to the other local authorities, it has a higher proportion of folk coming from outside of the area. But we were really clear, when the law was being developed, that prevention and relief duties are blind to your connection to another authority. 'It doesn’t matter whether you're from around here, we have to assist you and we have to take reasonable steps to find a solution for you at both prevention and relief stages.' The only caveat to that is that, at the relief stage, i.e. if you are already homeless, which is our rough-sleeper population, if you are found to be in priority need, then we can refer you to another authority—but that's not the process that's happening.

The process that's happening is that folk are getting a single offer: 'If you're not from around these parts, then we'll reconnect you.' Some of those reconnections are done in a really supportive way—they've learnt a lot from some of the reconnection work in London—but the law says quite clearly, 'We should be working with you on an individual basis to look at solutions.' That should absolutely include the solutions—or that should be about the Cardiff housing market. 'Can I get you into a private rented flat in Cardiff?' should be one of those options. That's what the law tells us, and that's not entirely what's happening. What's happening is we're exploring how we can reconnect you back. Now, if Welsh Government or the National Assembly wishes to have a different approach, that we should be reconnecting people back, then the law needs to be changed for the practices that are going on, particularly in Cardiff, to be legitimised. There are issues. The reason it's happening, partly, is because of funding. If we're a net recipient, will I need to be funded to provide the services? Do I have the housing for those individuals? All those questions have to be squared off. So, the practices are understandable, but the law says something quite different.

I did do a small piece of work that looked internationally at other examples. There are lots of other funding models. You can have the home authority funding services if they access them elsewhere. There are other options. You can have centrally held resources that you can tap into for folk that don't have a local connection. But, in the small bit of work that I did, when you ask—. Because the assumption is, 'Oh, they're coming to our authority because we've got the resources and the services', but when you ask those people—and we only managed to speak to about 25 folk—very few were attracted by the services; they were attracted by a multitude of other far less significant but apparently meaningful reasons. The same sorts of reasons that folk move—work and other things.

So, there is an issue with local connection. The international review we've just done picks up a lot on reconnection. This isn't specific to Wales. It's a much greater problem, as you might imagine, in London. Again, they've copied our legislation; it has the same rules around local connection. The problem is, when you reconnect and it's a single offer and you're not looking at whether you're really connecting people to positive social networks and whether there's a choice, what may well be happening is people are choosing not to return—'If that's my only option, I'll stay here on the streets.' So, it's a problem and it's not one that we have yet the solution to.

10:15

I don't disagree with anything Pete's just said on that. One thing I would say: if it is the case that Cardiff has got two thirds of people applying as homeless in Cardiff who are not from Cardiff, that really surprises me, because I've never come across a proportion like that anywhere else in the UK. So, it's very surprising. Something odd is happening in Cardiff if—

It's 72 per cent that are from Cardiff.

Oh, it's the other way around. That sounds more like it, yes. I agree very much, actually, with what Pete's saying. I think, particularly for the rough-sleeping group, and particularly because they're a relatively small group and a very vulnerable group, reconnection with consent can work but I think forced reconnection is something that should be avoided. I think there are better ways of doing it. 

I know a lot of the housing first issues have been raised. I just wanted to understand—I think it was you, Peter; I don't want to put words in your mouth—you said that wasn't a panacea. Obviously, there are pilots at the moment, so I'm just wanting to understand, should it be the go-to policy on this, if it comes to it that the pilots are successful? And if it's not the Finnish model, what is the best model that's working at the moment, so that we can look to it? And, my third question: I know you'll be asked by the Chair in writing with regard to the statement this week, but I wanted to just see if I could get on the record whether you thought that—. I know you're academics, so I caveat it now, but do you think, though, that there needs to be more research before removing the priority need? Because the Minister said, 'I'm not going to do anything until 2020, potentially, because I need to review the research.' I don't personally agree with that. I think there's enough out there on this issue, be it not on other issues. So, I just wanted to get your view on that.

If you could answer all those questions in one minute, we'd be very grateful.

On housing first, we have an approach that says, 'Individualise the response'. Housing first should be one of the key things on your shopping list to work with rough-sleepers. It should be offered as a solution. So, in essence, yes, it's your go-to. 

On the Finnish model versus anything else, the debate is really about scatter site versus congregate site. Scatter site should be the preferred option. They have similar housing retention outcomes, but in terms of impact on crime and other things, scattered site works better, and homeless people prefer scatter site—

Yes. Then, on research before ending priority need, we've gone through the process of learning about our new system, we know how many people aren't in priority need, so we know the number of people that we've then got to additionally house. I don't think we need new research to make that leap, no.

10:20

Going backwards on that, I don't think you need any more research, but I do think you need an impact investigation on what the impact would be in different local authorities and how they would respond to that, and possibly thinking about a staged approach like Scotland did. I mean, maybe not as long; a 10-year programme is not as long as you need, but you might want to do it in a staged way.

I think, on housing first, as Pete says, the key debate is whether it's scattered site or congregate, and I think, if you're looking for international examples, Denmark is a better example than Finland—I keep making this point, and no-one's listened to me in England either. Because in Denmark, they started off having congregate and dispersed and they moved heavily towards dispersed because it worked better, for the reasons Pete said, and also tenancy retention was better. In fact, the Finns have also moved towards a dispersed model, as they've also found that that works better. So, I don't really know why the Welsh Government has got this communal, congregate housing first element in their guidelines. I think that's a mistake. I think the rest of the guidelines are good.

The final point on housing first is I think, absolutely, it's not a panacea, but it should be the default. So, instead of saying what I'm afraid the Welsh Government guidelines do say—'Well, housing first is for people that hostels don't work for'—it should be the other way around. Hostels, or some kind of congregate supported accommodation, should only be used for people for whom housing-first-type models don't work or aren't wanted. So, it's about switching the default.

Okay. Thank you both very much for your evidence this morning. It's been very, very useful, and we will write further to you. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy in due course. Thank you very much.

Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:21 a 10:27.

The meeting adjourned between 10:21 and 10:27.

10:25
3. Ymchwiliad i Gysgu ar y Stryd yng Nghymru: Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 2
3. Inquiry into Rough-sleeping in Wales: Evidence Session 2

Let me welcome everyone back to item 3 on our agenda today, our second evidence session with regard to our inquiry into rough-sleeping in Wales. I'm very pleased to welcome Jane Thomas, assistant director for housing and communities at Cardiff council, Simon Inkson, head of housing at Powys County Council, Julie Francis, service manager for housing at Wrexham Council, and her colleague Tracy Hague, housing options lead at Wrexham Council. Welcome to you all. If it's okay, we'll move straight into questioning. Perhaps I might begin with the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 and what effect that legislation has had on local authorities' approach to tackling rough-sleeping, in your experience.

In Cardiff, we've always had a commitment to try and house single homeless people even though they were not in priority need. So, we have got quite a wide range of services available to single homeless people. The Act obviously focused the mind on prevention, which is hugely important—trying to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place. So, there's much more effort going into prevention than there was previously. But when it comes to the duty to help to secure, I think that that was fairly clearly in place before. We've always had bonds arrangements in place for single homeless people; we've got a single homeless gateway for single people. What changed, I think, after the Act was we took more ownership of that as a council. So, the accommodation gateway for single people now operates through the council, so people come through the council to get into single person homeless accommodation, whereas before it was very much run by the partners, by the third sector. We take far more interest in how many people are coming through, whether we are actually achieving housing for everybody, and that's been, I think, for Cardiff, the main difference from the Act—both the prevention and our ownership of the trying to secure accommodation for single people.

So, would you say then, Jane, that while it's had a marked beneficial effect in terms of preventing homelessness, as you mentioned, in terms of rough-sleeping perhaps it's been more limited?

10:30

I think the Act has not had implications for rough-sleeping. However, as a council, we've taken a lot more action on rough-sleeping. I can't really tie that back to the Act, specifically. It's more because of the pressures that rough-sleeping is presenting on the streets, and that's why we've put our new strategy in place and we are funding a lot more services now than previously. When I reflect on that, I couldn't really tie that back to the Act; it's many things happening at the same time.

I would concur with what Jane said. Obviously, the range of services provided in an authority like Powys is very different to the services provided in either Cardiff or Wrexham, but I would say that my colleagues who deal with homeless people and rough-sleepers are probably far more proactive than they previously would've been before the introduction of the Housing (Wales) Act 2014.

I see one other beneficial impact, and that being the requirement for local authorities to undertake homelessness reviews and produce homelessness strategies, in that it is requiring us to actually think, at this current time, about how we deal with the very small numbers of rough-sleepers we have in Powys, compared to Cardiff and to Wrexham, and look at a more holistic package of support. Because my view is that rough-sleeping isn't just a housing problem; it is quite often the end result of a number of personal circumstances and issues, rather than just purely being a loss of accommodation or an absence of accommodation. Quite often, we will accommodate people who will then subsequently go on to lose that for a number of different reasons.

Yes, for Wrexham, it's very similar to what our colleagues have said, really. Our housing options have worked very hard on the preventative side, so that has had a definite effect on homelessness, and has had some effect on our rough-sleepers, but not really our entrenched rough-sleeping. I wouldn't say that the Act has had a major impact on that, really. It has allowed us to intervene a lot earlier and prevent crisis situations, so I suppose, in that, yes it has had an effect on rough-sleeping, but mainly, we've seen the differences in terms of prevention of homelessness and the prevention work that we've done with that, really.

Okay. And, in terms of the homelessness strategies and to what extent there's a local authority focus now on tackling rough-sleeping and a strategic approach to that, could you give the committee a flavour of what will be developing and rolled out?

In Cardiff, we developed the rough-sleeping strategy ahead of the requirement to develop a homeless strategy, simply because of the huge pressures that we were facing. I think we did supply a copy of the strategy to you, and that is quite comprehensive: it does look at the whole range of services to rough-sleepers, dealing with all the complex needs and so on. I think, as a council, that has got huge buy-in from our cabinet, who're all very much behind it, and monthly reviews are provided for our cabinet member in detail on all the programmes that are going on to address rough-sleeping.

In Powys, our numbers of rough-sleepers are very small, compared to both Cardiff and Wrexham, but the individuals themselves who we come into contact with who're sleeping rough, present us with a whole range of problems, and provision of accommodation, quite often, doesn't last for a multitude of reasons. And, as a result of that, we're looking at a more holistic approach to try and prevent homelessness, but also provide them with support. So, looking at initiatives such as assertive outreach work, but actually trying to fit that in within a locality model of support that we're trying to develop in Powys, which is based around the main towns.

We're currently looking at our strategy on a regional basis with the other local authorities in north Wales. Each local authority is undertaking a review of services and we're hoping to find some common themes, of which, one, I've no doubt, will be rough-sleeping, and then we'll develop our strategies, both regionally and locally, as a result of that.

10:35

Thank you. I know that you'll be coming to this a little bit later on in the questions in a different way, but in regard to some of the evidence—I don't know whether you've had the chance to look at it yet—previously, we were talking about a housing first assertive interventionist model. How much of an ask is that of local government at this moment in time, in terms of your current modus operandi and in terms of that gap in between the potentiality for need for that type of service in Wales?

So, assertive outreach and housing first—

Together. Okay. So, there are quite a lot of services that we have that give out assertive outreach, i.e. they take the services out to individuals and they're quite persistent in addressing their need. So, we've got the outreach team that's directly employed by the council. That's seven members of staff who go out till midnight. Every day they go out, but they go out till midnight on three days a week. They're out there over the weekend, and they're constantly engaging with those rough-sleepers to try and get them into services.

We also fund the Wallich intervention service, which is called the breakfast run; we fund the day centre, which they actually have to go into, but also the night bus. There are 15 per cent of rough-sleepers who will only go into the services that are on the street, if you know what I mean. So, they will only access the bus service or the breakfast run or the outreach team who are out there. They won't come into the day centre or into the other services, into the housing options centre. So, assertive outreach is really important—

Which most progressive local authorities are doing. So, in terms of the optimum model, as is being discussed around the housing first model, in terms of that persistence, that stickiness of sticking to that person and coming back in terms of policy and thinking in terms of tenancy and the support that wraps around that, how much of an ask would that be at this moment in time?

Well, we are already doing quite a lot of that in Cardiff—

—so we've got the rough-sleeper project, which takes people directly into self-contained accommodation, so using the housing first model. So, the outreach team have access to that, so they will be the glue sticking to the person and then trying to bring them into the housing first model. It is temporary accommodation and they do move on later, so it's not strictly housing first, but now we have the Salvation Army running a housing first model, and that's very much about having the support on the street to get them ready to come into services, because otherwise they won't come into services at all. And then when they do come into the housing first model—. We've only got two so far into that because that's quite a new scheme, but so far that has proved quite successful.

Then, also, there's a complex needs project where the support is on the streets for the people who are constantly being evicted from our front-line services—you know, very intensive support on the street and then into the hostel and to continue that intensive support in the hostel to try and make them sustain the accommodation. All of those projects do have some success, but due to the complexity of the individuals, that success is never more than about 75 per cent. You will have people dropping out even with that intense model.

In terms of how big an ask it is for local authorities, the funding that is available for local authorities is shrinking, so it is a challenge if it is kept as a housing responsibility, but if it is demonstrated to be a wider responsibility and involves health as well—because rough-sleepers are far more likely to call GPs and access accident and emergency—as well as adult social care and possibly children's services, I think we have a hope of actually addressing that issue within Wales, but it needs to be holistic, the services that are provided, and not just housing.

Yes, I'd agree with that, that it's definitely more than just a housing issue, but in Wrexham we are exploring the housing first model. We haven't actually got a strategy in place around it. We are looking at what's developing really, but we've actually got a couple of properties that we're trialling at the moment where it has been a housing first model with our other partner agencies that we work with. I think the key for us is engaging with health within Wrexham and trying to get more services around the health element of it. I think finding accommodation first and foremost in Wrexham isn't one of our major problems, really. It's sustaining the tenancies once we get people into them, and the support element of it at the end of it, really, which is the crucial bit that I think we do need to concentrate on a little bit more.

10:40

Can I just intervene again? I suppose the challenge for an authority like Powys—and I'd say that a lot of local authorities are not too dissimilar—we don't have a huge stock of single-person accommodation. So, that in itself presents a challenge for us, and we are looking at introducing a housing first pilot in the coming months. But the shortage of single-person accommodation within the social housing sector is a big challenge for us; and another huge challenge for us is a lack of shared housing within the private rented sector.

Could you, Mr Inkson, just tell us how many people you've got on the housing waiting list, and how many people you've got sleeping rough?

We've just undertaken a re-registration exercise very recently, and I think the figures are somewhere about 1,200 people on the housing register.

And sleeping rough, I would say, within the last six months, we've come into contact with about 13 rough-sleepers. The scale of the problem is dwarfed by what happens in both Cardiff and Wrexham.

So, why isn't it possible for you to develop the sort of single-person accommodation that is needed?

Well, the development of housing is something that we are looking at. We have recently taken on our first six one-bedroomed flats in Crickhowell. It's the first local authority housing that's been developed for 30 or 40 years, and we have plans to build more homes, but it takes a period of time—from planning to the delivery of new homes, it does take some time.

I'd say it's slightly longer than that. We also need to bear in mind that, as a local authority, the skills and knowledge around the development of housing has left the authority. So, it is a learning process for us.

Okay. Could I ask, in terms of rough-sleepers being generally found to be in priority need and then able to access the interim accommodation, is that your experience as local authorities: that, generally, rough-sleepers are found to be in priority need?

We've recently started doing homeless assessments on the street, through the outreach teams, so we're not requiring them to come into an office. What we've found is that, from the information we can gather, they are not being judged as priority need. That wouldn't affect how we treat them, because we would treat them as vulnerable and a priority anyway, and they would always have priority over our single-person accommodation. However, it's quite difficult to gather all the information you need for a priority need decision. I think, in some ways, it's a bit of a distraction from the decision that the person is vulnerable and that we really need to help them, rather than going through all of the paperwork that's required for a priority need decision.

Each case is determined on its merits. So, whether somebody is found to be a priority need depends on the circumstances that they present with. I would probably say that, in the majority of cases, rough-sleepers who we, as an authority, have come into contact with have been considered to be in priority need of accommodation.

For Wrexham, it's very much the same. Our rough-sleepers have got very complex needs, and it is our understanding and my opinion that they do fall into the priority need category. Most definitely, in Wrexham, we've had a particular issue, as the panel are probably aware, with substance misuse, and a high proportion of our rough-sleepers have got addictions. We've got a particular problem in Wrexham with new psychoactive substances, which is a very complex need to address and makes people very, very vulnerable, and has all sorts of onset problems as a result of that addiction. So, I would say, yes, quite a few of ours would fit that category.

And work we've done—we've gone out. We don't just sit here; we go out. We've done some work with the Salvation Army. But also, within my own constituency, we're finding—. And I know; I'm well aware of the issues that you face, in particular, with the NPS, because we did a study on that, of course. But access to mental health services, detoxification and general support to help with those complex lifestyles that have been adopted, through, you know—. We met people who were years and years, but they—. We watched them on their journey, going through, which was amazing, and there's fantastic work by the Salvation Army here in Cardiff. So, do you have issues with being able to—? What we were told was that, when they do present, and people are reaching out to them saying, 'We can support you', then the support, through the access to the mental health teams and continuous support, was just not there. People were, if you like, deciding to go back, because they just weren't getting access to the mental health support and the detoxification, and you know that's a dangerous process in itself—it needs to be very well advocated. Do you have an issue there?

10:45

I think, sometimes, with some of the rough-sleepers we are trying to help and to get into detox and rehab—we do a profiling system now in Wrexham, so for those rough-sleepers who we know and are engaged with, we have their profile. Our outreach workers meet with them on a daily basis, they come into Crisis Cafe once a week, so we do have that engagement with them. I think the biggest issue that we have found is that when a rough-sleeper presents to us, and says, 'I'm now ready for detox', that place isn't available, and it might take us a week or a fortnight, and then that gives them the time to change their mind. It's having the service at that exact time that you need it—

Yes, we have a massive problem with dual diagnosis of mental health and substance misuse at the same time, and accessing services for people with that sort of complexity is very difficult. I would echo that, but they're not necessarily the sort of people who can meet appointments, and if it's not there there and then when they've got that window when they want to do it, then that's really difficult. So, really, the assertive services, the services that go out and stick to the person, really need to be health services, not just housing services, because, as some of the panel have said, it isn't a housing only problem. There is a housing issue, but it's not a housing problem alone.

I would concur with what Jane and Tracy have said.

In Wrexham, we have got two nurses attached to our outreach team recently employed. That's proved very effective, not just dealing with mental health issues, but other health issues as well. We're piloting that as part of our outreach team, and that is proving invaluable, because there are gaps in mental health services. But it's something that our Supporting People programme is looking at in the planning process of how we can address that gap.

It's council funding at the moment, yes.

We funded two mental health nurses, and we're going to fund one, going forward, from council funding.

Very briefly, this is just the underbelly in terms of the ongoing eviction issues in terms of access to mental health and in terms of addiction services support, I think. This is a massive issue. But just very briefly, this could even be a 'yes' or 'no', there has been comment that registered social landlords are really not housing homeless people, so do you collect data on the homeless people—I'm sure you do—that you house?

Sixty per cent of all general lets in Cardiff go to homeless people—

Rough-sleepers—we don't keep separate figures for them.

Okay, that's what I wanted to know. So, generally, there's no key performance indicator or performance indicator around that, so you wouldn't be able to tell us. Okay, thank you, Chair.

Priority need is widely discussed and this issue. If priority need was abolished, what would be the impact for your authorities?

I think a significant increase in expenditure on homelessness services across the local authority. Bearing in mind we have a supply of temporary accommodation to meet the current level of demand, I would see, in the very short term, until that is increased, a significant increase in expenditure on bed-and-breakfast accommodation. I think those are some of the short term, then in the more medium term, we'll obviously need to look at the temporary accommodation that we would provide. We need to develop more, probably that will be supported, and need to be managed. So, expenditure in those areas would increase quite significantly, I would have thought.

10:50

Yes, expenditure would increase. My personal view is that, if you're homeless, without a roof over your head, or rough-sleeping, how much more priority can you be? So, my feeling is that, yes, we should treat them as priority need. But, yes, it will have an impact. It will have an impact on resources, on the support that we need to develop to make sure people can sustain their tenancies having lived rough on the streets, and the cost of it, and the accommodation in some areas—whether or not it's available. We've got a local lettings agency in Wrexham and we do engage quite well with the private rented sector, and that's another avenue to be able to house people. So, we've used that as quite a positive approach to setting people up in a sustainable tenancy. But my view is, if you're vulnerable, living rough on the street, then you are very much in priority need.

We don't assess priority need before we allow people to go through our single person accommodation gateway, so they can go through there whether they're priority need or not. I think that giving that duty on everybody might increase the numbers coming forward, rather than people trying to resolve their own problems. That would be my concern. Plus, also, I think, there would be quite a lot more assessment and paperwork, which is one of the problems with the new Act, really—the amount of paperwork that needs to be done in the assessment.

So, I think it's really more about vulnerable people, isn't it, making sure we pick up the vulnerable people, whether or not they've had an assessment, and that we treat those vulnerable people in the best way that's most appropriate for them? So, for example, if we think that somebody is particularly vulnerable—they've been rough-sleeping for a while, or for some other reason—we would put them straight into a hostel room if we possibly could, rather than putting them through emergency accommodation that can be a bit more difficult for them to sustain.

Can I just ask on that point? Does everybody have that? In my own constituency it's very difficult to access hostel rooms and things. It's mainly down to bed and breakfasts. Do you have facilities to provide anyone who presents as vulnerable with hostel accommodation?

We do at Wrexham—we have hostel accommodation, and we have direct access accommodation, and we quite often have a surplus of our accommodation with rough-sleepers still living rough on the streets. So, I think there are some barriers around the hostel accommodation, about the rules and regulations if you want to remain as an occupant there, and I think that presents barriers for some of the client groups that we deal with in Wrexham. But, yes, if somebody needs it, there is availability there—for Wrexham anyway.

Just briefly, following up on Julie Francis, under what circumstances would a person on the street not be deemed to be priority need? You're in charge here. You're the local authority. It's your decision as to whether or not somebody's priority need. So, what's the profile of the individual who's deemed not priority need by your local authority?

Well, I think in our position at the moment, every case is individual, like my colleagues have said. I think it's the vulnerabilities in terms of our rough-sleeping. They're so vulnerable in terms of the issues that they've currently got.

I think again it's individual, because there are a couple of rough-sleepers we've got on the streets of Wrexham who we know have already got tenancies. So, it's difficult to say. It is individual. I would say most people who present with complex needs we pick up.

Okay, that is obviously a very exceptional situation, but apart from them, would you—?

I think I probably need to quantify that in that, because of the drug issue, the substance misuse issue that we've got in Wrexham, that is quite a social, cultural thing, and people tend to gravitate towards the street and the people who have got the addictions, and the peer groups that they mix with, really, if you like. So, in terms of that, they prefer to be on the street with the friends, with the culture, rather than being at home. That's very small numbers really, isn't it, but that is the case, unfortunately? So, yes, I would say that, apart from people who've got tenancies, they are priority need, and that's how we treat them.

Very briefly, it was just a comment that Jane Thomas made. You said that, potentially, if there was an end to priority need it would mean that people would not solve their own problems. I wanted to understand what that meant, because, of course, when we had the academics in earlier, they were saying that there should be more of an onus on local authorities to be proactive and not just allow people to come through the doors. Isn't it for all of us to help to solve people's problems, whether it's someone's fault or not, that if they come through the door that they—? You know, I just want to understand why you said that. It just flagged up to me straight away. 

10:55

It's not a matter of fault, and I wasn't really speaking about rough-sleeping, because homelessness is much, much bigger than rough-sleeping, isn't it, and most people resolve their own housing issue, don't they? But if you give the council a duty to do something, then more people may come into the service. I'm not talking about rough-sleepers—that's quite a different issue, isn't it, where we need to be out there on the streets trying to get them into accommodation? I just mean the general population. Obviously, we would help them to secure accommodation, but if we then had to provide everybody with accommodation, that might attract more people in who would otherwise have found private sector housing quite happily on their own. 

A couple of very short questions, and it's partly for the record. In terms of the data that we have about the actual numbers of rough-sleepers, we've got, obviously, the Welsh Government approach and the figures there—the national rough-sleepers count—and then there are other methods and so on. How satisfied are you that we actually have a fairly accurate picture of the actual numbers that fall within this category? 

In Wrexham, it's pretty accurate, given the profiling that we're doing and the work that we're doing with the outreach workers. We can be working with any amount up to about 40. Obviously, the figures are fluid—they're not the same on any one day—but we engage with between 10 and 40 in any one day. So, we're about right, I would suggest, for Wrexham. 

Does the system—? Do you have your own mechanism and your own system of counting and assessing it, or—? 

Yes, we do, and we work quite closely with partner agencies, with the Wallich, with Clwyd Alyn Housing Association and other registered social landlords. We've got the four outreach workers. They all get together. We have provider meetings where individual cases are discussed. We will know on a daily basis whether we have any new guests at Tŷ Nos, the night shelter, the night before, and then we will send the outreach worker to pinpoint that particular rough-sleeper to start some profiling, find out where they've come from, whether they need to go back, whether they need some reconnection help, and then bring them into the office to work with our housing options officers.   

And, obviously, Cardiff is the biggest in the sector—your figures are reasonably accurate. 

We count every week the number of rough-sleepers with the help of our partners and the outreach teams. So, at the end of December it was 79 people. During the actual Welsh Government count, the rough-sleeping was disrupted a little bit by a police operation in the city centre, so it was a bit lower than it actually is. And we count the numbers coming in, so we have a significant number each month of new rough-sleepers, or new to rough-sleeping at the moment because they may have been rough-sleepers previously. So, we think we've got quite a good handle on how many there are at any one time. 

Do you have any comment, then, on the Government's system as opposed to the Wallich-type system in terms of network details? Is there any variance or is there any big issue on numbers? 

I don't think we've got an issue with the numbers, no. 

Just looking at the causes of rough-sleeping—do you think we have a deep enough understanding of why people sleep rough? Do we need more research, and what do you think are the main reasons? 

No, I don't think we have a very good understanding at all and I think research would be useful, but I don't think that research can just be asking particular rough-sleepers because I don't think you would get necessarily terribly accurate information. And it's very difficult to tell what's cause and effect because, obviously, a huge proportion of rough-sleepers have got both mental health and substance misuse issues, but whether that is a cause of their rough-sleeping or a cause of their becoming homeless in the first place is very hard to track through. Obviously, the welfare reform changes have meant the benefits system is not, possibly, as complete a safety net that it used to be—people do fall through it more easily and, obviously, we're very concerned with universal credit coming to Cardiff shortly for full service that that might increase. And although there's really quite a lot of advice across the city to help people, I'm particularly concerned that people won't seek that help. And that is what we find as a landlord, because, obviously, we're also a very large social landlord—often the people that we do end up evicting, even though those evictions have reduced recently, are people that just don't make any contact with us, they don't seek any help or support, and they are often single people. So, I think there does need to be research, but it really needs to dig into those reasons, and not just ask the people who are rough-sleeping why they ended up where they are, because I don't think you'd get very accurate information from that. 

11:00

I think we need to draw a distinction between rough-sleeping and persistent rough-sleeping because some people may sleep rough for a night or two following a relationship breakdown and be helped into accommodation. Really, what we need to focus on is that hard core group of persistent rough-sleepers. I was asking a colleague this yesterday when we were looking at our homelessness review. Public Health Wales have done a lot of research into adverse childhood experiences. Could we actually look at adverse childhood experiences and people's propensity to rough-sleep, and particularly that persistent rough-sleeping group, because I think there's probably quite a close connection there with adverse childhood experiences?

And, from our experience in Powys, local housing allowance is quite a big cause of rough-sleeping, mixed in with, obviously, individual circumstances. But, if you bear in mind that there are three local housing allowance rates across Powys—the Montgomeryshire rate, the Brecon and Radnorshire rate, and the Neath Port Talbot rate down in Ystradgynlais—it's easy to access accommodation, or relatively easy to access accommodation, in a town like Llandrindod Wells—we've got a large supply of private-rented accommodation—not so in Brecon. If people have been brought up in Brecon, and Brecon is their world, they will rather sleep rough than move to another town. And accessing rented accommodation in a town like Brecon, when you're only entitled to £45.90 a week, is virtually impossible, in a town that also has no supply of shared accommodation as well. 

Is there a particular problem in a rural area, or is it similar to the urban—

I think it's exacerbated in a rural area because, if you're in an urban area, you could move a mile or two into a cheaper area of town and access accommodation. That's not available in rural towns. 

Thank you. Obviously, when people start rough-sleeping, I'm sure not many intend to do it permanently, and it often starts as—you know, whether it's domestic violence or losing a job or mental health issues. In regard to regional collaboration, with such small numbers, and, if we look at looked-after children as well in terms of those small numbers, is there any current thinking around opportunities for working collaboratively? We all know the point that you've just made in terms of you want to stay in your centre, but is there any merit in that? And, also, in terms of universal credit around the guarantor issues, in terms of the already known eviction arrears rate—bearing in mind in England that we've just only just dipped our toe into this water—there is very great concern that this is going to exponentially rise and obviously knock on to the rough-sleeping perspective. Is there any thought around (a) that projected rise that's anticipated, and then the whole landscape in Wales around regional collaboration? And is there any current regional approach in terms of local authorities working together with health, not within your own local authorities, and also around substance misuse issues, because the quantities of scale are there in terms of procurement?

In terms of regional working, we are working with Ceredigion in terms of our homelessness strategy, particularly around the issue of assertive outreach work. We would want to explore whether there is an opportunity for us jointly to commission such work, because the small numbers that we have in Powys wouldn't necessarily require us to have a service full-time. But, possibly with Ceredigion, that may be an opportunity for us. 

So, is there currently any type of regional collaboration around this agenda in Wales between local authorities?

I think there is in north Wales. 

Yes. In north Wales, we're aiming to work collaboratively. I think Tracy touched on it before: our homeless strategies are going to be worked on regionally with the common themes and then the more local plan attached to that—so, yes, definitely some collaborative working.

In terms of the new psychoactive substances work that's going on in Wrexham, that's starting to feed out more to regional areas as they experience similar problems. We've hosted a number of inquiries regarding the model of—. We've got what's called a 'gold group' at Wrexham, where they engage with people there and then, as a rough-sleeper, and put them into immediate access to detox and rehabilitation. So, that's a model that we're working on regionally as well.

In terms of—. Just if I might indulge myself and say that one of the causes that I find in Wrexham as well, which doesn't seem to be mentioned a lot, is isolation and loneliness in what people experience—people coming out of care sectors, for example, people coming out of prison, people coming out of even residential settings in some areas, they've been used to lots of people and then we put them into tenancies or we put them into accommodation by themselves and they're just completely lost. There is a need for more support and wraparound services. But I've talked to a few rough-sleepers who have tenancies and have then got back to the street and their reasoning for it is that they want to be with people—they can't manage the tenancy alone. So, whether there could be some more work done around shared tenancies or around other models—I know shared tenancies don't always work, but around other models of how we can target the isolation as well, because, as well as the complex needs, there are things that we overlook that are not so obvious, which I think—. Isolation is a major issue; they gravitate towards groups of people.

11:05

When we talk about rough-sleepers, we tend to imagine this visual presence and we do see—high streets, shop doorways and things—but a question for you, Simon: I've been reading up some recent studies about, in more rural areas, people actually don't go to the high streets, but they will go off into the countryside and set up. They're still sleeping rough; they have no accommodation. I just wondered: have you done any studies as to whether more rural rough-sleeping is off the beaten track, in the countryside?

We haven't, and that's a question we were discussing yesterday, actually, because Powys is so vast. When we do the rough-sleepers count, we obviously focus on the towns, where we've been given intelligence by other agencies. We don't look at isolated farms, for example, and there's plenty of land where people could pitch a tent and live. But I think, if you don't have access to a car, it would be very, very difficult, unless you are going to live off the land, to sustain that lifestyle for any length of time. Public transport: there is very little public transport in rural areas, so how are you going to get your benefits, how are you going to sustain yourself—

And it's a very isolated existence, isn't it? I just wondered if you'd done any work on it—

Okay. Could I ask Wrexham if you're able to provide us with a reason for the apparent decrease in rough-sleeping in Wrexham, with 16 fewer rough-sleepers in last year's count compared to the year before?

I think it is simply down to the assertive outreach that we've done—it's the prevention work that we've done with landlords and with social landlords themselves to try and sustain tenancies in the first place. It's certainly, I think, the engagement of some of our health professionals in outreach work to try and address some of the more complex issues. The housing options teams themselves have taken a much more proactive role in preventing homelessness and preventing people from going onto the street. I think the fact that we've got a lower number, Wrexham would seek to continue to improve on that and lower it even further. That's our goal—to get as many people off the street as we can and into settled, secure communities where they're going to thrive and flourish. So, yes, I think it's a combination of factors. But it's mainly down to the support people are given.

Okay, thanks for that. Could I just ask about prison leavers? We've got the national pathway now. How effective is that? Would you like to see priority need re-established for prison leavers?

Shall I talk about the pathway first? Priority need is a different issue, I think. But we are having significant problems with the pathway, and possibly it's something that we should, ourselves, have put more work into. In quarter three alone, we had 23 people who started sleeping rough following a release from prison, so that's in one quarter alone, and, 10 of them, we had no previous information from the prison about. So, I think that what is happening is the prison leaver is saying that they have somewhere to go to the prison, so they're not doing that engagement work, and yet, when they get home, or wherever they thought they were going to be housed, it's not happening.

Eight that were referred from prison, so we were expecting, didn't come in, didn't attend the housing options centre, and five did attend but soon disengaged with services. And we know that, of those 23, 10 are still sleeping rough. They may have been sleeping rough before they went into prison, it has to be said, because, obviously, because of the complex needs of the clients, it can be very difficult. But I think there is an awful lot more that we could do to join up services between homelessness and the prisons. I think one of the problems is that Cardiff prison is very short stay, so it has limited time to work with them, but there certainly needs to be more delving into whether the prisoner has actually got somewhere to go, rather than just accepting their word.

11:10

I think our experience matches Jane's in Cardiff. Obviously, the scale is slightly different. Of the seven rough-sleepers that I spoke about, only one of those his last accommodation had been a prison institution. The pathway suggests that a local authority would get three months' notice of a prisoner's release. From what colleagues have told me, that tends to be more like two weeks, and sometimes not at all.

We find that the prisoner pathway is an excellent piece of legislation that is not being used to a great effect. We have a regional prison liaison officer based in Wrexham, and she works for the other four local authorities, visiting HMP Berwyn and Styal Prison, and it's her role to be that link for the local authorities and prison services. And, just to echo what you were saying there, very often the referrals are coming through when an offender is due for release in two weeks. Her feedback to us is that, had she had that information and the referrals when she should have had them, we would have had far more placements ready and available when the offenders are due to be released.

Okay. Well, that's very useful, practical information. We do need to move on, I'm afraid. We haven't got much time left. Gareth Bennett.

Thanks. We might have covered a lot of this, but, if there's any extra stuff you want to add, what services do you offer to rough-sleepers in your council areas, and how effective are they at tackling the problem of rough-sleeping? I don't know if you want to go first.

Don't go over what you've already said, but if there's anything additional you'd like to highlight—.

Obviously, we've already talked about the outreach, so I won't talk about that, but we have got a considerable amount of hostel accommodation. We've got more than 200 places in our single-person hostels, and that's five different hostels; it's not all in the same hostel. I think we're up to—. We always have 45 emergency places. We have another 50 emergency places during cold weather. So, there is a huge amount of resource going into rough-sleeping. There's also significant supported accommodation in the city. We've got 390 places of supported accommodation, so that's move-on from hostel into supported accommodation that helps with mental health and substance misuse, but also 189 spaces for young people specifically, with a specific young person's gateway and a young persons' dedicated hostel.

In terms of how successful they are, we are piloting a range of different services because we do recognise that, although we have these services, the clients are going around in a loop, and are often evicted and then rehoused in services. What we do need is more intensive support services in order to try and keep them in the accommodation, so we are piloting a range of innovative projects, including housing first and the intensive support projects that I talked about earlier, a specialist hostel for vulnerable women, and in particular for sex workers, who are in the wrong type of accommodation. So, we are piloting a wide range of schemes with funding that we managed to free up from Supporting People by recommissioning services.

But we still have a huge issue with people being evicted from services and just going through that process again and again. I think we had 203 service users evicted up to December. Some of those—23 had multiple evictions. So, obviously, the services are not keeping people in there in the way that we would really want them to, and that's something I'm exploring with our providers of services. Some people have had up to 36 placements within accommodation and have lost them. So, I think really our focus is now on trying to provide that support, working on some of the ACEs and the psychologically informed provision to try and grow those services to be more supportive and have far fewer evictions from services.

11:15

In Powys, I suppose we have the benefit of small communities, and rough-sleepers are quite visible in those small communities and we get to hear about it very, very quickly, either from members of the community, ward councillors, StreetLink. We have a range of generic services, so we do have temporary accommodation across the county in all of the main towns, with the exception of Brecon at the moment. So, we will place people into the temporary accommodation. We are looking at assertive outreach, but actually it's more than just the outreach; it is the assertive support to ensure that people can remain in the accommodation that they are placed into, so that they can sustain their tenancies, rather than just picking them up off the street. I think that's probably about it. We are looking at housing first as well.

Yes. In Wrexham, we have very similar services. We work very closely with the Wallich. They do an excellent project in Wrexham whereby they don't just kind of sustain people—they work on things to help them flourish. We've got another service, ARCH, which we work with quite closely. We've got the assertive outreach along with the health interventions for that. We've got the gold group that I've mentioned for the substance misuse work that we're doing. We have the crisis cafe, which is very successful. We find that informal settings where people can come and have a drink and a talk and something hot to eat is a better way to engage with people and to get them to engage with services, so we tend to focus on those. We're looking at the housing first model. We've still got estate offices in our local areas for the local authority, which operate an open-door policy for anybody to seek advice from. We operate Soup Dragon and we are currently working with Housing Justice Cymru to look at a church-based day shelter for rough-sleepers to be able to access. We've also got the Salvation Army and other people working within, and we are looking at providing some pods for move-on accommodation for rough-sleeping with wraparound support to enable people to move on to sustainable accommodation.

Thanks. With the hostels—Jane, you were mentioning hostels—how effective do you think they are at meeting the complex needs of rough-sleepers?

They do have a lot of success and we monitor the positive outcomes. I think that they do have quite a lot of success, but the complexity of the client group means that a lot of people do fall out of services, particularly around the drug spice, which is causing a particular problem at the moment that is very difficult for the providers to deal with. I know we had one person who came through our complex needs project who had both heroin and spice addiction. They did manage to get him onto a methadone script, but the spice use was so heavy that they just could not keep him in the hostel for the sake of the other residents. With these sorts of needs, it really isn't about the accommodation; it really is about the support and finding the right thing that would work for that individual. We are working with Public Health Wales on the ACEs issue and we've been trying to find some learning from that.

One of the things is that, when a provider evicts, to have a reflective approach and to document what has gone wrong, what has gone right with that person, because they might have moved them on—for example, that person did go on to methadone—but they haven't moved them all the way. So, to have that learning of what worked well and what didn't work well, and then pass that to the provider the next time they come into the service, so that we've got more of that learning of what works for that particular individual, and focus the support on their needs. Because, obviously, a lot of these people do come in with trauma, and they do need specialist services. So, on the whole, I think they're doing a good job, but we just need to focus more on those very, very complex individuals.

11:20

I think the persistent rough-sleepers that we're talking about are a very small group of people, but actually they need significant multi-agency intervention if you're going to turn those lives around. It isn't just housing intervention; it is health, mental health, adult social care and possibly children's services intervention. There needs to be a wraparound solution.

I'd like to add to that, just to say, if we could do one thing differently, it would be to get more assertive mental health and substance misuse services onto the streets.

Yes, that's what I want to get on to. Obviously, one third of the people seen in Cardiff actually aren't from Cardiff. Could we have some idea of what your approach is to those people without that local connection? Because there is a danger, isn't there, that the services that we provide in Cardiff act as a magnet. So, I just wondered if you could tell us a bit, from your perspective, before we get that of your colleagues.

Yes, certainly. There's a difference between people coming into the housing options centre and then people who are sleeping rough. So, if people come into the housing options centre, they are referred. They are given advice and information. So, if they wanted to access the private rented sector, we would give them the same information that we'd give to anybody else. But if they want more assistance than that, we will try to reconnect them with their home local authority. We work with the Salvation Army to do that—fairly successfully—either to reconnect them with their family, which is obviously ideal, or to reconnect them with the local authority.

In terms of the people sleeping rough, specifically, or particularly any vulnerable people, we will occasionally give a waiver. So, we will say, 'We will allow people into services if they have particular vulnerabilities', or if they really don't have a very close local connection to anywhere else, which does happen as well. So we will allow those people into services. But otherwise we are trying to reconnect them to their local authority.

Through the Welsh Government grant funding, we have funded some bonds and rent in advance for people from out of county to try and assist them to access the private rented sector, preferably not in Cardiff because we have got quite a lot of homelessness in Cardiff anyway, but not necessarily in the local authority that they came from. We've been doing that on a trial basis this year to give more support to people with no local connection. But, otherwise, we really do try to connect them.

We did have a major problem with European Economic Area nationals, but that has reduced quite significantly now. There are only one or two. And, again, we worked with the Salvation Army to either try and reconnect them or to get them into work because, often, they were falling into homelessness because they weren't in work and therefore couldn't access benefits. A small amount of help to get them back into work would resolve their problem.

Obviously, there are services in Cardiff, and it does attract people in—not only the services, but the ability to beg and make a huge amount of money from begging as well. So, it is a major issue, and we cannot accept all of those homeless people coming into Cardiff. It would be extremely difficult for us to accept them all because we haven't got the move-on accommodation to get people out of the hostels at the end. So, although we do take—I think it's probably about a third of the people who come through with specific needs, we will give them a waiver, but we cannot possibly do that for everybody.

How much burden sharing goes on? If you've got people coming from other local authorities, do you then—? If the person refuses to go back—maybe there's been a violent scenario that's forced them to come to another place—do you then get financial support from the local authority that has the duty? How does that work?

No. However, for domestic abuse, we're part of Refuges Online, so we do share accommodation across Wales for domestic abuse victims.

11:25

Okay. So, the person fleeing domestic abuse from Powys, you might accommodate them in Cardiff, but the bill would be picked up by Powys. Is that right?

No. It's a reciprocal arrangement. So, we might put people from out of Cardiff into a refuge for domestic abuse, but other councils then pick up Cardiff people when they need to move further away.

The criticism is that the reconnection service isn't effective, because people are given a ticket back to wherever, and then, there's no effective connection. So, I just wondered what your experience is, because we'll be sending them back to Powys, possibly, conceivably—

Can I just say, we don't just give them a ticket? We would never just do that.

We would contact the local authority and ensure that they would accept them before we sent them back.

We haven't, actually. I was chatting to a colleague yesterday, and we haven't had new referrals back from Cardiff. As Jane was saying, Powys isn't one of the authorities that they receive huge numbers of people from.

We have tried to reconnect a difficult rough-sleeper with his mother somewhere in England, and that lasted a couple of weeks and then broke down, and he returned to the area. So, it didn't involve the local authority in England, it involved contact with his family.

One of the issues we found when the Chair and I visited Solas in Newport was that these people with adverse childhood experiences, the only person they've got to love them is their dog. So, if hostels don't accept dogs, then they're not going to go into a hostel. Solas do take dogs—they had nine dogs on the day we visited. What thought has been given to, I'm afraid what is a fact of life for some people with very complex mental health needs?

We do have hostel places for dogs. I was in Tŷ Gobaith and there were dogs there, recently. We do that. And couples were always a problem, as well, and we've now got a lot more provision for couples who want to stay together. That was previously quite a problem. But, yes, we certainly cater for dogs.

In terms of allowing dogs in temporary accommodation, I'd have to check that and get back to you.

Yes, it's the same for Wrexham—I think we'd have to check it. We do reconnect people where we think they will flourish from going back to be reconnected. However, if somebody presents in the situation that you've said in terms of domestic violence or reasons why they can't return to their area, we do have reciprocal arrangements with our neighbouring authorities that we will foot the bill, if you like, and then they will do the same when there's a case that we need to present to them. We have quite good links with that in terms of we wouldn't just get a ticket; there would be conversations about background and whether that person would flourish going back to where they're from, really.

Okay. I think we have to move on, because we're almost at the end of our allotted time. Perhaps you might send the committee a note in terms of reconnection, because I think there is an issue as to the level of joining up between the authority that's referring somebody on for reconnection and the authority receiving the person, and whether the level of support is sufficient to make it a success. And, also, whether people are sleeping rough because they do not wish to be reconnected and would rather sleep rough than be reconnected. So, if you've got any information on that, it would be very useful.

In the small amount of time available to us, I wonder if Bethan Jenkins might address some of the questions, not the ones that have previously been covered, but others.

I would just ask a brief question with regard to how you use your powers in relation to public protection spaces or dispersal powers, working with the police. Much of what we've discussed, and why we're having this inquiry, is because we've had concerns about how, potentially, some local authorities have been moving people on. Shelter has said, 'Well, if you're going to move people on, you need to have the support services in place for them to go to.' I have personally witnessed police moving a homeless person on outside a shop in Cardiff, and it wasn't hostile, but he had to move everything from that shop window. How are you using those powers? Are you using them sparingly? If you haven't got time to answer it now, send us a note on why you use them, how you use them. Is it to do with this sort of aggressive—or not aggressive begging but the predominance of begging that you're trying to alleviate, or is it other issues that you have, potentially? 

11:30

It's not very widely used in Wrexham. It's not something that—. We've used it, with the police, obviously, on maybe one or two occasions, because we had individuals who were posing a risk to the public. There was quite a huge outcry—it was at the time when NPS use was at its worst, and it was felt that that was the only way we could tackle those particular individuals. It's not something that we widely use at all in Wrexham.

To my knowledge, it's not been used in Powys. I would also just like to say that there are times when a concern about rough-sleeping from people is based on the perception of people who are begging. Just because people are begging doesn't mean they are rough-sleeping. They may have accommodation. It may not be settled or permanent or secure accommodation, but, quite often, they're not rough-sleeping.

I think that has a lot to do with benefit sanctions, as well as substance misuse issues.

I'd second that. A lot of people begging are not homeless at all. We have found that that is definitely the case—some of the people we've rehoused ourselves. We don't use public protection orders. I think the only ones we've got are around parks and people camping in parks—we've got some powers there. Generally, the police have been taking action, but it's supposed to be about aggressive begging. They have been moving people on for that purpose, but they've not been using public protection order powers, as I understand. We're trying to develop a pathway with the police so that they've got a very clear way to refer into services when they do intervene, so that they can refer people to The Big Issue, so that they can sell The Big Issue instead of begging, and that they know exactly where to refer to get them into housing services. We're developing a written protocol with them on the pathway that they should follow.

I'm afraid we haven't got any further time, but we will write to you with a request for some further responses to particular points. We might include in that, I think, whether there are any diversionary giving schemes being developed or thought about in terms of street begging. Thank you very much indeed for coming along to give evidence this morning. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy. Thank you very much.

11:35
4. Ymchwiliad i Gysgu ar y Stryd yng Nghymru: Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 3
4. Inquiry into Rough-sleeping in Wales: Evidence Session 3

Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for coming in today.

We now move on to our third evidence session with regard to the committee's inquiry into rough-sleeping in Wales. I'm very pleased to welcome Yvonne Connolly, regional manager for Wales and the south west for the Salvation Army, Richard Edwards, chief executive of the Huggard Centre, Frances Beecher, chief executive of Llamau, and Antony Kendall, director of operations for the Wallich.

Thank you all very much for coming in today to give evidence. Perhaps I might begin the questioning by asking about the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. How effective do you think it has been in terms of helping tackle rough-sleeping in Wales?

I think the housing Act was very, very positive. It's legislation that is not just UK-wide leading legislation; international countries are looking at it. But I don't think that the legislation actually had rough-sleeping in its particular remit. So, whilst I think the housing Act is very positive and has diverted many families and many people away from homelessness, which is absolutely to be commended, I think, to cover intervention and what is needed on rough-sleeping, it would have to be expanded a little bit. I don't know if anybody—

Yes, I'd back that up, really. There's been a clear focus on changing the Act to prevent homelessness, and there's been some clear evidence to show that's been very successful. But, obviously, with the rise in rough-sleeping levels, we've still got people falling through the net. I would agree that the focus of the Act needs to be working more for people who are becoming homeless or are already homeless. I think section 68, where local authorities could be providing accommodation while further investigation is taking place into an applicant's homelessness eligibility and possible priority need—I'm not sure whether that is being applied consistently across Wales.

We would echo that in terms of the demographics that it has supported. When we look at some of our community-based services or floating support services in terms of working in a preventative way, the vast majority of that is families and females who are experiencing that level of prevention, and it is working for that demographic. I think our floating support service now has over 70 per cent female lead on support in terms of the client group. Yet you look at some of the outreach services and the front-line services, and that goes 360, where, actually, that lead then becomes, generally, single males. There's a growing female population. But single homeless people in particular are those that I think that we need to target in terms of looking at how a new wave of preventative work can be undertaken.

I would agree with all of that, but I would also go on to say that the issues around homelessness and Part 2 of the Housing (Wales) Act 2014—obviously, there's a huge impact there, but I think rough-sleeping is almost like a separate issue in itself when we're looking at homelessness. I think that the tradition of looking at a lack of access to accommodation as having a causal link with rough-sleeping needs to be challenged, because the vast majority of people that we're working with who are rough-sleeping have got access to accommodation, or have been offered access to accommodation, but they're unable to sustain and take up that accommodation. That is something that homelessness legislation will find it quite difficult to tackle, whereas, in fact, we need to be looking at the issues that cause the rough-sleeping in the first place. It's not a lack of access to accommodation, it is issues around substance misuse, mental health, institutionalisation, poor physical health, and learning difficulties as well. They're the most significant issues that are preventing people from actually accessing and taking up accommodation at the moment.  

11:40

But I would interject and say that we have to acknowledge there is a lack of suitable accommodation. That's the issue. As I say, we keep repeating that rough-sleeping and homelessness isn't just about housing. It's actually somewhere safe that somebody feels safe to stay. Currently, the model that we've most got doesn't translate for the majority of entrenched rough-sleeping. 

I think I'd also add that there's been some concern around the figures around non co-operation. I'd possibly question whether these people have not co-operated or whether the way that the advice and assistance has been offered hasn't met that individual's needs. So, when people do approach housing options with complex needs, I think there needs to be a very person-centred approach to make sure that those needs are met and the right advice and assistance is offered in a way that they can access it. 

Antony, in your evidence you said that inappropriate decisions were being made by local authorities when assessing vulnerability and priority need. Would you like to take this opportunity to expand a little on that?  

Sure. I think it's more a case of—. First of all, I think the whole concept of comparing an ordinary person who becomes homeless—. I think, as soon as someone becomes homeless and lives on the street, I would say they become inherently vulnerable. I think the fact that people are compared against someone who is already vulnerable, I think, puts them at a distinct disadvantage in the first place. I think the actual guidance around vulnerability, in terms of identifying someone who is ordinary and then someone who becomes street homeless—I think that's all very subjective. We talk about someone who experiences more harm. Again, 'more' is a very subjective phrase as well. So, my concern is that the guidance is subjective and also that it just puts people who end up on the street at a disadvantage, because I would say nearly everyone who ends up on the street is vulnerable.     

Okay, and in your experience are rough-sleepers generally found to be in priority need and given interim accommodation, or not?  

I would say the majority are not, frankly, priority need. But I need to add, obviously, that those who are found to be priority need shouldn't end up on the street—they should be given accommodation. So, I guess there is a lack of information from our perspective there, possibly, in terms of the people who would have ended up on the street, but, obviously, are considered priority need. 

I'd echo that as well. I think there's a difference as well in those who are rough-sleeping and who are supported through that process, and those who aren't. Actually, what we found with some of our services is, people understanding their rights and understanding their past experiences and what that may or may not entitle them to—is it necessarily always presented in a way that they understand or that they appreciate? So, actually, we have found that there's a real difference in experience if some of our support services and our outreach services work through that process with people who experience rough-sleeping, and work through it with them at their pace, as opposed to perhaps trying to complete a very lengthy and difficult process in a very short, stringent time frame. 

Okay, and could I just ask, in your view, should priority need be abolished? 

I think everyone who hasn't got a house is in priority need. So, as I say, I think there is a reasonable call to abolish priority need. I would argue, however, that there are—. I tend to agree with some of the academics that there are particular groups that—. So, I'm saying, on one hand—but, you know, as I say, prisoners are a very, very difficult group. And I also think that children, under the law, should not be treated in the same way as adults. So, we have 16 and 17-year-olds who are currently priority need. Whether you'd call it priority need if we removed priority need, I still think they need to be treated as children. I think it's still pretty outrageous that we're expecting 16 and 17-year-olds to go through the same system that adults are going through. But I can see the merit of removing priority need, particularly when everybody is vulnerable. 

11:45

Yes, I'd agree. I think abolishing priority need should be a long-term goal. I think it requires its own impact assessment. The reality of getting rid of priority need needs a lot of work to make the situation workable. I think if we did it straight off, we would be in dire straits, it wouldn't work, but as a long-term goal, I think it's something that we should explore further. 

I agree with that. I think it's something that needs to be explored, but I don't think it's a silver bullet that's going to address rough-sleeping. I don't think it's going to have a significant impact on the number of people that are rough-sleeping through that change, because I don't, as I said before, think it's about access to accommodation. 

I would agree. I think one of the other things for me is that, sometimes, perhaps having these stringent criteria actually encourages people to become something, to actually be able to access something. So, we see this sometimes with some of the other statutory services, where you've got entry points and assessment points almost based on what point of crisis you need to be at, as opposed to actually how we can prevent you reaching that crisis by accessing those services. So, I think there's some consideration around that to begin with: what priority need actually means for people. 

Okay. Well, thanks very much for that. Before we move on to other matters, I think there may be some supplementaries on the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 and its effectiveness. Rhianon. 

Thank you. Picking up from what a number of you have said earlier, there is this debate, and that's dynamic, in regard to what is the biggest priority. Is it, as the Wallich in my own constituency said to me when I visited them, the fact that there is no move-on, or not enough move-on accommodation, or there is not enough private rented sector accommodation, or is it the underbelly, which is the lack of support in terms of mental health and in terms of substance misuse? Is there any synergy amongst you in regard to those two major points? Are they equally important, or is one more than another?

I think one of the biggest challenges we face is that the majority of people that are ending up sleeping rough are presenting with substance misuse and mental health problems. We need to provide more specialist services to meet those needs. We don't have enough of them, and that's why people are being placed in projects that don't meet their needs, and subsequently people fail. So, people do get evicted because they're being inappropriately placed, essentially being set up to fail. So, we do need a lot more investment in services that are very specialist. I'd like to see more services that do commission the psychotherapeutic side of delivery. Currently, Supporting People doesn't fund that as an eligible activity. So, I think if we had a range of services, a lot more services to meet the growing demand of very complex needs, obviously then, we need move-on accommodation. So, I think we can actually make really good progress with people with complex needs, but it takes time, and it takes money and it takes resources. And I think if we've got all those three factors, we can make good progress in helping people move on, and then, obviously, we need that move-on accommodation to follow.

In the last few years, we've seen a dramatic increase in the complexity of the issues that people are experiencing as they're rough-sleeping. And that becomes a circularity, because, particularly around substance misuse, if you have a chronic substance misuse issue, you have to spend more time on the street in order to raise the money to fuel that. So, it's finding a way of breaking that cycle that is really, really difficult. We've seen an increase in poly drug use. We've seen a huge increase over the last six months in the use of new psychoactive substances, which has further reduced our ability to engage with individuals because the windows of opportunity for engagement reduce quite dramatically when people are taking new psychoactive substances. And what we're finding at the moment is that getting people to engage with services is very, very problematic. So, it's those low-threshold services, that low-threshold intervention, where resources need to be focused at the moment. 

Where we're looking at move-on accommodation, I agree there needs to be more accessible and affordable accommodation, because that is really, really important. But within the supported housing sector within Cardiff at the moment, we're seeing a growing number of vacancies because of the complexity of the needs of the individuals that are in front-line services. So, all of the emergency accommodation at the moment is dealing with people with very complex needs and there's a long delay to get people into hostel provision because there aren't enough hostel spaces to deal with people with those complex needs. Once people are in hostel accommodation, it's very, very difficult to stabilise somebody to a point where they then hold down a tenancy in the community, and that's where the vacancies are being held at the moment—where there are tenancies out in the community. So, it is about front-loading that system at the moment.

11:50

I think one of the issues that we've got is that we are holding a problem. So, we’re bringing somebody into temporary accommodation, into a hostel environment, which is not geared up or set up for people to start the process of recovery, and then, once that’s over, we want them to move into move-on accommodation. We're missing a journey; we're missing steps that allow people to get off the streets and to start their journey. So, I don’t believe that it's the move-on accommodation; I think it's actually the integration of services—that is a major issue for us, because, again—. And I'm sorry, but I will never agree that hostels are the best place for vulnerable people. We're a little bit of an anathema; we never run hostels, we never will run hostels and we will deliberately not contract for hostels because they're not the right places for vulnerable people. But I do feel that the integration of health and mental health services and drug and alcohol—that's a lack of integration and it's beyond the gift of a third sector organisation to insist on that. That is something that I think is within the gift of Welsh Government, both to insist, for example, under law that there is a requirement for support, and to insist that services, when somebody is identified, have to integrate. It's beyond our power, and very often then we are left having—. The people don't fail; we fail the people, because we can't bring in those other services, and that, to me, is absolutely crucial.

I have a very, very short one just to do with what Antony Kendall said in relation to the fact that the majority were not found to be priority need in your view. We heard contrary evidence from Wrexham, where they said that if people were identified, then usually rough-sleepers would come into that category. So, I'm wondering if we need to look at his. How is one council saying that they are treated as a priority and you're saying that, really, the majority are not?

I guess I'm referring to five areas where we operate outreach services. So, I guess that Wrexham could be an anomaly there. Sometimes we do find that people are given priority need status and they are placed in accommodation, but because of their needs, they sometimes fail or the service fails them and subsequently they get evicted. So, they might have had priority need status originally, but then end up back on the streets.

Thank you. Before I go on to this in particular, just one point: we've heard quite widely that it's not just about housing, but it is about the integrated services of mental health and substance misuse and detoxification and things like that. As service providers, it must be very frustrating when you can see that gap in provision. How do you make those representations, other than—? Yes, we've given you that opportunity today, but generally in your everyday work, it must be just so difficult, when you can see—. How do you get your message to Welsh Government as well as us doing it through this?

Just to give you one example: in my organisation, we're increasingly frustrated at our inability to get young people into mental health services. We're constantly being told that it was a dual diagnosis and that it was drug psychosis or they didn't want to label a young person at 17. The only way that we actually came about it was to run a four-year—the only research of its type in the whole of the UK into the mental health of young homeless people. Once we managed to get the jargon demystified to get health to understand and to allow us to do our own assessments, it started to break down that barrier. But what has been very difficult, despite talking to the then health Minister, is getting that protocol rolled out, because they don't have to listen to us. So, it worked in an individual organisation, and it has significantly helped to ensure that young people get the services when they want, because we're talking the same language, and we now have a level of assessment that they have to accept, but we couldn't get it rolled out. I think that's obviously sometimes very, very difficult.

11:55

The reason I'm pressing on this is that health is the biggest spend here, and, for me, if there's a gap in provision, then without the health Minister blaming the health board, who picks up this responsibility? 

I think we've struggled, over the years, with the vulnerable groups health action plans. It's been a good bit of work that's not really had the weight behind it to deliver. So, I think it's being raised again in the rough-sleepers action plan, and I'm hoping that that will give some weight to bring the services we do need from health to get involved with our clients.

I suppose the question that's down for me to ask you is putting the emphasis on local authorities, because the question is: could you expand on your evidence that inappropriate decisions are being made by local authorities when assessing vulnerability and priority need, and, if so, how should this be addressed? But, for me, it's a bigger issue than just local authorities. I'd like to see that emphasis from our health boards, from Government down and from you people working on the front line up, and it's getting that message loud and clear to join up.

I think it goes without saying that, actually, when you can access those services, a lot of the front-line workers in those services are second to none, and, you know, their commitment and their engagement, it does sometimes go unrecognised, and I think, from a Salvation Army point of view, we've very strong relationships. Without a shadow of a doubt, there are issues—major issues—with getting access to those. As I spoke about earlier, for me it's around when you have assessment criteria, that it's trying to measure you at how bad you need to get before we can actually support you and engage, and that is very difficult. One of the things some of our services here will have done is that we've actually seen the gaps between drug and alcohol work and mental health, and actually looked at our workforce, and how we can support those statutory services. It's not our place to replace them, but, actually, I think some of us at the front line can understand how we can support better people to access services, and, indeed, those services to better understand our client group, because there is a void in understanding there. So, I think the message for us as well is: how do we collectively work on this? It is a difficult area, and it's one, funding-wise, that there's probably not an immediate solution for. But I definitely think, for us, as a sector, we've been very proactive in terms of seeing gaps and working together on how we respond to them. I think, as Fran has said, that actually some sort of a statutory or procedural roll-out with that would actually really support us in being able to invest. As national providers, around here, we've organisationally invested in where those gaps are, to secure our client group and to ensure that their safety and their needs are met. As an organisation that's very much committed, morally and socially, to where we work, that investment is there to be given. It's just ensuring that, actually, we can have something more collective to—

I know, but we're drilling down now to the issues, aren't we? My final point: we've been told, previously, that this is a very expensive resource that's needed to deal with these complex individuals who present. Surely, if we could get in sooner with the mental health access, with the support that's needed, with the detoxification and all that, then, ultimately, we'd be saving resources, wouldn't we?

Yes. And as I say, it is that prevention, but it's actually recognising that there are certain categories of people who are more at risk to be becoming rough-sleepers. So, we need to be targeting far earlier. As I say, it's fine having a rough-sleeping strategy, but you need to link it. It needs to be linked in to what prevention could be done at the earlier stages. Because, otherwise, all we're doing is dealing with the visible problem, and we're not doing anything to address what's coming behind.

Exactly. And you know, as I say, with the cuts in funding, and with the idea—the horrendous idea, by the way—of a supergrant, you are risking interventions and you will see things really escalate.

12:00

Okay, thanks for that. We do need to move on. We do need to be disciplined. We haven't got endless time. Jenny on scale.

Yes. The statistics: you all agree that the snapshots that we do are snapshots and that they obviously don't capture the problem, except on that particular day, possibly. So, rather than go into that, I'd rather examine some of the barriers to improving it without having to throw a lot more resources at it that we could be using on service delivery. So, the Wallich: you mentioned that some church groups who deliver emergency accommodation don't actually record any data. What would be the barrier to them joining in SHIN?

No barrier at all. That's actually one of the objectives of the network.

Okay, so that's relatively easy to resolve. Why is it not possible to join up the information you all collect through your outreach with that of the local authorities to have the best possible snapshot? It's never going to be 100 per cent accurate. You wanted to come in.

I think there are barriers across different organisations to sharing that information, and some of the church groups have ideological barriers about sharing information with statutory and other charitable sectors. So, whilst there are no physical reasons why they can't be shared, traditionally it's been quite difficult to get information shared with other providers. We are passing—within our services, because we run an open access day centre and we take details of everybody who accesses the centre and where they spent the night before, we can build up quite a detailed picture of the numbers of rough-sleepers and their pattern, and some of those people may have accommodation but still slept rough, and we can record that as well—. And we do pass that information on to the local authority, but there are obviously issues around data protection, and we don't get detailed information back; we get generalised information back.

So, in terms of working on individual cases and sharing information across services on the interventions that we're working on with particular individuals within the city, we're not very good at the moment at sharing those statistics to look at who's working with who and how those interventions are actually working. So, there could be some real improvements there in terms of the information sharing, but we've got to get over the hurdle of perceived data protection issues in order to provide that wraparound service.

And I think there are some barriers. To give you an example with young people, many young people come through once they reach the eyes of statutory services, and then you look and realise that they've been rough-sleeping off and on for about 12 or 18 months. They don't get included in those figures. So, I'm not as confident as others as to the veracity of the figures. I think they give us a good idea and I certainly think they give us a good idea of trends, but if we actually want to look at the level of rough-sleeping, which is not just on the streets but a slightly wider definition, multiply it by more than tens.

I feel it would be far better to have a good idea of the issue and the size of the problem so that we can actually deal with it, and some of the figures that are coming out are local authority figures of people who manage to get to the services. Obviously, with rough-sleeping, they're people who haven't got to the services but there are a heck of a lot more people who haven't got to the services yet, and I think they would give us an idea. It's not beyond our capacity, but it's who does that.

Okay. Obviously, it means resources that we aren't otherwise using for delivering support mechanisms, so it's really how significant a barrier it is to providing appropriate services, whether this is something where we just recognise that the statistics are an underestimate—unless you think there's double counting going on.

I think it's recognised that it's a starting point and, as you said, a snapshot. I think the vast majority of us actually operating outreach services are probably more aware in terms of the volume of people and the need, because obviously the stats are counting heads, so to speak, but actually in terms of the real understanding of what that equates to, what that looks like and what their needs are in terms of support, I would have said that we would have had that information from an outreach point of view much more at hand and we're much more engaged to receive and understand that information.

Okay, so long as we're listening to you when we're saying that this is not capturing the level of need, is it sufficient just to leave it there and just get on with trying to improve the way we meet need?

12:05

I wouldn't have said it was sufficient to leave it. I think, as I said, it's a starting point and we do need to scope collectively, as a sector, how we respond to that and make sure that that data's more robust and easily understood.

I don't know if you wanted to ask the Wallich in particular, Jenny, about their involvement.

Well, I think, if—. Do you agree with what the others have said, or do you think we need to have a more robust focus on ensuring we've got better data?

And I think, particularly, Richard, in terms of the street homeless information network and to what extent that's a solution to these issues.

Sure. I would agree that the Welsh Government data accurately reflects an upward trend, and I think that's as far as I would go in terms of my confidence in that data. The data we gather from our five outreach teams has been accurate to say how many people are actually seen throughout the year, and that's the approach that the SHIN, the street homeless information network, is trying to achieve. Obviously, the limitation to that very narrow account that we currently have can be very misleading, and the data that we've gathered through our continuing monitoring approach from the five outreach teams we operate does give a much more accurate picture of how many people have been sleeping rough throughout the whole year. So, my view is that a national system that can be used by as many organisations as possible, which not just counts people but actually identifies the reasons why people became homeless, whether there was anything that could have been done to prevent that person becoming homeless, and also the barriers to actually ending and reducing that length of time people are homeless. I think there's really key data there that we can gather to get a much more robust picture of the extent of homelessness across Wales.

Okay. So, who's resisting adopting this system, because, obviously, it's really important to understand the failure of services that prevented them becoming homeless?

Who's resisting adopting this system?

I'm not aware of anyone that's resisting it so far. It's in its infancy so far. Obviously, we're going to be out there approaching current providers already working with rough-sleepers to ask them to adopt or commit to using that system. We'll also be going out there trying to develop a wider network of responding teams across the sort of more rural areas of Wales. That could be working with faith groups or developing volunteers who actually work for the Wallich. So, currently I'm not aware of any particular resistance, but I do understand that organisations won't necessarily be pleased with being asked to use another system.

Do you think that we've got a proper understanding of the causes of rough-sleeping, and do you have any particular views about specific causes for the current perceived increase in the numbers?

Well, I would start by saying that, although there's no really robust sort of research into welfare reform, I think we're all probably in agreement that it's very likely going to be a big factor in it. My concern is that the impact of universal credit is yet to be felt in Wales fully, so I think it could even be about to get much worse. I would say the second biggest factor is the increasing levels of substance misuse, mental health and co-occurring issues, and I think that is making it very difficult for usual services to meet the need in what used to be much simpler. I think 10 or 15 years ago, I would say that the extent of substance misuse and mental health was around 30 to 40 per cent of each and not necessarily co-occurring. These days, I would say it's more up towards 80 to 90 per cent of the people we're working with on the streets.

I'd agree with that, but I would say that this isn't new. We saw a massive rise in homelessness around 1992, and we saw a massive rise in homelessness around 1982, both linked with cuts and austerity. So, I think it behoves us, as we're going into times of austerity, to recognise this. The sector has been sort of saying, over the last five to seven years, 'Things are getting worse, they're going to get more difficult.' So, as you see public services being cut, safety nets being cut open, more vulnerable people are falling through the nets.

The difficulty I have is saying about the causes of rough-sleeping, because every single person you speak to on the street has a different story. The commonality is their lack of resources, both mentally and physically, and networks of families. So, even with the substance misuse issues, you see people who are managing a level of high degrees of substance misuse because they have those networks around them. For me, the biggest issue, as a society, is that we have shrunk people's ability to—families can't take somebody in because they can't pay the bedroom tax, they're in smaller accommodation. Eighteen to 21-year-olds, through universal credit, don't have the right for housing benefit to be paid through their universal credit, unless they prove they're exempt, and by proving they're exempt, they make themselves vulnerable to sexual and other levels of exploitation. So, I think we have to acknowledge that we are causing, as a society—and when I say 'we' I put it firmly back in London—a situation, and I think we have to be pushing that. Yes, we've got to address the complex needs, and, yes, we've got to address the needs of the people who are suffering at this moment in time, but I really think, as a foundation, we've got to look at those issues and take those issues seriously.

12:10

I would agree with that, but, again, I think the three major issues around the recent increase in rough-sleepers are around welfare reforms. We know that more and more people are being sanctioned by the benefits system, and when somebody is sanctioned by the benefits system, they find themselves in absolute poverty, rather than relative poverty. Often, then, they are forced to street culture activities in order to survive, so they then start begging on the streets. I can obviously only talk about Cardiff, because our services are Cardiff based. So, welfare reforms have had a huge impact on that, because they've opened the door to a lot of people to street culture activities that previously they hadn't considered. The second—

Yes, and also recourse to public funds as well for some individuals, so it's a mixture of different things.

The significant increase in substance misuse issues—we've seen a 93 per cent increase in heroin use amongst rough-sleepers in Cardiff in the last three years, and if you are a victim of that and you're trying to live with chronic substance misuse of that level, you need to be raising at least £70 to £100 a day in order to meet that need. Therefore, you are compelled to spend large amounts of time on the streets to raise that level of money to fuel that addiction. We haven't got the low-threshold substance misuse services in place at the right levels to be able to help support people who are suffering that, and because people can raise that amount of money on the streets, again, it makes engagement with services very, very difficult, particularly when some of the most lucrative times for people to be begging are in the small hours of the morning, when people are coming out of nightclubs and pubs. We see a lot of people trying to access emergency accommodation at 4.30 in the morning, because that's the time when town has quietened down, so they then want to come in and get some sleep, and then, in the morning, they won't engage with the housing options centre, because they want to spend the day asleep, or they need to go back onto the street in order to raise money. So, again, it becomes a circularity, and that gravitational pull back onto the streets is huge.

At the moment, within our hostel, 45 per cent of our residents are spending significant amounts of time still on the streets begging to preserve those levels of income that they had before. We and other services across Cardiff have lost people from accommodation because they've been pulled back onto the streets to raise those levels of income, and even people in their own accommodation, when we've got people into tenancies, have ended up defaulting on those tenancies because they've spent more time out on the streets.

So, how do we break this relationship between the begging and the need for the money to pay for the drugs and rough-sleeping? How do we—? What's the answer?

I think we need to take a 360 approach to that. There isn't a silver bullet here. One is making sure that the support services are there. There are some very good support services amongst front-line organisations in Cardiff, including the Wallich and the Salvation Army, Huggard, and other services, and the local authority's outreach team, that actually engage with people on the streets. But we've got to develop those low-threshold substance misuse services to address that very particular need, which is soaring out of control at the moment. So, we need to do that. At the same time, we need to make sure that the services that we have are actually accessible to people, as far as we can, with substance misuse issues. We are forced, at the moment, to exclude people from services who are taking illicit drugs on site for legal reasons, which means the only place they then have to go is back on the street, so it means that we can't work with people with those issues. So, we need to be looking at enhancing our harm reduction services to have an inclusive approach to people who are taking drugs, particularly rough-sleepers. If the only place that rough-sleepers can take drugs is on the street, that's where we're condemning them to be, so we need to take injecting off the streets.

But, equally, we need to raise awareness that the life expectancy of somebody on the streets is 47, and, if a member of the public gives them a fiver, their life expectancy at the end of that is still 47, that the only chance that individual has is to engage with services that can help break that cycle. In fact, we've got to stop it being so lucrative for people to be on the streets, because, whilst people can raise £100 a day begging, it means that all the support services, no matter what they look like, are having to compete against that pull back onto the streets, so, it is very difficult.

12:15

Okay. I'm afraid, as ever, we have limited time available to us. Could I just ask, on these matters, two questions? And then we will need to move on. One is on diversionary giving. To what extent might that be a partial solution to the problems of street begging and that income that fuels substance misuse, as you describe?

I have a slightly different view. Again, I seem to—. But whilst I think diversionary giving is useful and it can help, I have a bit of a problem with the rhetoric of 'never speak to somebody on the streets and never give them any money'. We all have a choice what we do with our own money, and the reality is it is a catch-22 situation. But, hand on heart, I regularly give to people on the streets, I regularly sit down and take them for a cup of coffee and talk to people, and I think—

Frances, would you give them money, or are we talking about a sandwich and a cup of coffee?

Yes. I always ask, 'What sandwich would you like?' rather than just give, but I give both, because they are human beings, they are like me, and, as you say, it's that dual thing: a lot of people cope on the streets by drugs and alcohol; a lot of people end up on the streets from drugs and alcohol. But I have a major problem with that sort of patriarchal, 'We will not give to you because you cannot be trusted'. So, I think, again, there's no silver bullet. I know I disagree—. As I say, I'm in a very different position to a lot of colleagues, but there is no silver bullet; we need a mixture.

I don't agree with Frances on this. I don't think anybody is suggesting that we ignore people and treat them as undeserving and step over them in the street. The analogy I use is, if you find somebody sitting outside Boots with a broken leg, you don't sit down with them and then rush off into Boots and buy first-aid kits and try and fix them; you get them appropriate help. So, what we need to make sure of is that there is appropriate help available, that we have professional services that can work with people. We can't fix people on the street by buying them cups of coffee, giving them fivers, buying them sandwiches, but, as a community, we can help by making sure that the emergency services are in place, that people know how to call upon those emergency services and those emergency services can respond, because, if I had a broken leg outside Boots, I wouldn't want somebody rushing into Boots buying a first-aid kit; I'd want them to phone me an ambulance.

And you won't get the emergency services in four hours, anyway.

Just to say, from my own point of view, I'm not aware of any of that rhetoric around any sort of diversionary campaign, around, 'Don't go and speak to someone who's currently rough-sleeping or homeless'.

No. I think it's really about, 'Don't give money to people begging on the streets, but donate to a shop that is part of a scheme whereby that money will then be used to provide services'.

Totally. And, we're, locally, in Cardiff, part of a scheme. What I would say is that, actually, the current general population discomfort around rough-sleeping and the number of rough-sleepers on our streets is something that can be harnessed, and I think something like a diversionary campaign is a way for us to harness the general population's desire to do something and to do something lasting and meaningful. I don't think for a minute, especially from my own point of view, that there is ever a point of going, 'Don't give to an individual', but it's around how do we raise awareness that, actually, what you can give can actually last a little bit longer than actually just that moment.

12:20

But I think you need to put all arguments here. I think it comes back to, as well, that I'm not aware of any diverted giving campaigns that are particularly successful or have major impact. 

Which is why I think that a diverted giving scheme is a good thing, but it's not going to, itself, have an impact on rough-sleeping. Diverted giving schemes are about buying people fridges, sofas, deposits for accommodation, paying for training courses. There isn't anybody rough-sleeping on the streets of Cardiff who's rough-sleeping because they don't have access to those things. So, that's the reality of it. A diverted giving scheme is a way of refocusing public care and respect, but I think it has to come under the banner of a homelessness charter that establishes the reasons for not giving to homeless people, based on care, respect and empathy for their needs, rather than, 'You've just got to ignore them and they go away.' So, actually establishing a proper homelessness charter for the city based around empathy for the needs of homeless people, recognising that they need proper help and support, and that members of the general public are not qualified to fix people with substance misuse issues or whatever, but, actually, we need to be supporting the services that can, because we actually care about people on the streets—I think that's the route to go.

I have to just come back and say—

It's good, yes. As I said, I don't disagree, but, if we're going to create cultural and systemic change across Wales, we need people to acknowledge that the person sitting on the street is no different to them, and I'm afraid—. And I'm afraid when, as I say—. We need to get the balance right, and, very often, showing kindness and talking to someone can get the balance right, and that's not a sticking plaster. So, we need the balance. So, we're not disagreeing, but we're just saying—

In the same way that I'd talk to somebody outside Boots with a broken leg—I wouldn't anonymously call an ambulance, I'd go and talk to them and make sure they've got the right help.

Okay. Thank you very much. Prison leavers—was removing automatic priority status for prison leavers counter-productive in terms of rough-sleeping?

We've definitely seen an increase in prison leavers in all our outreach services across Wales.

Okay. Well, that's very useful clarity. Thanks very much then. We will move on, and we have Gareth Bennett.

What do you think about the effectiveness of the services that are available for rough-sleepers at present? Maybe if we start at this end and Yvonne and then you each give your opinions on that.

Yes, I think, from our point of view, in terms of the services that are available as emergency accommodation to those that are rough-sleeping, the vast majority of us and providers are doing a good job. At times, with the current situation with rough-sleeping, that means that can get lost. One of the things that we've had to look at, at the front line, is actually how we deliver our services. One of the conflicts for me is that I think, as a sector, we're being asked to provide environments that are inducive to stability, to long-term change and to transformation, yet it's an environment that's awash with fixed-term contracts, with instability in terms of employment for its workforce, and it's one that's constantly being manoeuvred into a focus on contract management, as opposed to, actually, delivery of effective services. So, I think for me it's around the—I think services are good, I think services have risen to the challenge of complexity, and are attempting to rise to that challenge and attempting to change some of the services that are available. I know we've adopted quite a lot of trauma-informed approaches right at our front line, as well as looking at remodelling existing services into complex needs projects or housing first projects. So, I think, for me, there is a gap in terms of actually now how we grow and how we are able to expand the delivery of those services in line with what we've identified today, which is increasing demand and increasing complexity. I think, for me, what's important around the effectiveness of those services is actually the stability that they are given to be effective.

Yes, I would agree with that. I think that it's really important that there is safe provision for people trying to get off the streets in terms of rough-sleeping, and I think that's paramount. Where we're not so effective at the moment is maintaining that engagement with individuals with complex issues, because we are forced to exclude people for substance misuse issues and anti-social behaviour, and often that anti-social behaviour stems from the substance misuse issue in the first place. So, to look at how we can make those services more inclusive for people with substance misuse issues would make a huge step forward in terms of engagement with services.

12:25

Yes, I would like to see more enhanced harm reduction support. I think we need to be providing harm reduction counselling, advice and support. We already run the busiest needle exchange in Cardiff and the Vale and we're only working with homeless people. So, it shows the scale of the problem. But to actually work towards a position where we can allow people to take illicit substances on site rather than pushing them back onto the street to do that would have the most positive impact on those individuals and the wider community.

I agree with everything that's been said, and, as I say, I think sometimes providers are criticised when we cannot hold onto people, when we're legally not allowed to hold onto people. So, we are in a catch-22. But I would say, particularly for young people, they don't appear, and they're not going to be picked up by current rough-sleeping provision, but we've got the End Youth Homelessness, so we're trying to address that, so I won't talk about that. But my biggest point is we're at a point where providers are being asked to do more when, actually, the very funding for homelessness prevention, for sticky support, for persistence, is completely being lost and diluted by putting all these grants together and losing the emphasis on homelessness prevention, Supporting People and homelessness. So, at a time when we're seeing funding change, we see a 0 per cent, zero budget on Supporting People being put into a supergrant system with a £13 million deficit. So, how are we going to address this when we're losing the emphasis on homelessness prevention and Supporting People? To me, we're being set up to fail.

And, Antony, did you have any thoughts on that, on any particular thing that you would like to see added to the services?

Okay. Firstly, I need to back up what Frances is saying. I think the threat to our funding that actually provides all these crucial services to rough-sleepers—if we lose those services we're going to see a massive increase in rough-sleeping, without a doubt. We operate outreach services. They are our crucial link to getting people from the streets into other services that can actually progress them further. I'd say they work very well. Drop-ins and day centre-type services again provide an opportunity for rough-sleepers to meet their basic needs—again, crucial for them to just maintain their dignity, if nothing else. Our housing first project in Anglesey—that's basically taken the majority of the entrenched rough-sleepers off the streets, and 79 per cent of those people who've been worked with are still housed. So, those longer term services that have got long-term funding work very well. I would just question—when we get a homelessness prevention grant offered to us halfway through the year that we need to spend by the end of the financial year, I would question how effectively we can use that money.

Okay, Gareth. Perhaps we can move on to reconnection services, if that's okay.

Okay. Yes, reconnection services. How appropriate do you think reconnecting is for rough-sleepers? Shall we start at your end, Antony?

I think they're very appropriate, assuming that the rough-sleeper is willing and wants to return to their original location, and that there is the support and accommodation there so they don't need to continue sleeping rough. It's as simple as that, really.

I've known of some really poor examples where reconnection is still giving somebody a bus ticket or a train ticket. So, I think we need to challenge that. But I also do feel we have to look at areas where people do gravitate to and actually look at, you know, are they receiving enough funding, because it is a fact—

Where are they being given a ticket, sorry? Because we were told by the councils that they weren't doing that. So, I just want to—

I can give you examples of young people being given both bus tickets and train tickets by certain local authorities. Whilst I won't name them here, I'm happy to do so.

Okay. If you would, subsequent to today, then, Frances. Yvonne, perhaps—I know you're involved with Cardiff Council.

Yes, reconnection services. I will say that, when we were approached to remodel an existing service into this, I had reservations, especially based on some national experiences in organisations in London. So, it was something we approached with reservations, and one of the ways that we've approached it is that, actually, if we were going to look at delivering this, we would want to safeguard those people who are coming. So, in fact, I'm considering now changing the name of the service from 'reconnection' to 'connection'. So, actually, in terms of the stats and looking at that, there are very few people then reconnected back out of Cardiff. Of those that are being reconnected, all of them have gone into a meaningful and credible accommodation option. There is no bus ticket; there's not even just a housing options appointment. We've reconnected or connected people as far as Europe, but for me, one of the real points of that service is around the waivers. So, it's a service that supports people who don't have a local connection to Cardiff but, actually, we've recognised that Cardiff is the right place for them. There's a higher accessibility, although it's small, to other additional services. And we have worked with the local authority successfully—and I'm happy to provide that data—to provide waivers for people who've then gone through front-line services. So, I would say that reconnection, when done right, has a place. It's not a solution on its own, but it has a place. But more than anything about that service, that service is there when someone has a very statutory experience; the reconnection service that is built around that is a much more personalised approach to try to recognise what's right for that individual. 

12:30

Yvonne, is all the reconnection from Cardiff through that project that you are involved with? 

As far as I'm aware, we now oversee the vast majority of reconnection in the city. In terms of the outreach teams, I think that they are working to channel those that perhaps have not been very visible to some of the outreach teams into that service. But what we've found with that reconnection service is actually that that reconnection service is now having to do outreach work, and actually getting to work with people and trying to understand them. So, I think perhaps where some reconnections have been done maybe by other services or some of the other outreach teams, that may be through a lack of clear understanding about what that service is.  

I would support that. We've worked very closely with the Salvation Army through our advocacy team, where we've been working with people to reconnect people, particularly in European countries. So, we've been working with that, but it's the relationship between reconnect and local connection, I suppose, that's the issue, and it's not so bad during the winter months because we extend our emergency overnight provision and we don't take local connection into account when people are going into that. But during the summer months, we do see a significant number of people who can't get into emergency accommodation because they don't have a local connection who are still out on the street, so that has a perverse impact, I suppose.  

Okay. Thanks very much for that. We will write to you following your evidence today with some further questions that we haven't been able to reach, because time is always limited, and also with regard to the action plan announced this week by Rebecca Evans as the relevant Welsh Government Minister and, indeed, the guidance on housing first, so that you might respond on those if you wish to when perhaps you've had a little time to consider them. So, thanks very much for coming along today. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy. Diolch yn fawr. The committee will break for lunch until 13:15. 

Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 12:33 a 13:17.

The meeting adjourned between 12:33 and 13:17.

13:15
5. Ymchwiliad i Gysgu ar y Stryd yng Nghymru: Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 4
5. Inquiry into Rough-sleeping in Wales: Evidence Session 4

Prynhawn da. Welcome to our afternoon session today. Item 5 on our agenda is evidence session 4 for our inquiry into rough-sleeping in Wales. I'm very pleased to welcome Beth Thomas, regional sales manager Wales and south-west, The Big Issue, Jennie Bibbings, campaign manager for Shelter Cymru, Rebecca Jackson, policy and research officer for Shelter Cymru, Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis, and Katie Dalton, director of Cymorth Cymru. Welcome to you all. We'll go straight into questions if that's okay. Rhianon Passmore. 

Thank you. What impact has the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 had on rough-sleeping, in your view, across Wales?

Well, clearly, in terms of homelessness overall, it's had a really positive effect—thousands of people who are getting help that they wouldn't have had before the housing Act. But, of course, over this time, we've seen steady increases in the numbers of people sleeping rough. Our view is that if the Welsh Government code of guidance was being fully implemented around rough-sleepers and priority need, then the situation wouldn't be quite as serious as it is. But, unfortunately, what we see through our casework and our research is that rough-sleepers aren't routinely identified as priority need, and of course, it's really hard to work with people if they don't have an address and you don't know where they are. So, in our view, that is one of the aspects that's holding back successful implementation. 

I would agree. I think that the housing Act prevention duties have been largely very positive. We've seen that thousands of people have seen homelessness prevented. Some of those, of course, would have gone on to rough-sleeping if they'd not had that prevention duty applied to them. But I agree with Jennie that some of the interpretation of whether someone is vulnerable, whether someone is priority need, may still act as a barrier to people getting settled accommodation. And, of course, this is much more than simply just a housing issue. It's often about rough-sleepers with multiple and complex needs. They need to have support, intense support, wrapped around them, access to mental health services and substance misuse services. So, I think local authorities, through their housing departments, can do one element, but, actually, it needs cross-Cabinet input across Welsh Government, and also other services, such as the health services, to get on board as well. 

So, in regard to the debate that there is around priority need and declassification, for instance around prisoners, and the knock-on effect that that has had, it tends to be a diffuse argument. So, in a sense, is there any comment on the fact that perhaps this isn't the real debate, and that the real debate is wider than whether there should be a classification of priority need? Is there a view on whether we should be shifting that?

13:20

I think there are probably a couple of views. I think the answer is 'both' to what you just said. I think there is certainly evidence from elsewhere that, if you were to remove the concept of priority need, then more people who would otherwise be rough-sleeping would be able to access the system and would therefore not be rough-sleeping. Particularly, I'd point to Scotland: when they introduced that, there was certainly a downward trend in rough-sleeping, part of which, at least, could be attributed to that change. But the second point is that there is, of course, more to it than how someone is classified. If we've still got a system where the culture isn’t enabling people with the most complex needs to access support, then that would happen however you classify people, so that needs to change too.

So, in terms of infrastructure and in terms of what the missing elements are in terms of the trajectory, which is obviously of concern in terms of the witness evidence that we have heard around an increase due to the extensive impact of welfare reform, which hasn't bitten in Wales yet, what would be your perception, either based on evidence or not, or your own view, in terms of where we need to go to in Wales to plug the gap?

On the issue of prisoners that you raised, I think there are a couple of things that affected that. There's no doubt that the removal of priority need, as it stood, before the housing Act, has impacted. I was speaking to some previously homeless people a couple of weeks ago who said that priority need had been a factor in their ability to access housing and therefore move on with their recovery, and it was certainly affecting the behaviour of other prison leavers as a result of that change. But I also think that changes to probation services have also affected that. I think that the prisoner pathway that was developed as a result of some of our concerns that were raised and others about the change to priority need for prisoners has the potential to get in there much earlier and try and provide prison leavers with settled accommodation, but I'm not sure that it's resourced appropriately from a UK Government perspective in probation. When people came around the table from devolved and non-devolved agencies to develop that, I'm not sure that that has been implemented as well as it could have been.

I think there are some leavers that are outside of the Assembly's and the Welsh Government’s remit. You referenced welfare reform and I think that’s had a major impact on people's ability to access and to stay in tenancies. I think that the amount and affordability of accommodation out there also has an impact and is tied in with caps on welfare, which makes it even more inaccessible for people. I think that some of the initiatives that the Welsh Government have taken forward more recently around housing first pilots are a really positive step. I think that those will only work successfully where health, substance misuse and mental health services are at the table and contributing to those from the outset. So, I think that's certainly one of the solutions and there are a number of assertive outreach schemes in Wales that are doing some of that work as well.

So, in terms of housing first as a model, which we've discussed at length in today's earlier sessions, and the roll-out of such models, what further support can be given in terms of Welsh Government around that? Obviously, you mentioned the statement earlier—

Rhianon, we'll be coming on to steps to prevent and tackle rough-sleeping later, but on the housing Act, at the moment—if we could stick to that.

Just finally, then, in regard to the housing Act itself, what else do we need to add to it to make it optimum?

Our view is that the housing Act took us part way there in terms of culture change, and a lot of local authorities really embraced this whole agenda and worked really hard to introduce new person-centred approaches. There are still some local authorities in Wales that are driven more by compliance than by a person-centred ethos. Those aren't my words; those are the words of Tamsin Stirling who was presenting at an event that we had last week. Tamsin was the ministerial adviser to Carl Sargeant and Huw Lewis. So, this focus on compliance—to an extent, it's inevitable when you've got really busy services and crazy-high caseloads, but nevertheless, that is always going to be there. We feel that the housing Act was never the end of the process; it was always the start of the process. Welsh Government, very wisely, included in there the ability for the Minister to alter and change priority need. So, it's always been there as a long-term direction. We are in a stronger position to make those steps now, arguably, than Scotland was when they embarked on their journey, because we've got that prevention agenda in place. It's an important start for us, but in order to keep that focus on culture change and keep that focus on better outcomes for people, we need to keep improving and closing those gaps, and particularly looking at the very real gaps that there are currently around priority need. We could set a long-term plan, maybe over five years, 10 years, to achieve that aim of a proper rights-based human right to housing for all.

13:25

Can I just reinforce that point on Scotland? I'm currently chairing the Scottish Government's taskforce on homelessness and rough-sleeping, and it was very clear that when they introduced the change on priority need, it did produce a reduction, but it was limited by the lack of a prevention duty in their own legislation. So, actually, the combination—. And I'm having the exact mirror image discussion with the Scottish Government. The combination of a good prevention duty and removal of barriers like priority need that keep people out of the system is a very powerful combination.

I'd also just reinforce the point on culture. I think it's easy to underestimate the sea change that's required in housing offices, between a system that is generally about doing what we can for those people who qualify, to being a system that is about absolutely making sure that no-one who comes through the door becomes homeless. It's a very different ethos, and that culture change really needs reinforcing. 

I absolutely agree with that. I think there are elements in the legislation that could be reconsidered around priority need, but I think legislation can only go so far, and, actually, consistency and continuity of funding are absolutely critical within the housing and homelessness sector to provide long-term strategic solutions, and I think that culture change is the other big issue. We've recently—well, two days ago—started rolling out the PATH training programme that the Minister referenced the other day, and that is about trying to embed a trauma-informed approach, a psychologically informed approach, within local authority housing and homelessness teams, third sector homelessness and housing-related support providers, and RSLs. And that's based on an approach that is not, 'What is wrong with you?' but 'What has happened to you that has led you to this situation? What are the adverse childhood experiences that, maybe, have led to substance misuse issues and sometimes the behavioural issues that may have had you evicted in the past?' Having a better understanding of why those behaviours present, why those substance misuse issues happen, will hopefully maintain people within accommodation, avoid eviction, and hopefully help to lead to that culture change that we need to see continuing.

But it's absolutely critical, again, that the housing and homelessness department in the Welsh Government have put some funding into this to allow us to roll it out throughout the homelessness and housing sector, but other services also need to take that trauma-informed approach. So, when people turn up to mental health services or substance misuse services and they're stigmatised, they're judged for their behaviour, they're seen as not co-operating and therefore don't have duties discharged around homelessness because of a lack of co-operation, actually, a trauma-informed approach would start to question, 'Why are people reacting to a service or a person or approach in that way? How can we adapt that to make sure that they better engage and that we have more success with them in the future?' As I said, it's really positive that the Welsh Government housing directorate have engaged in this trauma-informed approach, but we do need to see that across Cabinet, and across public services as well.

Okay, and Beth, did you want to say anything from a The Big Issue viewpoint?

From our perspective, we're slightly different, in a different position to my colleagues here. They're from more of a research sort of background, and legislation and that side of things. What we tend to encounter are people who are quite far removed from this, and people who are in a position where they're in temporary accommodation, so they're in hostels, they're sofa surfing or they're currently rough-sleeping. So, they're almost past it. They've come through and they're away from that. They're not necessarily somebody who we've experienced in relation to this. Does that make sense?

Yes. Okay. Okay, we'll move on, then, to Jenny Rathbone, who has some questions on the scale of rough-sleeping in Wales.

Yes. We obviously are aware of the Wallich's initiative, supported by the Welsh Government, to have a more holistic approach, rather than just counting numbers on a particular night of the week. I just wondered if you think this will produce more accurate figures and what that might do for the way that we commission services.

13:30

I'd say two things on that. I think it clearly will enable more accurate, but, more importantly, more frequent reporting of numbers. The second thing—which I think is even more important—is it will enable interrogation at that sort of case level, so understanding the qualitative nature of cases that are being handled as well. And the third thing I'd say is it's an almost essential tool for people who are front-line working to understand very quickly where that individual they're working with has touched the system before, whether they've been rough-sleeping before, and what their circumstances are. So, I think it's not just a numbers thing—it's actually a really invaluable tool for front-line workers as well.

So, you think it will be used as a reflective tool to be able to look back and see where people have fallen into the cracks before we've become aware of them as homeless people.

I think it can be. I mean, otherwise, we work on the basis that any encounter with someone who's rough-sleeping—. Unless we have the data or the information at our fingertips, we don't know how they've encountered the system before, what's been tried before, and so on. Most of the approaches that work best are by-name approaches that enable multi-agency working with individuals and, of course, with a system like this, you've got that automatically.

So, would you envisage people having iPhones or iPads when they go out to do this outreach so they can—

—look up what we already know about the individual so we're not asking the same question again and again?

Certainly they could. I mean, my experience of going out with outreach workers in London who use the combined homelessness and information network system, which is not dissimilar to what's being developed here—it's tailored for different environment—is of working with people who do have access to that kind of technology so they can quickly identify the person, where they've slept before, and what's been tried before, which, going back to Katie's point on psychologically informed approaches, is just essential if we're going to understand where that person's coming from and not just the fact that they're sleeping rough. And to do that in real time, I just think it's hugely valuable for the front-line worker.

Well it certainly gets over relying on dedicated individuals who've been doing this for years, because we've obviously come across that too, but we can't rely on that as a methodology. Anybody else want to add to this? Or do we think that this approach will deliver the improved quality of information that we need?

I hope so. I think that the data that we have from various sources at the moment is useful to triangulate that and to see any kind of trends that are appearing across the data and, clearly, at the moment, that's an upward trend.

One issue of concern that has been raised is where some local authorities have recorded zero rough-sleepers within some of the counts and, you know, that does seem quite remarkable, but also, I think, opens up challenges and questions around rurality, and particularly within vast rural areas how you identify and count rough-sleepers. I was speaking a few weeks ago to someone who had slept rough on the side of a mountain in the south Wales Valleys for a year. Not everyone is within city centres, town centres. There are some people who are in very rural areas. So, I think one of the considerations for a pan-Wales system rather than a London-based city system is to try and understand how we can better capture some of the cases that might be missed by current counts.

Except anonymity is normally associated with urban areas: I would challenge how it was possible for a community not to notice there was somebody sleeping on their mountain.

Yes. You would hope that local authorities and support agencies would be aware—

Clearly, you know, if a zero figure is being recorded in some of the counts, then that needs to be interrogated more to understand whether that is a true reflection or not.

I think the importance, as well, is about how people know how to report spotting rough-sleeping. So, for example, only today, outside one of the buildings I work near, there were people rough-sleeping, and I'd spoken to somebody who was involved with the building and they didn't know how to report it, they didn't know what to do about it, other than they just felt that they shouldn't be there because they were making a bit of a mess. I think the importance of people knowing how to report to StreetLink—you know, the app via StreetLink, is so important to just the general public. It's all well and good some of us knowing about it and talking about it, but the public need to know about it, and people need to understand, perhaps, the difference between when somebody's rough-sleeping and when somebody is begging. But, if there was a general understanding of StreetLink across the UK, across Wales, then people would be able to report more clearly. So, something like somebody sleeping on the side of a mountain, somebody might not feel comfortable to approach that person. Somebody said to me today they felt scared to approach these people, but if it's just an app, everybody loves an app, so that would be an easy way for somebody to report somebody rough-sleeping.

13:35

Okay. Thank you very much. We move on then to causes of rough-sleeping, and Siân Gwenllian.

Ie, jest yn edrych ar yr hyn sy'n achosi cysgu ar y stryd yng Nghymru, rŷm ni wedi cael tystiolaeth ysgrifenedig gan bobl o'r byd academaidd sydd yn dangos—neu'n dadlau—nad ydym ni'n deall yn iawn beth yw'r rhesymau pam ein bod ni wedi gweld cynnydd yn ddiweddar. Un, a ydych chi'n cytuno nad ydym yn deall ac, yn ail, beth ydych chi'n ei feddwl ydy'r rhesymau penodol dros y cynnydd?

Yes, just looking at the causes of rough-sleeping in Wales, we have received written evidence from academics that shows—or suggests—that we don't understand fully what the reasons are why we've seen a recent increase in rough-sleeping. One, do you agree that we don't fully understand the data, and, second, what do you think are the specific reasons for the increase in rough-sleeping?

I'd agree with the evidence you've had earlier that there isn't enough detail and there isn't enough data, but I think there is certainly enough of an understanding of the causes of rough-sleeping to at least be able to explain why it would increase, even if you're not explaining in every individual case why it's happening. Certainly factors such as people being locked out of the benefits system, for example, based on where they were born before they travelled to this country; welfare reform more generally—if you cap benefits at a time when any rents are going up, then eventually you reach an inevitable point where people become homeless; and, of course, cuts to wider support services as well. So, I think it's no surprise that the figures are going up, and those are the major factors, I think.

We've been doing our research and we've spoken to almost 100 people who are currently sleeping rough. The causes for them are nothing that's particularly new or surprising. There's a lot of evidence to show that they are well-known causes. When we look at the system in Wales and at how we're managing the housing of homeless households, we see that our RSLs are taking, at the moment—about 18 per cent of their allocations are households that have been homeless, which is significantly lower than in both England and Scotland. A lot of the people that we're speaking to have got complex needs, and they may struggle to access the private rented sector. We've heard from landlords within the sector that they feel that sometimes it's a bit of an ask too far. They don't feel equipped or capable, actually, to manage some of the support needs that people have, and they feel that people are being set up in tenancies that will inevitably fail. So, what is needed is for the RSLs to take more of an active role in housing some of the most vulnerable households that are homeless at the moment.

Before you go on, Siân, I wonder if Bethan could just come in very quickly.

Just on this, because I had a tweet earlier from Community Housing Cymru who were saying that allocations are made through common housing registers, so it's not always the housing associations' fault if they're not taking on that load, although they did recognise they could do more. Do you have a comment on that particular point, or do you think, really, the housing associations/RSLs should be doing more?

I think they should be doing more and, yes, there are common housing registers, but even when you speak to local authority teams, often what you hear is that housing associations will tend to pick and choose a little bit more. So, there are barriers in the way for households to access accommodation, and also there are issues around financial viability assessments that are carried out before a tenancy is granted to a household. In some cases, we're seeing landlords considering rent arrears from more than seven years ago, we're seeing rent arrears from the private rented sector and we're seeing decisions being made around an individual's lifestyle. So, somebody that I've spoken to who is sleeping rough at the moment—I asked them about what contact they've had, what options they've explored, and they said they did look into social housing, they sat down with an officer, and it was decided that, because they were an alcoholic, it was likely to be that it wouldn't be an affordable option. So, obviously, that poses the question: if affordable housing is unaffordable, then where do people go?

I would reinforce that completely. Both in Wales, but also across other parts of the UK, this sense of landlords—actually, in all sectors—becoming more risk-averse is marked everywhere, as is the phenomenon of both local authorities and social landlords pointing in each other's direction to find the reason why this is happening. I think, where they're pointing in each other's direction, probably both are at fault to some extent. 

13:40

As well, actually, if I can just say, with housing associations, I do feel that, quite often, they underestimate their own expertise. Usually, the way that they are set up, the way that they do manage their properties, and their role within the community, actually, their staff are probably best placed to work with vulnerable households. Really, they need to recognise the value of their role, and that they do have this expertise, and that they really can play a really important part in making sure that households stay housed as well, which they're unlikely to do in the private rented sector, where it's maybe not as supportive. 

And I think, coming on to that, what is absolutely critical, for both landlords in the private rented sector or in housing associations that house vulnerable people with complex needs, is the assurances that support services will be there to help them. So, where we've seen things like the housing first pilots, there's that assurance that there's going to be intensive support wrapped around those people. So, landlords have had more confidence to engage and let properties within that context. 

I think that cuts to funding such as Supporting People in some areas have led to some landlords seeing a decrease in the amount of support that's available to vulnerable tenants, so that makes them very nervous about those support needs. I know of examples where housing associations have actually put their own money into hiring support workers in place of lost Supporting People funding because they're very keen to try and make sure that those people are supported, both for that individual but also for the rent collection element that makes their business as a housing association viable. So, I think that further, stronger assurances about the availability of support services to help people maintain tenancies would certainly be welcomed by landlords, both in the social and private sectors.

In regard to the thinking behind the supergrant and the ability to collaborate and be more effective on a different scale, what is your view—and it may well be the same, or different—in terms of that shift in terms of the Supporting People grant and the pathfinder local authorities?

My view is that the proposal to merge Supporting People and homelessness prevention grants with a series of non-housing grants is extremely risky. We've seen, although in different circumstances, the ring fence removed from Supporting People in England. The auditor general in England found an average cut of 45 per cent to Supporting People services following that across four years. So, I think the evidence across the border, although it's a different country and different circumstances, is very, very worrying at a time when local councils are facing huge pressures to meet statutory services. 

I think that we will see probably very little shift within the pathfinder projects in the first year. Because of the budget deal, we've managed to get a sentence in the guidance that says that local authorities should not be spending less than their SP allocation, so I don't think the pathfinder projects will show you the longer term impact of this. I'm very wary about a decision that Ministers are planning to make in the autumn based on very little evidence about the medium and long-term impact of the funding flexibility.

I think one of the really critical issues for local authorities is that they have been facing lots of pressure on their services, and, obviously, their duty is to provide the statutory services above and beyond anything that is non-statutory. I think that some of the things that I have heard around how the funding flexibilities could be used to help support some of the duties and semi-statutory duties—whether it be around childcare or children's services, around the Flying Start/Families First bit of those grants—worries me a little in terms of what the impact could be once Supporting People clients are competing for funding within that merged grant.

So, we know from experience—all of my members will be able to give examples of where they've tried to set up supported-accommodation schemes for homeless people, for people with mental health problems, for care leavers, and there's been opposition from the local community to those schemes that has become very vocal. I know one example of a paper-mâché syringe that was made by the local community to protest against a supported-accommodation project. 

I also know of anecdotal evidence where councillors have stopped projects going ahead in their patch because of opposition to it locally, and that's at a time when local authorities are under huge pressure to make very difficult decisions. My view is that Welsh Government should be taking a bit of that heat off and saying, 'You know what, some of these groups aren't the most politically popular groups, but it's absolutely essential for the prevention of homelessness and rough-sleeping that we maintain funding directed at housing-related support and homelessness, and that we don't risk that getting diluted by putting it in a broader pot.'   

13:45

Okay, does anybody else on the panel have a contrary view, or would you all be in agreement? Yes, okay, thanks for that. Siân Gwenllian. 

Yes, just looking at prisoners, is the fact that the priority need doesn't automatically apply to people straight out of prison having an impact on the level of homelessness? 

Yes, it is. We've seen it a lot in the research, and as well when we're speaking to people who have left prison and are coming out onto the streets—when I'm asking, 'Have you had contact with the local authority?', they're saying, 'Well, I'm not priority.' They're well aware that there has been this shift, and so there is some reluctance then to approach local authority, because they don't expect much of a response. But, as well, sometimes, the response and the assistance that is offered isn't appropriate.

I've got an example of somebody who I've spoken to who went into prison from care and has only been out of prison for a total of 22 months in 19 years, and the whole 22 months have been spent homeless. The accommodation, when he's come out of prison, that has been offered has not been suitable because of the exposure to substances and the fact that he has gone into prison and gotten himself clean. So, he's refused to go into emergency accommodation. Then, because he's refused to go into emergency accommodation, he's actually been in breach of his licence and been recalled to prison. He's in this never-ending loop of in and out of prison, just because he's 'choosing' to be on the streets to stay clean. 

So, would you all agree that re-establishing the priority need for people from prison is part of the answer? But, surely, there must be more to do with the probation service and the pathfinder.

Yes, there needs to be more of a joined-up approach, definitely.

Yes, I'd agree. People who I've spoken to who have been prison leavers and have spoken about their experiences and the experiences of their peers said that the change to priority need has certainly been felt by them. They've felt that that prior right that they had to access to accommodation was removed, because that then relied on a judgment call about whether someone was vulnerable, and that's very subjective—and also about whether that vulnerability was as a result of being in prison, which again is very subjective.

So, I think it was seen as a few barriers being put up there, when, actually, in terms of trying to reduce re-offending, both for the individual and the wider community safety element, putting a roof over someone's head, giving them an address so they can register with health services and access support services, et cetera, would have been a much more progressive way forward.

So, I think that, while priority need continues to exist, we would certainly welcome an improvement in the situation for prisoners. But I agree with you that the changes in probation—anecdotally, I understand that there aren't the appropriate resources in place to make sure that people are getting that accommodation assessment early enough and that local authorities are not being notified early enough to try and get that accommodation in place. 

So, as I said before, the pathway was a very, very positive piece of policy. People rolled their sleeves up from devolved and non-devolved agencies and really worked very well together to try and come up with that, but implementation doesn't appear to be as successful as it should be. I believe there's further research on that due to come out in the next few months, which the committee might want to reflect on then.  

I think it's just worth adding one final point, which we may come on to, about different approaches to tackling rough-sleeping, in a moment. One of the things that almost without fail all of the housing first pilots have shown—where you do house someone and provide the wraparound support that they need, one of the things they've all shown is a reduction in re-offending rates.  

That's very encouraging, but I'm still struggling to understand how it is that the vast majority of prisoners aren't deemed vulnerable anyway, because we know that most prisons are full of people who've been sexually abused and have mental health problems. The case that Rebecca mentions is obviously very, very shocking. 

13:50

It's not unusual. That hasn't been an unusual case. 

Okay. When we did this legislation, we had endless discussions about this and we were assured that nearly all prisoners would be deemed to be vulnerable and, therefore, a priority, but that clearly hasn't happened. Where would you put the main cause of this breakdown? Is it that the prison services aren't even able to keep their prisons clean, and therefore providing move-on services doesn't happen either, or it is the probation services that have been privatised, or is it housing services finding any excuse to turn people away?

A combination, I would say. Certainly, the resource issues around probation have meant that they haven't been able to step up to the plate and implement their bit of the pathway. If the pathway had been implemented—as Katie said, it was a really good piece of work. But I know that local authorities, before the housing Act, had a lot of ambivalence around prison leavers. They felt that there was a high failure rate and they felt that there were too many of them coming through. There was this really unsubstantiated rumour that people were committing crime in order to have a priority need. In actual fact, we found it was much more common that people committed crime to get into prison so that they had a roof over their head. I know that some local authorities have de-prioritised prison leavers and have—

As a tendency, yes—to put them at the bottom of the pile and perhaps not give them the attention that they need. Part of the quid pro quo around the housing Act was to take away priority need for prison leavers and then open up the prevention duty for everyone. It was part of the deal that was struck between Welsh Government and local government. But, in some local authorities, it has meant that prison leavers are at the bottom of the pile now. 

I couldn't possibly say. [Laughter.]

Thank you for that. If there's any further information you could provide after today—

Perhaps I could provide something when I talk to caseworkers, and give you a full picture. 

Chair, may I just ask, in terms of the provision of information around that, is that openly accessible to this committee, as to the data around local authorities and accessibility or not of housing to prisoners or ex-offenders? Is there any data collected, and, if there is, it would be useful if it could come to this committee?

There's some around priority need. So, there's data available on that, but not for all prison leavers presenting, I believe. 

Well, we'll certainly check that with our committee resources. Effectiveness and availability of services—we're interested, obviously, in how effective services are. We've touched on it already. To what extent is there a great deal of variability from one area of Wales to another, do you think, in terms of providing the quality that we'd like to see?

Our study has found a fair bit of variability. We were looking at three case study areas: Swansea, Cardiff, and Wrexham. There were great differences between the three in terms of availability of emergency accommodation and the suitability of emergency accommodation too, and I think different authorities place a different emphasis on elements of the legislation, such as priority need and local connection.

So, for example, in Swansea—I think Swansea is quite an interesting case study to look at in terms of their provision—they've got a good housing options team with a good person-centred ethos. They don't make a big deal out of priority need or local connection. They only have three emergency beds in the whole of Swansea. One of them is run by nuns and it's quite strict in terms of the rules and regs. They have winter provision in the churches, but that's run by volunteers, so it's only for low to medium risk and you have to be sober when you turn up. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, they've found that it's not very widely taken up and they're actually considering withdrawing it. And that's all there is in terms of emergency provision. 

There are two direct-access hostels and they have got really good outcomes. If you can get a place in the hostel, you're in a really good position, actually. If you can stick with it, then you've got a good chance of getting into social housing. And the registered social landlords in the area, to be fair to them, have stepped up to the plate, I think, more than in other parts of Wales in terms of nominations, but if you get into the hostel and you drop out for whatever reason—and it might not be because of a fault, it might be because you want to try out another housing solution—. So, for example, we spoke to a woman who had a place in a hostel. She moved out so that she could move in with her partner, but they split up, so she was homeless again and she found herself right back at the bottom of the pile for the hostel. So, it's good provision, but those places are like gold dust and the move-on doesn't happen quickly enough.

You look at what Swansea needs, clearly, they have hardly any emergency accommodation, but is that really how we want to be spending public money? When we spoke to people on the streets of Swansea, nobody told us, 'I want to go into a hostel for the night', 'I want to go into the church', people told us that they wanted a home—they want a permanent home as the starting point and not the end point of their road to getting back on their feet again. So, I think Swansea is a really strong example of where there is a housing first-shaped gap.

13:55

You have to acknowledge that this is a challenge for local authorities on top of the general housing crisis—the huge numbers on housing waiting lists, certainly in my local authority of Cardiff, and I'm sure it's similar in Swansea and other places—so it's very, very challenging to see where the money's going to come from for, obviously, just more affordable housing.

Absolutely. We've already talked about the role of social landlords in all of this, but I think that it is a really important point that this can't just be done by housing. Katie has already said that, for housing first to be a success, we need proper cross-sector buy-in—we need a commitment from health and we need commitment from criminal justice. It needs wider buy-in than just the housing sector, and more sustainable funding as well. I know that our colleagues in the local authority housing options service sometimes get frustrated with—it's very welcome funding coming from Welsh Government, but it comes in January and you've got to spend it by March and you can't employ anybody or put a longer term set of solutions in place then.

Okay. Could I just pick up on something that was highlighted in Cymorth Cymru's evidence, which is a 250 per cent rise in Bridgend? What's going on in Bridgend?

I believe that was from one quarter to the next, so we can come back to you on that figure. That may be linked to the change in seasons, but I'll have to get back to you on that one. It's from some Wallich data—

I can get back to you on that—that's not a problem.

Okay. You've already mentioned that people don't want to go into hostels, and one of our previous witnesses said that hostels are not a good place for anybody. If that's the case—. Some hostel accommodation has to be available because, if a local authority is faced with somebody this evening, they have to have somewhere quite quickly. But I suppose it's the shortage of supported housing where we have this psychologically based approach. What do you think needs to be done in order to ensure that the supported housing is available to deal with people with complex needs beyond their housing?

I think that the supported housing issue is really critical at the moment. We've already touched on the uncertainty regarding the Supporting People funding, which provides the funding for the support element, but the UK Government is also planning to devolve the funding that currently pays for the rent and eligible service charge element of supported accommodation. That's currently paid through to individuals via housing benefit, but because of the issues with the universal credit and delays in payment, they're planning to devolve that chunk of money to the Welsh Government in, I believe, April 2020. So, at the moment, the funding for supported accommodation, both elements of it, is really uncertain: one that it might be devolved by the UK Government, and the Welsh Government will have to set up a system to deal with it, and secondly the Supporting People funding, which provides a support element. For me, that is another key reason why SP shouldn’t be merged into a supergrant next April, because there's lots of uncertainty coming from the UK Government around that devolved aspect. Those need to be commissioned together alongside each other. One without the other doesn't work. So, in order for us to continue to provide supported accommodation and for developers and lenders to have confidence in the funding that is coming through, to be able to build and redevelop, that funding certainty absolutely has to be there, particularly from a landlord and developer and lender perspective. From the support perspective, we absolutely need that funding to be there for Supporting People and to be ring-fenced.

But I think that you're right: there is a lack of accommodation generally, and especially in urban areas like your constituency, but these are relatively small numbers that we're talking about—the entrenched rough-sleepers—and, actually, those are probably the people, because of their complex needs, who end up costing the health service more, turning up and costing money every time they go through a hostel system. So, it could be that a local authority, and other agencies like the health board, take a step and back and say, 'Actually, for this relatively small cohort, they are costing us a lot of money in terms of public service use, and it's better for us to prioritise getting them into a housing first-style model, which, yes, does take a set of accommodation off people on the housing waiting list, but, actually, from a public service perspective and saving money—?' But also, for that individual who—. You know, a lot of them have had really traumatic adverse childhood experiences—they've been in and out of the care system, they've been let down by other agencies. If we're going to house anyone, should we be taking a stand and saying, 'It's those people'?

14:00

Can I add something to that? I think the point about the cost to the overall system is really important. In one study that we did in a city region—not in Wales; in the Liverpool city region—we found that only 15 per cent of the people in the hostel system were going on into settled accommodation. The other 85 per cent were circulating the system and never getting out of it. They were going to prison, hospital, sleeping on the street, into a hostel, and literally never getting out. The cost to that system was immense, and what we showed was if they were to rebalance it so that hostels became emergency accommodation, in its truest sense, and everybody else was either simply rehoused or rehoused with the support they needed if they had complex needs, not only would that produce a more effective system of getting more people out of homelessness and out of rough-sleeping, but actually we showed that it was going to be less expensive as well.

Okay. Well, that's obviously really important information and we'll try and reflect that, but the other point we picked up from a visit to Solas in Newport was the great supported accommodation with lots of intensive support from staff, but then there was a shortage of move-on services into, if you like, a lighter touch supported housing.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, all of this has to be underpinned by the availability of enough social housing for people to move on into. Whether they move into it quickly or slowly, it has to be underpinned by that.

And I think where you're able to provide support—. I mean, housing first will be an absolutely essential solution for entrenched rough-sleepers with complex needs and getting them into settled permanent accommodation, first off, but for those that go through supported accommodation, there is often, as well as a lack of availability of accommodation, a real fear around that support dropping off once you move out of supported accommodation. So, where we can have seamless support—so, that might be the same set of providers who provide the supported accommodation providing the floating support that follows that person on to their tenancy, whether that be in the PRS or in social housing—having that seamless level of support, it is a step down, but you're familiar with the people, you've built up trust and relationships with them. So, where models like that can exist, we can have more confidence in that support once someone has moved on.

If I can just add on that, what we've experienced a lot is people getting into accommodation, they've been through some really strong hostel systems with some really good support programmes in place, and that's tapered off. They've been in their accommodation, which is usually further away from the city centres or from places where they've got networks and they feel they've got a community. They're quite isolated, which quite often leads to places being abandoned and rough-sleeping because they want to stay within their friendship network, whatever that might look like. And also things like: they'll be out of the way, there won't necessarily be support there, so then you find things like—. And quite often there's a lot of mental health issues there, with things like anxiety and depression. So, they're up in whatever area that might be—Cardiff is a good example—so, somebody's up in St Mellons on their own, living in accommodation, feeling quite isolated, with anxiety. And then there have been things like developing anxiety around getting the bus, and then there's money to get the bus, so then people quite often abandon that. And that's where those things like support while they're in those places around things like mental health—.

This person I'm thinking of in particular—and this isn't just one person; there are several people who we've got examples of this with—was on a waiting list then facing six months' wait for counselling. They could have gone to peer mentoring and peer group sessions for counselling and things like that, but if you've got anxiety that's the last thing you want—to be in a group of people talking about your anxieties, and you've had to get the bus down there and that's frightened the life out of you, and you're there and you've got to go to this every week. So, that's where they're in a position where they are so vulnerable, and that's where I think prevention is so much more important than prevention around—. Not more important at all; I'm not discounting anything, obviously. But prevention is really important because that's when people quickly fall back into rough-sleeping, because then they'll think, 'I'll just stay out tonight with everyone.' And then you've got the chance of relapse, so then someone uses. So, they've gone from being in their own accommodation, which they worked really hard to get to, they're clean, they've maybe stopped selling The Big Issue—or they're only selling slightly with us or they're still in touch with us—to all those things just dropping like that, and it's that quickly, and that's when you do see people going through those cycles quickly, quickly, quickly.

14:05

Yes, that's exactly what I was going to do. To what extent do you think reconnection services are an appropriate response to rough-sleeping where somebody has come from outside the area, let's say Cardiff?

So, the first thing to say is that the evidence base on reconnection is very, very weak. There is very little evidence about the effectiveness of it because, in cases where it happens, there are very, very few examples where the follow-up understanding of what happens next is there. So, I think that's important to say—that it's a very weak evidence base. I think where we see it working it only works where there are a number of factors: (1) there's an element of choice involved; secondly, it's very clear that it's a safe system-to-system reconnection and what's receiving at the other end is completely joined up with what's sending at this end. Where it clearly doesn't work is the sort of rhetoric around giving people the bus ticket and sending them out here. It doesn't work. 

Okay, but how do we—? I mean, all routes lead to Cardiff. How do we actually get a sharing of responsibility, where people end up gravitating towards the capital city or other cities in a region?

Well, that's the key element of it being a system-to-system reconnection; it implies that it has to be a shared responsibility. It simply has to be.

Okay. So, are the mechanisms starting to develop where we get a shared responsibility for all our Welsh people?

I would say it's likely to be variable, but also probably different depending on the client group as well. So, local authorities will have relationships with each other where, if someone is fleeing domestic abuse and therefore it is unsafe for them to remain in that area there'll be a relationship with another local authority, and that will be reciprocal. I think that sometimes you don't see that happen where people don't want to return to unhelpful social networks that have maybe led to them misusing substances in the past and they don't want to get back into that cycle and they very deliberately moved away from that area. I think that can be really unhelpful to place someone back there simply because that is their original local connection, and I think that similar reciprocal agreements between local authorities would be helpful in those instances as well, because that is one of the times where, as Beth has described very well, a tenancy fails, where someone very quickly slips back into some of those unhelpful environments that lead them to misusing substances or certain behaviours that can lead to them not maintaining that tenancy, and then they're back round in the cycle again. As Jon says, those support systems absolutely have to be there. I'm not convinced by anecdotal evidence that they are there and functioning as they should be.

What about public services boards? Are they a vehicle for joining up the dots between different services and between different areas within the same region?

I think they are. My perception is that public services boards have got a lot on their agendas. We would certainly welcome them looking at homelessness and housing issues and having a focus on those within public services boards, but I think they are grappling with a lot of issues related to them being fairly newly set up but also around the number of issues that are fighting for attention on their agendas. But it's certainly something that they could pull together. Certainly, the regional collaborative committees that exist at the moment within the Supporting People structure should have representation from different agencies outside of housing and homelessness. I know that attendance varies across different regions about whether health, criminal justice et cetera attends, but that's certainly another way of bringing other partners around the table. So, I think there's much to improve on in that respect, but I would agree with everything that Jon said on reconnection.

14:10

Okay. If nobody's got a contrary view, we'd better move on. And Bethan Jenkins.

We've discussed housing first quite a lot. So, unless you've got a view as to a type of model from different countries that might work better then you don't need to comment further. But if you do then please do. But I wanted just to ask, in relation to the fact that we've got the police coming in later, as our last session, and Shelter had some views on that—specifically, if you're going to use these powers, that there needs to be somewhere for people to be moved on to. It came over from the local authorities that they use it sparingly, but we get anecdotal evidence that people are being moved on, perhaps unnecessarily so, although there may be good reason in other instances. So, just your views on the stick approach and whether it works at all.

I think, firstly, there's a lot of confusion, and some of those orders demonstrate that confusion between street lifestyles and anti-social behaviour and people who are sleeping rough. Clearly, they are very, very different issues. I think all of us have sympathy with local authorities and the police in dealing with instances of anti-social behaviour, particularly where that's threatening behaviour towards other people. But two things: firstly, not to confuse that anti-social behaviour with rough-sleeping, and, secondly, if dealing with issues of anti-social behaviour from someone who is rough-sleeping then that's an opportunity to support that person out of their rough-sleeping. If we take that, great, but I think in most cases the motivation for these orders isn't to provide support to people.

I think what Katie was saying earlier about the trauma-informed approaches is something that would be quite beneficial when it comes to things like police training. From our experience, working with the police, some people are so good at dealing with people—how they relate to people, have empathy, have compassion—and some people really don't. I feel that something like the trauma-informed training is so beneficial. Yes, some people are really good with it, and some people aren't. And I think if that was—. It shouldn't be your luck who you encounter on the day. It should be a case of that's standard training, that's how people are trained to behave and how to work.

But have you seen—? Some of us have written to either Alun Michael or to the chief constable. Have you—? I feel like—. When I'm making representations, I feel like people who are raising it with me are lying or something because they have told me that the police have been moving them on, they have been taking their sleeping bags. So, is that totally false or are we getting two entirely different versions of a story? Because I don't want to totally dismiss what the police say, because, obviously, they have a view, but then, too, I don't want to dismiss what homeless people themselves have told me, that they have been disenfranchised in this way. So, before I meet the police, I want to have some sort of reality check here about what actually is in existence on the streets.

There's a definite gap between policy and practice here. When we were talking to—well, when Rebecca and her team were talking to people, the stories layered up, you know. It wasn't just one incident of an unfair dispersal notice. It was one after another after another. In terms of what Beth was saying in terms of—

Lots of people. Lots of people. Not just—. In all the areas, wasn't it? 

Some of those stories were clearly really unfair. There was a chap who we spoke to in Swansea and he had a dispersal notice and he was just walking down the street. He wasn't sitting, he wasn't begging, he just looked homeless. There was someone else we spoke to, and she was handed a dispersal notice when she wasn't even there. It was already pre-written out and it was given to her partner—'When you see her, you can give her this as well. You're banned'. There was a chap who was banned from the city centre on Christmas Eve, and he said to the officer, 'I'm not going to be able to eat anything on Christmas Day, now'. They said, 'Not my problem'. So, he had nothing to eat. He didn't have his Christmas dinner. These stories add up, one after another after another.

From what we've heard, from talking to people, it's often very different when you have an officer by themselves. It's not always clear, when you're talking to people who are street homeless, is it police community support officers we're talking about, or is it the local authority rangers, because they just see a kind of an authority figure in some cases. But a lot of people told us that, if you get one on their own, they're really nice and they buy you a cup of tea and they will ask if you're okay, and then their colleague comes along and the tone changes. So, I think there is a great deal of potential to work constructively with the police and with local authority rangers and perhaps give them some guidance on how to actually work with people in a positive, supportive way, rather than—. Because, as Beth said absolutely accurately, this is retraumatising people who've already got issues with authority, who've already had traumatic early-life experiences, and they're getting victimised again and again, and it's going to make it harder for the rest of us then to make links and build that trust in future.

I would also perhaps question how the police are ascertaining whether people are genuinely homeless or not. Are they talking to the housing options team? Are they known rough-sleepers? Because if you ask someone if they've got an address and they give you an address, it could be any address, couldn't it? If the police ask you for an address, you're going to give it, it doesn't necessarily mean that that is your permanent home. So, I would question that too.

14:15

Okay. I know we're really pressed for time. Any comments on that? But any comments as well, on this alternative giving issue? The panel were divided, before lunch, on do you give money, do you give food, do you give nothing? Do you try and get them to sell The Big Issue? A promotion there—I'm not being paid—[Laughter.] In fact, I only sold one when I did it. But what's your view on that?

So, we've had experience, we've had positive experience, of joining in collaborative fundraising arrangements, where people are encouraged to give to a range of charities. Where we've refused to be involved is where there's a 'so don't give to homeless people' rider on the back of that. Our view on giving to people who are begging is, frankly, there's a personal choice there. Clearly, there are—. You don't know what's going to happen to the money when you've given it away, but if we ask people who we work with, day in, day out, they will say the moment that someone gave them some money, some food, the time of day, was actually a point of human kindness that actually helped them to think about what they were going to do next. So, we just don't preach on that.

I do. I don't know how long you've got—

Okay. I've done quite a lot of work around alternative-giving campaigns, and, quite rightly, there are some that are absolutely horrifying—some images used, some language used that just really demonises the homeless. Yes, just terrible. And then there are some—well, there's one in particular that has been quite innovative and I think has got a lot of potential, and that's some work that's been done in Cambridge. That's something that's looking to be echoed in Cardiff, which The Big Issue are part of, and that's a campaign that encourages the public—it doesn't tell them what to do, doesn't patronise people, doesn't demonise people, but it's encouraging the public to donate into a pot that can be, and this is the important bit, accessed by any organisation working with anybody at risk of homelessness, or to move them away from homelessness. So, it's not firefighting, it's about prevention, it's about preventing those people who're up in St Mellons from falling back into that, maybe by being able to pay for some counselling for them. So, it's meaningful. The money doesn't go to one charity where the money goes in and you don't know where it's being spent—it's bespoke. So, any organisation can apply for that, working with anybody who's homeless—to move them away from homelessness or stop them from falling back into homelessness. Also, 10 per cent of the fund is going to be ring-fenced for organisations working with ACEs, so, it's again about preventing that next generation of people from becoming homeless.

We started to work with Swansea on an alternative-giving campaign and this is something that we presented to them saying, 'This is a way of doing it. This is something you could do that's a bit different'. And Swansea were interested for a period, and then—. Where I think it may have seemed like there was going to be a lot of time and a lot of work that would have had to have gone into it, that option was then dropped and a different option was taken, which is where we stepped away and said, 'That's not something we want to be part of', which is the campaign that's coming out now. The campaign in Cardiff, I do feel, is quite different. There's been quite a big multi-agency approach to it. A lot of work and a lot of research has gone into it. Obviously, I do feel quite strongly that an alternative to begging is selling The Big Issue, which I'm bound to say.

Okay. Thank you all very much. I'm afraid that's all we have—. Katie, yes, very—

It was just on Bethan's question about housing first and whether there is any particular model. I think that the dispersed model is preferable to bunging everyone into one building. I also think that mental health and substance misuse in particular absolutely need to be at the table and the health Minister needs to take some leadership alongside the housing Minister and make that happen. It needs to be trauma-informed and we need more of that across housing, homelessness and public services. And there also needs to be funding certainty so that, whether it's housing first or supported accommodation, those models can continue to exist to tackle this, and funding certainty is absolutely critical, alongside those other things I just mentioned. Thank you, John.

14:20

No, thank you very much, Katie. That was very useful; very succinct and clear. Thank you very much, all of you, for giving evidence this afternoon. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy in the usual way. We might also offer you the opportunity to submit further evidence following Welsh Government's publication of the action plan this week and the guidance on housing first. So, we hope you'll avail yourselves of that further opportunity. Thank you very much.

6. Ymchwiliad i Gysgu ar y Stryd yng Nghymru: Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 5
6. Inquiry into Rough-sleeping in Wales: Evidence Session 5

Welcome, everyone. May I welcome you to this evidence-giving session on our inquiry into rough-sleeping in Wales? I welcome specifically Jeremy Vaughan, as assistant chief constable for South Wales Police; Ian Barrow, director for the National Probation Service in Wales, HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales; Diana Binding, lead senior manager on accommodation, Wales Community Rehabilitation Company; Dusty Kennedy, director of the Youth Justice Board Cymru; and we have Chief Superintendent Stephen Jones of South Wales Police. So, welcome to you all. Thanks very much for coming along today. Perhaps I might start by asking the initial question, which is: in your experience, is rough-sleeping increasing at the current time, and, if so, what challenges does that create? Who would like to begin? Jeremy.

Diolch yn fawr am y cyfle i roi tystiolaeth ichi yma heddiw.

Thank you for the opportunity to give you evidence here today.

I won't go for the entirety of my submission to you in Welsh. Regretfully, my vocabulary, even though I speak every day at home, isn't always what it should be in terms of the Welsh language at work. So, diolch yn fawr.

I've pointed out in my submission, my written submission, we don't specifically hold data around rough-sleeping within policing. That being said, we do have pockets of increases of reports around aggressive begging. Now, it's important for me to say from the outset that begging and rough-sleeping aren't the same thing. Our experience in Cardiff, and Steve Jones can speak in more detail about Cardiff, is that around 70 per cent of the people that have been arrested for begging have homes. So, it's not the same thing, but often people conflate the two issues, and, in Cardiff specifically, there's been around a 30 per cent, 35 per cent increase in the number of reports around begging in the year. There have been 35 arrests this year in Cardiff. The number of arrests across the rest of Wales is a small number in that regard—

Thirty-five since the financial year. So, 2016-17, yes. The context of that is that policing across Wales arrests 60,000 people a year, so this is a pretty small amount of the arrests that we make.

So, in terms of drawing on specific data, I think it's more difficult for us to be able to answer that question specifically, but what we can say is that there are pockets where the problem is more manifest, and local businesses, local communities will complain about crime and disorder issues associated with rough-sleeping. 

14:25

Okay. Does anybody on the panel have anything to add in terms of whether there is an increase at the current time?

Yes, I would say that, although we do collect some data, that data is—so, our data is that, on 31 January, we had about 88 people throughout all our client base who were actually rough-sleeping. However, that doesn't really give a very accurate picture, because obviously people's circumstances change from day to day, and there may also be reasons as to why people might not wish to describe themselves as rough-sleepers to us because they could be worried about recall, or there could be other concerns. Also, people do prefer, I think, to say that they have friends and family that they could go and stay with, rather than to say that they have nobody. But, having spoken to my offender managers, many of whom have worked in their areas for many, many years, and I spoke to our accommodation officer, who has worked in that area for about 23 years, they would all say anecdotally that there is an increase and that they've seen that increase within the last year to 18 months. So, it is an anecdote, but it's based on people with significant experience of working with this particular cohort. 

I think from a National Probation Service point of view, I'd echo a lot of what of Diana's said. Anecdotally, officers are saying they're seeing an increase. We've done a number of deep-dive exercises that don't actually identify a huge number of people rough-sleeping on National Probation Service caseload, certainly within recent months of coming out of custody. But, again, I think that part of the issue is that we've got a number of people who report to us that they are staying with friends, or sofa surfing, or staying with family that could actually be masking the fact that they are rough-sleeping.

We're responsible for overseeing youth offending teams, and they deal with a younger age group, so, the 10 to 17-year-olds. We have an accommodation indicator that tracks whether the young people are in suitable accommodation at the start and the end of the sentence. Ninety-three per cent of them are in suitable accommodation at the end of the sentence, and of those that are deemed to be in unsuitable accommodation, we had nine last year who were in no fixed abode. The youth offending teams tell us that none of those were rough-sleeping. They were all sofa surfing, or staying with friends, and for very small periods with family.

So, on the face of things, it does not appear to be an issue for that cohort of young people, and to bear in mind that the vast majority of those being under 16 will be staying with family, generally. So, it's going to be a small number to start with.

Maybe I'm pre-empting the next question, but it would be interesting to know what the duty of the probation service is to ensure that the person leaving prison or entering the probation and supervision service—what duty do you have to ensure that they are linked in with the appropriate housing service?

There is no specific duty on us, or no statutory duty on us in terms of ensuring that people are linked in, but obviously there is a wealth of evidence that suggests, both in terms of reoffending and managing risk of harm, that stable and suitable accommodation for people is absolutely paramount. So, we do invest a lot of time, both as individual practitioners within the probation service and also within our key partnerships, including the Wales Community Rehabilitation Company, in looking at trying to address people's accommodation needs and making sure we've got access to appropriate accommodation.

One has to question how effective it is, though, given the numbers of people we know have been in prison, or have been in the criminal justice system, who are on the street.

We will come onto that later, Jenny. Yes, we'll come back to that in due course.

I wonder if you might be able to give us an overview from your different perspectives in terms of the way you interact as a service with rough-sleepers, and indeed those in danger of becoming rough-sleepers. Jeremy.

Yes, I'm happy to start. I think you will have seen in my written submission that the police are always trying to strike the right balance between both taking coercive action in respect of preventing crime and disorder when there's evidence of violence and when there's evidence of possession and supply of class A drugs, when there's evidence of alcohol-associated criminality, protecting the vulnerable and looking after people in need. And often we're called because we're the 24/7 emergency service to deal with people in crisis. And I'm certainly confident, across Wales, that our default position isn't to use coercive powers. The number of arrests are low. The way that people are treated when they're in police custody is very well. It's subject to real scrutiny. There's nursing provision in custody full time.

There are 2 million calls to policing in Wales a year. We record 1 million incidents, 200,000 crimes. That we have a pan-Wales strategic approach to rough-sleeping is not the case, that each force in Wales is absolutely adamant that the use of powers is done diligently, is done with due regard to people's human rights is absolutely certain. Policing in Wales is subject to real scrutiny from the Independent Office for Police Conduct. You might think that that is dependent on somebody making a complaint against police. We voluntarily refer every day. We review conduct. In terms of incidents, we voluntarily refer matters regularly to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. I would suggest that it's probably the most accountable service in terms of complaints. 

Strategically, my colleagues across Wales—and I speak on behalf of south Wales but also, in part, for Wales—would say that their primary focus and objective is to work in partnership to prevent harm, to prevent people coming to worse harm, because it's not in our interest or anyone's interest to take somebody into police custody. 

14:30

Can I ask if any police have actively self-referred themselves to the IPCC if they know or think that they've done something that may not have been in the human rights of the homeless person? I would like to have that evidence and see those—anonymised, of course—because we've had instances from Shelter, even just now, saying that some police officers vary in their activities, and I'd be very surprised if they would self-refer, but perhaps I'm naive. 

No. Individuals are rarely going to stick their hand up and say, 'I've misconducted myself', or 'I've behaved inappropriately'. Every day, there is a professional standards department that reviews calls and incidents that come into the police. 

So, that's not actually when they're on the streets and carrying out this work with rough-sleepers. You wouldn't necessarily find out what the conduct would be if it hadn't been reported. 

If it hadn't reported. There are a couple of things on that. What is really helpful for us is that, when there is evidence, intelligence with some detail, of where there's an allegation of us inappropriately using police powers, that that is shared with us and the specifics are shared with us, so that we can investigate, because the robustness of that investigation process into individuals' misconducting themselves is significant. 

The second thing I'd say on that—

Sorry, but are homeless people really going to feel confident enough to do that because, you know, a lot of people I talk to on the streets, they don't even feel—. They feel really uncomfortable talking to the authorities anyway. Are they really going to complain about a police officer? 

I completely accept that—giving individuals the confidence and the likelihood that people in crisis with complex needs are going to stick their hand up and pick up the phone to the police, I agree with you. 

In part, to address that, police officers across Wales—not entirely yet, but increasingly so, particularly in south Wales—are issued with body worn video cameras. There is an explicit instruction to officers in south Wales to turn those body worn video cameras on when they are dealing with homeless people. 

What are body worn video cameras? It's something they wear on their body armour. They press 'record' and it records the interaction with individuals. 

We are inviting third sector organisations to come in and review that footage, because nobody wants to know more than me whether our staff are behaving inappropriately with people in crisis. 

Would there be a requirement on officers to use that equipment in those circumstances then, Jeremy, or is up to them whether they do or not? 

The use of body worn video in certain circumstances is discretionary, but we've required it when it comes to dealing with people who are rough-sleeping, when it comes to dealing with domestic violence incidents, when it comes to dealing with stop searches, and when it comes to dealing with incidents where they're likely to be using violence, because, nationally, we found that the number of complaints against police reduces significantly because the evidence is there. 

14:35

And have you had any complaints, then, from showing that footage to the third sector? Or, (a), have you had the take-up from the third sector to look at it, and, (b), have you had any positive—because we don't want to be just critical here—outcomes in changes of attitude from police officers as a result of potentially seeing themselves be a bit terse or taking the wrong action?

There's loads of evidence nationally that body worn video, the use of, alters behaviour as well, there is. We have just started introducing the opportunity for third sector organisations to look at that footage. So, it's in its infancy, it's fair to say. I will say, though, and I can't go into detail, that there are cases now that sit with the independent office of police complaints reviewing our conduct in respect of the way we've dealt with certain people. So, yes.  

That's okay. We'll return to some of the policing issues shortly, Bethan. But, first of all, for the other organisations, in terms of the way you interact with rough-sleepers and those who may become rough-sleepers, could you give us a brief overview?

I'll try and be as brief as I can. So, I'll firstly reference a piece of UK Government legislation—the Offender Rehabilitation Act that was enacted in 2014. It meant, for the first time, that probation services were offering supervision for people who received custodial sentences of under 12 months or less. So, for the National Probation Service, that has led to an increase in the region of 1,500 additional people who we're supervising each year. I make reference to that because it's important in that anybody who comes under probation supervision, whether they're rough-sleeping or not, will have an individual offender manager, for whom, obviously, it's absolutely in their interests to ensure that their needs are being met in terms of meeting both the order of the court or terms of licence and what I referred to earlier in terms of our desire to ensure that people don't reoffend and reduce risk of harm. 

And those individual officers, if they are interacting with the rough-sleepers, will do whatever they can in terms of trying to find accommodation. That will involve liaison directly with accommodation providers, whether they're registered social landlords, local authorities, private, or direct access hostels. We utilise a number of partnerships with organisations such as the community rehabilitation company, who offer longer term accommodation advice. And we do have some accommodation ourselves in the form of approved premises, the primary function of which is not about addressing housing need; it's primarily about offering a support package that allows us to manage the risk of harm that those individuals pose, but we have, on occasion, used those premises to accommodate people if the need is acute. 

As a result of the legislation that Ian's just described, we have the 'through the gate' legislation, which is new. So, to support the fact that there's a larger cohort of people who previously weren't subject to supervision, what is new within the last few years is that all of the prisons have 'through the gate' staff who are paid for by the Wales Community Rehabilitation Company. Those 'through the gate' staff see every single man or woman who comes into one of our prisons in Wales, whether they are sentenced or on remand, and the remand group in particular were previously a group of people who didn't have a lot of, or didn't have any access to services. So, all of those people are seen by a 'through the gate' member of staff. Those staff are either directly commissioned by us, so we use St Giles Trust in Cardiff and Swansea, and we use Safer Wales in Eastwood Park, whereas in Her Majesty's Prison Parc, it is in fact our own staff, so CRC staff. So, every person is interviewed within five days of their initial meeting with a member of the prison staff, and, at that meeting, issues with accommodation is a question that we ask. And so, if there are any issues with accommodation, if that person already has accommodation, then that person will be referred to Prison Link Cymru, who obviously you're aware of—they're a Welsh Government-funded service—and they will help sustain that person's accommodation if at all possible, because many people who go into prison do actually have accommodation, but they need advice to make sure that is actually retained where possible. 

At 12 weeks before release, they're interviewed again, and, at that point, if there is an accommodation need identified, then the 'through the gate' person will get in contact with the offender manager, whether that's the CRC offender manager or the NPS offender manager. They'll get in contact with them, they'll identify that need. They will encourage—. If the person is going to be homeless, that person will then make an application to their local authority for accommodation, and that will be supported by a risk assessment, which will be written by the probation officer. So we have a much more joined-up approach than we had previously available. So, that will then be sent to the local authority. One of the pieces of work that the CRC and the NPS did together as part of the pathway was to ensure that there was only one application form for all the local authorities. We were assisted in that, obviously, by Joy Williams, but that is a great help because there’s only one form rather than the several different ones that were in place before. So, we alert the offender manager to that accommodation need so that when the person is released, if that person is released homeless, then the information has already gone to the local authority and the offender manager is aware of it. There will not be accommodation identified on release for that person if they come out homeless, for reasons that I’m sure that members of this committee are fully aware—it’s very difficult for local authorities to hold on to accommodation because of the risk that the person might not actually go there on those days. But then the person will go to the gateway in a local authority and will be given assistance or not, depending on whether or not they’ve been assessed for priority need.

Whilst they’re on supervision, obviously, the offender manager will support that person, will talk to them, maybe help them identify other suitable accommodation in the area. So, we obviously work very closely with local supportive hostels and so on. The CRC also commission Justice Cymru, which is an organisation that specialises in providing accommodation advice and support, so they have that legal knowledge and expertise that our offender managers do not have. They also have relationships with local landlords and a lot of them are very experienced. Quite a lot of them, in fact, worked for us when we were a trust, so they’ve been around for a very long time. So, we do have access to that specialist knowledge in Wales and that’s a commissioned service by us. Of course, the probation officers will work with offenders to support them to retain their accommodation. So, we’ll obviously talk to them about their responsibilities as a tenant and as a neighbour.

14:40

Thank you. I'll be moving on to declassification of priority need at some point before we finish. With regard to witness evidence that we've had previously, throughout the day today, there's been a theme, which is that, often, the correct hoops haven't been followed in terms of whether it's a risk assessment from probation or whether that vital information has been carried through to local authorities from prisons or probation. So, I don't know if there's any comment on that because it's been referenced a number of times. I myself, in my own constituency, have had a major issue around this particular circumstance. I don't know what your response to that would be.

For example, Diana, the previous panel, I think, stated that they were aware of a number of examples where the 12-week period that you mentioned wasn't observed and, in fact, two weeks was the notice that was given, which created all sorts of problems.

We have, as you can imagine, a performance target to make sure that we do keep that 12-week target, but of course, a large number of people are not in prison for even as long as 12 weeks, because after the recent changes in legislation, we do have a significant increase in the number of people who only go into prison for a very short period of time. This is particularly true of women. For all of the years that I've worked in the probation service, which is many now, women in particular rarely stay in prison for longer than a month—that is an average length of stay. Some people obviously stay in for even shorter periods of time, particularly with Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 custody. A lot of people might have very short sentences, they'll come out of prison not licensed, and if they don't maintain contact with us, or possibly for other reasons, we do recall those people to prison, which obviously is something we have to do—we avoid doing it if we can, but if we have to—they then come back out again, so we do have people who go in and out and in and out, so the ORA custody—

Sorry, with respect to you, that's not my question. What I'm saying is that there seems to be anecdotal evidence that has been discussed within this committee room, on the record today, by others that there are gaps within that and that it's not optimum in terms of the transference of communications—vital communications—whether it's a post-sentencing report or a risk assessment that have not gone through the normal conduits in terms of local government and their vital ability to be able to signpost to accommodation, and then that circuit will just continue in terms of lack of accommodation and crime, et cetera.

There are a couple of things that I probably haven't put down. So, the first, I think, is that, for a lot of people, when they're coming out of custody, their circumstances do change. So, whilst you think that, at 12 weeks or 10 weeks prior to release, things may be stable, for whatever reason, in terms of relationship breakdown people's changing circumstances about whether they are able to offer accommodation things do change on that front.

14:45

Local authorities have anecdotally stated—and I've heard this constantly—that they are not receiving correct paperwork in terms of risk assessments from ex-offenders.

That is nothing—. Nothing along those lines has been raised with me from any local authorities.

I think that there's—. I mean, individually, I'm sure there are some circumstances that people can point to, but that's certainly not been raised with us as a theme that needs addressing.

Diana, if you had any information on the 12-week and two-week issue, in terms of if it has only been two weeks, it's for the reasons that you mentioned or other reasons, perhaps you could furnish the committee with that—

—which would be very interesting. And maybe, if that is a real issue, perhaps short sentences need to be factored into the pathway in a way that, perhaps, isn't happening at the moment. Sorry, Dusty, yes.

The Youth Justice Board itself doesn't interact with young people face to face, other than through occasional visits to secure establishments, but we oversee the justice services that do. Their interaction begins with a very comprehensive assessment, the AssetPlus assessment, and accommodation is a key part of that. As I said earlier, the majority of the young people are living at home with parents. So, the judgment, then, is whether that's a suitable situation for them, and whether living with parents is contributing to their risk of offending. In the vast majority of cases, that's exactly the right place for them to be. With 16- and 17-year-olds, there's more likely to be an issue around accommodation being something that might destabilise their engagement, particularly with learning and employment, and that's the area that most youth offending teams get involved with: trying to broker, with providers and local authorities, access to accommodation.

Generally, that's most acute with children who are going to end up in secure accommodation, so that's where they put most of their focus. As I said earlier, it's very small numbers of young people. At any one time in Wales, there are between the mid-20s and mid-30s of young people in secure accommodation. Most of those will be returning to the family home when they're released. Those very few who are looking to be in independent living of those I would say that we would receive notice once a quarter, maybe, of a young person who is coming towards the end of their sentence, and circumstances have changed. Similar to what was mentioned earlier, perhaps they were going back to the family but there's been a breakdown in family relations and the family's changed their minds about them living there, or they were going to go into some kind of supported housing and, particularly with those who have been convicted of offences like arson or sexually related offending, providers of accommodation can change their minds sometimes in terms of whether they're willing to bear the risk of having those young people there. So, as I say, very occasionally we'll get a call about a young person facing the end of their sentence with nowhere to live.

That can impact on their ability to get early release. If a young person's been doing well on their sentence, we want to encourage early release as much as possible. I have to say that, when we've then contacted the local authority, the destination local authority, there has been swift action to try and resolve the situation. Sometimes, the fact that the secure provider and the local authority communication might not have been as good as it might have been has been the nub of the issue, rather than there being absolutely nowhere for the young person to go. But despite that, we would say there is definitely some scope to look at some more stable and readily available accommodation for young people. The problem comes up not just at the end of a custodial sentence, but also in order to avoid a custodial sentence. If you're going to do a pre-sentence report, and part of your pre-sentence report is that there's nowhere for the young person to live, with the sentence, a judge or a magistrate would be taking more of a risk to choose a community sentence, then, than if there was somewhere for them to live.

So, I think, considering the very small numbers we have in Wales who need somewhere to live, as a consequence of maybe being caught up in the justice system, surely there's the resource to be able to look at that before and after, and, for that small number of young people, to reconfigure the housing and the accommodation we have to be able to address that.

14:50

Okay, Dusty, thank you very much for that. Bethan, then, if we return to policing at this stage.

Yes. I just wanted to understand from the police at what stage you consider enforcement in the process of dealing with potential rough-sleeping issues. We've had quite a lot of discussion publicly recently about allegations, or potential allegations, of police moving people from the streets, moving their sleeping bags and so forth. I thought that maybe that wasn't true, and we've had your reply and Alun Michael's, but Shelter again today said that they feel it sometimes does happen, unnecessarily so, that somebody was walking down the street and they were told to move on, that a partner was told that they would be given an order. So, how are you working positively to try and use that as a last resort as opposed to using it as a first port of call?

Perhaps I'll introduce it, and then Steve, who's here from Cardiff, can talk about the specific operation in Cardiff in terms of the stepped process. When you think of the response and role of the police officer, it is trying to constantly balance that need to prevent crime and disorder and take care of people who are vulnerable and in crisis, and it is ever present. Often, it's down to the discretion of individuals, but what we've done where we've got specific problems, as in, for example, Cardiff, is given them a stepped pathway. So, perhaps, Steve, you can talk about that pathway process.

Yes. We are trying to develop a staged five-step pathway process, where, on the first offence of begging—because we need to differentiate here: rough-sleeping we recognise is not an offence. We're not seeking to move people on, but we respond to numerous calls from the public, from hoteliers, shop owners et cetera, and members of the public about aggressive begging or simply obstruction of fire doors—

We do not move people on for rough-sleeping. There must be an element of anti-social behaviour associated for us to issue a section 35 notice or to put a referral in. The five-step pathway is seeking to develop that, so that there are one, two, three opportunities for people to refer through to support services. Officers are giving out leaflets from the Christian Police Association and from the local authority, directing them to support services, but where there are elements or allegations of anti-social behaviour or they've been seen begging, they are requested to leave the city centre, a defined area, for a period of up to 48 hours, but with the proviso that they can return for essential services, such as outreach, the soup run and other commitments they may have within the city centre.

But how do you square that with what some of the third sector organisations are saying? They recognise begging, but they also say that people are reporting that they're being moved for rough-sleeping as well. You simply don't recognise that at all—in any of your officers.

I don't recognise that from the updates I'm receiving. I'm not naive enough to suggest that some people may not actually take a different tack to one another—we're all individuals. However, it is up to the individual officer to justify their use of any coercive actions or any powers that they invoke during that interaction with somebody. The statistics that I received this morning in relation—. We've only been collecting some of this information this month, but during January there have been 343 supportive engagements where the PCSOs and PCs are going out and speaking to members of the homeless community—not threatening, not moving them on, not arresting. That does also tally with the other powers that we've used. We've used 353 section 35 notices over the course of the last year, 260 of which are probably linked to people who were rough-sleeping who have been caught conducting themselves in an anti-social manner.

Okay. Earlier, we heard as well that—. People who were giving evidence suggested that there should be more training for police officers on this trauma way of—. So, instead of looking at the person as a problem, they would look at the issues surrounding that person, and they again said that some police officers would be quite understanding, but that if one of their colleagues came up to them, they could change instantly in terms of how they would deal with that. Is there enough training on this specific issue so that officers—? I know you say that everybody is an individual, but if they're working for an organisation, there surely would be an expectation that they would adhere to those values, if they are there, to try and make that more of a systematic, cultural change in how the police deal with people on the streets.

14:55

I absolutely agree with the comments you make there, and I think, throughout our approach to this, the mantra has been that we recognise the vulnerability associated with people when they find themselves in this position that it's not for us to demonise people. But people do have different traits and values instilled in them. With all our best intentions, we set the policy, we set the guidance, and we ask people to deal with people with courtesy and respect in all their dealings. As I said earlier, I'm not naive enough to think that some people may not show all of those values in every interaction they have. But I would just reference back again to the fact that we take a proportional response, and over that 12-month period, 35 arrests for begging is relatively insignificant. The other reports you've had, that we've removed bedding or destroyed bedding, simply isn't the case. That's why we have sought to give that instruction—to record their interactions, to open that up to scrutiny, to work with other third sector organisations to be that critical friend and give us advice and guidance on how to deal with people in that most sensitive manner that we all are seeking to adopt.

My final question would just be if we could have access to some of the data that you quoted just now in terms of how we can understand the proportionality of the situation and how you take action.

Yes, we collect that. On the training point specifically, it is a localised problem, I think it's fair to say. We would be very open to the support from other agencies—third sector agencies—to help us equip and improve the skills, abilities and sensitivities of our staff who are specifically tasked to deal with it. Not always are people specifically tasked with it, but on the city centre problem, we can certainly do that and we're very open to that. Part of the response in Cardiff—it's called Operation Purple Ash—is a multi-agency partnership response and approach, and I think there's even greater opportunity for some of the agencies you referred to to help us improve the skills of our workforce.

Can I just make the point? You might ask a question after, but I can't miss the opportunity. The draft action plan—these things don't always happen at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. A 24/7 emergency service might have to deal with somebody in crisis at 2 o'clock in the morning, and access to other services that aren't policing services is a real challenge.

Well, any sort of service. Mental health, immediate availability of emergency accommodation, drugs and alcohol services and so on and so on.

At this point, let me just mention that we will be writing to all of you after our committee meeting today, inviting you to give further evidence on the action plan and, indeed, guidance on the housing first approach, so that when you've had more time to consider them, because obviously they are very recent announcements, you might want to respond in that way, and, if so, that would be very welcome.

Let me just ask a couple more questions before we move off these particular issues around policing. Shelter Cymru have made a couple of suggestions as to how policing might work better in this respect. They say that the Welsh Government, for example, might play a more active role in guiding the work practices of police community support officers to sort of integrate that work better into the strategy that the Welsh Government is seeking to take forward. Would you support that view?

I think you wouldn't be surprised for me to say that we completely value the investment in police community support officers in Wales that the Welsh Government makes. It's meant that we are able to protect neighbourhood policing in a way in Wales that doesn't exist elsewhere. So, we absolutely support it. PCSOs fulfil a substantial role across communities—very varied, and they are really central to the way that we engage with people. I think that that would be subject to some detailed discussion about exactly what those expectations would be in light of other demands, in light of other things we expect them to do. So, discussions could take place, certainly, but it's not an insignificant issue.

No. Okay. Well, that's fine. The other suggestion that Shelter Cymru put forward in their written submission was that enforcement should be proportionate to the quantity and quality of support services in a particular area. So, for example, if there wasn't reasonably safe and secure emergency accommodation available—a hostel or emergency shelter—that that might be factored into the approach that the police take to their policing responsibilities. Would you have any sympathy with that view?

15:00

I think I'd need to understand it in more detail, because that's the first that I've heard of it. The reason I'm saying that is because the law is written in such a way that people make decisions based on the circumstances that they're presented with. So, section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 talks about the use of reasonable force for the prevention and detection of crime. Drawing upon the availability of other services and making those decisions might be quite complex in accordance with the law. So, I'd need to understand that better.

Okay. Well, perhaps when we write to you further, we can set out the thinking in a little bit more detail. Jenny.

Can I just pick up on this 2 o'clock in the morning point? There are other services available at two o'clock in the morning, because we've been hearing about them from other witnesses. So, we know that A&E is always available, we know that the community mental health outreach service, in some shape or form, is available, and we know that hostel accommodation is available, certainly in Cardiff, because some people talked about—. The people who are begging are out on the streets when other people are coming out of the pubs and clubs, but by 4 o'clock, they're knocking on the door of the hostel, because everybody has gone home by then. So, these services are out there. You don't think it's the duty of your officers, where possible, to link people up with the appropriate service.

Absolutely, I do. The last thing I want is police officers having to take people into custody. The last thing I want is that we take people to police stations as places of safety. That's not a problem. Absolutely, I think they've got a role. The accessibility and availability of those services is something that I would welcome real visibility on. Accident and emergency departments, ambulance services, they are available. They are also extremely busy and deal with medical emergencies and prioritise them accordingly.

Sure. I absolutely agree on that. But you'd be open to having a more joined-up approach to all these things so that you're dealing with the things that the police are supposed to be dealing with and—

It's absolutely central to everything that we seek to do, certainly.

Thank you. In that particular area, then, what would you like to see in terms of access to wider services for this particular cohort that would actually improve the current situation?

Often, when police officers deal with somebody in crisis and those complex needs aren't associated with crime and disorder, it's being able to hand that issue and problem on to somebody who has got the expertise to consider the variety of services. So, in keeping with the fact that I've not long seen the action plan, being given opportunity to give that some greater thought would be helpful. But fundamentally, being able to pass somebody on to somebody who can really care for the complex social problems that exist, rather than leaving a police officer to deal with them, or a PCSO who may be—. At 2 o'clock in the morning, the reality is it's going to be a police officer, not a PCSO. That would be preferable.

Yes. I'd like to just go back to the fact that we agreed that it was not a duty of the prison service to alert the local authority that somebody was coming out of prison, but you said that, nevertheless, within 12 weeks, either you or your colleagues in the probation service are actually alerting the relevant local authority. However, we did hear evidence from the local authorities themselves saying that this simply isn't happening in a lot of cases, and that, even if they're alerted, it's a much shorter timescale than that. So, I just wondered what information you have about what's actually happening on the ground, because there is clearly a revolving door here. How are we going to improve it?

The point I made earlier is that there's no statutory duty in terms of us making those referrals. We are, however, signed up to the pathway. We did a piece of work through something that was called the prisoner accommodation and resettlement working group with Wales Community Rehabilitation Company and Welsh Government. We undertook—

They were, yes. That was the group—. One of the things it did was devise the single referral form, for example. As a result of the work we undertook with that, we undertook specific briefings and training for staff in terms of how to access it. I'm probably in danger of repeating myself, but I think some of the things we experience when people are coming up in the 12 weeks prior to release are that circumstances do change dramatically. Certainly, part of it is to do with—whilst people may have in-principle agreements that they've got somewhere to go to, for whatever reason, that may fall—

15:05

They may be optimistic about the warmth with which they're going to be received.

Absolutely. There may well be circumstances where there's an identified address, but during the course of those 12 weeks, we as a supervising service will determine that accommodation may not be suitable, as information comes to light, perhaps in terms of previous behaviour around domestic abuse or domestic violence or access to children, or whatever it may be. There's also, from a National Probation Service point of view, as well—the 12-week portion of the pathway is not the sole approach we take. A lot of our prisoners who are released from custody will be released under the auspices of the multi-agency public protection arrangements, and that will often involve a number of meetings prior to release with partners, including us, police, local authorities, mental health services, to determine an appropriate resettlement and release plan for individuals. So, wherever we can, we would supplement the information that we are given as part of the accommodation pathway referral. 

Do you ever test the optimistic assumptions of the prisoner who says, 'Oh, I'm going to go and stay with relatives'? Do you say, 'Shall I speak to your relatives and see whether they are going to be able to—'

Could I say, as well—? We did hear fairly consistent evidence earlier that the national pathway may well be very good as a concept, but in terms of its implementation it's not effective or as effective as it should be at the moment, and that ending priority need for prison leavers has been a retrograde step and, as a result, there are now more prison leavers who are presenting as rough-sleepers. Do you recognise that picture?

Certainly, in the work that we've done, we've not identified many prison leavers within the first three months that are rough-sleeping. So, you could interpret that as, actually, the pathway itself in terms of access to emergency accommodation seems to be working quite well, but I accept there's a prevalence of prison leavers amongst the rough-sleeping community generally. I would suggest that's probably happening after the first three months, which could result in breakdown of accommodation after they've been placed in emergency accommodation, or other issues coming up. The removal of the priority need status has, I think it's fair to say, made a difficult situation even more difficult for us in terms of placing people when they're coming out in accommodation. But, again, the information that we've got from some deep dive exercises is that, generally, we think the pathway is working reasonably well from our point of view.

I think that that the pathway provided a huge number of opportunities for us to improve the way that we work with local authorities, and, particularly, the single application form and the emphasis on the probation officers completing their risk assessments in a timely way—I think all of those things have improved. I'm not saying that there aren't some, occasionally, that are not done, but those are great improvements. However, at the end of the day, if the pathway is followed in the way it's intended, then, still, many of our service users, because of the removal of priority need, will not, of course, end up with accommodation. So, you can follow the pathway as perfectly as you wish, but it won't necessarily end up in an accommodation outcome for our service users.

What is the profile of a person who has just come out of prison who is not a priority need? Unless they're Jeffrey Archer or, you know—.

Well, I am not an expert. I wouldn't say that I was. But I am told—. I have many anecdotal examples of when managers talk to me and say, 'This person has got mental health issues, but because he's only on this amount of medication'—in fact, I collected some of this information for today—'if he's on this type of medication, but he's not having enough of that sort of medication, or he can't provide evidence that he's on medication because, possibly, he hasn't got a GP—.' All of these things have to be evidenced. Or people who we would assess as vulnerable, for example a woman fleeing domestic violence, but they're not necessarily assessed as being a priority need. Because they've come out of prison, they're not actually assessed as fleeing, because they're not actually in that situation at that moment that they walk through the prison door—they're not fleeing domestic violence at that point; therefore they're not seen as a priority need. Another example I was given was a woman who didn't want to become homeless, so she went then to live with someone who—it was an abusive relationship, but that was better than her sleeping on the streets. So, it is very complex. Because people are no longer automatically assessed as priority need, there is more evidence that they have to get to say that they are. 

15:10

It's a complete muddle. And meanwhile we're expecting people who've been locked up for a period, and therefore have been out of the community, perhaps finding it difficult to re-adapt, and we're asking them to navigate the complexity of these services, and 'Where's your paperwork?' What's the role of the probation service to act as the advocate, or to navigate their way—?

We do—obviously, we do our best with that, because obviously we recognise that supported accommodation does support rehabilitation. So, we'll always try and support people, but it is about accessing other services. We don't ourselves, obviously, have accommodation. And those people who are rough-sleeping, we are supporting them as best we can. I have individual accounts of my probation officers bringing in clothing from their wardrobes and food. We have, in the office that I'm based in in Newport, a room where we collect food for people. So, people spend their own money on toiletries and food for all the people who come through the door who are sleeping rough. I know of a probation officer who has being going round giving people a hot drink in a doorway. It is a complex—.

I had a case recently of somebody who was sent to what they described as a bail hostel in Wrexham, presumably because there was nowhere else available. Do they still exist? Is that the sort of accommodation that needs to be available as a progression pathway to independent living?

The bail hostel in Wrexham is a national probation service property. They used to be called bail hostels; they're now called approved premises. It is unlikely, if somebody went to that, it would have been on an accommodation need. That would probably have been about the risks that they presented in terms of something specific. 

If I could just add one last thing about priority need—or two things, I should think. It probably is fair to say, I think, that we sometimes have different opinions in terms of vulnerability and how vulnerability is assessed when people are looking at priority need. Another factor that sometimes comes into play—and I think there's some inconsistency that we've seen throughout Wales—is the interpretation of previous offending leading to what's deemed as intentional homelessness. I think it would be welcome if there was some further guidance about how to interpret people's previous offences when they're looking at homelessness legislation. 

Okay. So you're looking to Welsh Government to give some clearer guidance on this matter. I think that's—

I just want to ask, because I'm human and I'm concerned now, was that woman sent back to an abusive relationship, then—the one you said that she wasn't defined as priority need because she wasn't fleeing from domestic abuse?

They're probably two different cases. I've certainly had cases where people have—

I'd be really concerned if people were being sent back into a dangerous situation.

People coming out of prison are not assessed as fleeing domestic violence, because they're not literally fleeing it and then—

Yes. That's my understanding, yes. Would you agree with that?

The other case was—because I asked my officers for examples to bring today—somebody who went back to stay with, not necessarily someone she was in a relationship with, but certainly a place where it was an abusive situation for her, because she couldn't access any accommodation. So, people are going back into an unsafe place where they're liable to be abused. 

Dusty, would you have anything to say on these matters that we've just discussed?

Yes. I think there is a qualitative difference between the adult and the juvenile systems here. The removal of the priority status for prison leavers didn't impact on our young people because they are young people, therefore they still have priority status. 

The other qualitative difference is that youth offending teams and youth offending services are part of local authorities. So, I'm not saying the communication between them and children's services and accommodation providers within the area is going to be seamless every time, but as members, as part of the local authority, the local authority is always aware that these kids are coming out, and the local authority is always working on getting them somewhere to live.

So, I don't know whether that explains—whether there's anything causal between the differentiation between the very small numbers we have in unsuitable accommodation compared to the adult system.

Okay. And what might be done to the national pathway to resolve these issues as far as prison leavers are concerned? Any particular points you'd—?

So, I think we're keenly awaiting the research from Wrexham Glyndŵr University, and we're keen to work towards that. I think that we've recently in Wales established a justice in Wales working group with the Welsh Government, which is really about the non-devolved Ministry of Justice interface, and I think, as part of that, we're starting to look at accommodation issues. But I think a step forward would be a conversation about re-establishing the prisoner accommodation resettlement working group, particularly in line with the research that we know is coming from Wrexham. That would seem to me an ideal place to look at taking that research forward, or the findings of that research.  

15:15

Specifically on the evidence given by the Wallich in relation to Bridgend—I don't know if you saw that. 

Okay. Well, what they're saying is that Bridgend's a host authority, presumably, because of the closeness of the prison, and they have some funding to use at their discretion. However, once a prisoner has been assisted with two weeks' worth of temporary accommodation, they will not be able to access it again. This gives somebody 14 days to find housing, which is unlikely given they're ex-prisoners, and they end up on the street. So, that seems to me a particular situation where we've identified, because Bridgend is a host, that we have a particular problem—they leave prison but they're then on the streets after two weeks, effectively. That seems to me a particular issue that requires addressing. 

We also noticed reports of a spike of a 250 per cent increase in rough-sleeping in Bridgend, so there's something going on which we need further explanation on. If it's to do with people simply being just let out and then, 'Ta-ra, see you later'— 

I think that's probably unlikely. The people who'd be going to Bridgend—. As I said now, people released from custody will be released under the supervision of a probation officer. It's very unlikely that the people released from the prison will just stay in that locality; they will return to their home authority area whether they are homeless or not.  

Unless, of course, there's a particular reason why they don't wish to return to their home, because they think they'd be at risk themselves, or something.

It would predominantly be focused on whether or not the assessment is whether they would be safe to return there or not, but, yes. 

Okay. Well, thank you all very much for coming along today to give evidence to the committee. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy. Diolch yn fawr. 

7. Papurau i'w Nodi
7. Papers to Note

The next item on the agenda today is item 7: papers to note. We have papers 15 through to 20. Papers 15 to 17 relate to our inquiry into rough-sleeping in Wales. Paper 18 refers to the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Bill. Paper 19 relates to human rights in Wales, which we will, in fact, discuss at our next meeting. And paper 20 relates to fire safety in Wales, and a suggestion that some of the requirements might be relaxed. We will reply to that, I think, along the lines that we're looking at these matters in a rather different context, but we will be addressing them in due course. 

Chair, in terms of page 169—if you've not got there, agenda item 7.5—I just want to clarify what the letter focuses on. It says:

'I welcome the Inquiry and the Committee’s decision'—

it's from Julie James—

'to narrow its scope to focus on the'—

and then it's sort of like a typo. Is it 'direct impact of Brexit'? What is the wording? Or is it just 'Brexit on human rights'? It's page 169.   

We intend to discuss matters in the round on that, Rhianon, at our next meeting, so to look at it—

Okay, but I'm just asking what that means from her. What does it say? Because I don't know what she thinks we're talking about. 

8. Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42(vi) i Benderfynu Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o Weddill y Cyfarfod ac o Eitemau 1, 2, 3 a 4 yn y Cyfarfod ar 14 Chwefror 2018
8. Motion under Standing Order 17.42(vi) to Resolve to Exclude the Public from the Remainder of the Meeting and from Items 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the Meeting on 14 February 2018

Cynnig:

bod y pwyllgor yn penderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod ac eitemau 1, 2, 3 a 4 o'r cyfarfod ar 14 Chwefror yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog 17.42(vi). 

Motion:

that the committee resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting and items 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the meeting on 14 February in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi).

Cynigiwyd y cynnig.

Motion moved.

Moving on then: item 8 is a motion under Standing Order 17.42 to resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting and items 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the next meeting on 14 February. Is committee content so to do? Okay, we will move into private session. 

Derbyniwyd y cynnig.

Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 15:19.

Motion agreed.

The public part of the meeting ended at 15:19.