Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.
There has been speculation in the last few days that the charitable status of housing associations might be under threat. It would cost the sector a huge amount in additional tax if charitable status was lost. The issue has been bubbling under for a while, but the new debate has been triggered by a request from the Tenant Services Authority to the Charity Commission to express a view on the implications of the new (mis-named) Affordable Rent regime.
The Commission’s response is of course equivocal: it depends on the circumstances of each association, what their charitable objectives are, and how Affordable Rent fits in with their activities as a whole. The key sentences in their reply are these:
“Generally, where an association has a charitable purpose to relieve those in need by providing housing, then those who benefit must be poor and in housing need…….. Associations will be aware of whether, in practice, some affordable rent products have rents at a level that people in poverty cannot access, and where housing benefits are capped at a level below the rent.”
“In summary, in principle, charitable housing associations can provide an Affordable Rents product. However, the extent to which the product will be used to relieve poverty may determine whether it is able to satisfy the public benefit requirement and one aspect of this will be the extent to which housing benefit will cover the rental. Charitable associations operating in areas of high market rents will therefore need to look at this aspect in detail to see whether the affordable rents can provide a means of relieving poverty.”
From an ideological point of view, it is clear where the Government is headed. By dictating that there will be no new social rented housing built in future, only ‘Affordable Rent’ (ie up to 80% of market rents), and by requiring that a proportion of re-lets in developing associations are also let at ‘Affordable Rent’ levels, the government is signaling the transformation of housing associations from bodies dedicated to providing homes for the poorest in society to institutional private landlords of near-market homes.
Some people in the sector have also been asking for this problem to visit them. Many housing associations are brilliant at what they do and serve homeless and badly-housed people, their tenants and their communities very well, but some look and act less and less like charitable bodies as each year passes and give every impression of not liking poor people much let alone wanting to relieve their poverty.
Charitable status might be protected as long as it is possible for people on low incomes to access ‘Affordable Rent’ homes. That in turn will depend on the allocations policies followed and the continued availability of housing benefit. Some associations think they will not be able to let the new homes to people who could be defined as charitable beneficiaries; for schemes to be viable they will have to let the homes, or at least a significant proportion of them, to people who can afford the rent without the risk associated with needing housing benefit to support their payments. For the moment, the government says HB will be available for AR properties, but in high cost areas it is the operation of the overall benefits cap and the uprating by less than real inflation that will make it impossible for families on benefit to access these homes.
The loss of charitable status would be a blow, but, in the context of government housing policy, it is the bigger question ‘what are housing associations now for?’ that needs to be answered.
Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.
Most people will never get to know about the work that many MPs put in, in quality and in quantity. But anyone following the Committee stage of the Localism Bill would be impressed by the hard graft put in by the key members of the Labour opposition, their analysis of the issues and their knowledge of the subjects under discussion.
The Bill covers such a wide range of topics and working out the ramifications of over 200 specific clauses and more than 20 schedules is a herculean task. As of 10 March there had been 24 sittings of the Bill Committee, and the leading Labour members have attended just about all of them, making dozens of amendments and speeches.
I have been following the debate on the homelessness sections of the Bill – see my previous post for more background here. The government’s policy of allowing councils to discharge their homelessness duty by obtaining a private rented sector letting for the applicant drives a coach and horses through the homelessness safety net, legislation that is arguably one of the legs of the welfare state. The whole debate can be read here.
On 10 March Nick Raynsford made a powerful speech on this section of the Bill – unfortunately to no avail. It traces the history of the homelessness legislation, how the Tories have always opposed it, and how the Lib Dems have always supported it – until now. Raynsford was of course heavily involved in achieving the passage of the original homelessness legislation in 1977. Here are a few highlights from what he said.
“Homeless people are not different from other people. There are some who have special problems, but the vast majority of homeless people are those who have fallen on difficult times. They may have lost their home through a variety of different circumstances, and they are exposed to all the horrors of not having a home. Above all, they need help and support to get back on their feet and to move back into the mainstream and normal life.
“That is what brought me into working in housing in the late 1960s. I was of the generation that saw “Cathy Come Home” and was horrified by the revelation in that powerful programme of just how badly we as a society treated homeless people in the 1960s. It was a revelation. I was not aware that old workhouses were still being used as accommodation, or that families were routinely split up and husbands were not allowed to go into accommodation for homeless families—only the women and children could go in, and the husbands were split away. There was no proper safeguard for homeless families or people. That led me not only to work in the voluntary housing sector, but to campaign in the 1970s for a law that would give hope and security to homeless people and help the process that I have just described.
“That process involved helping homeless people through the difficulty and back into the mainstream of society, rather than allowing them to be stigmatised, marginalised and punished, as was the case before the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. That Act was very important, and I helped Stephen Ross, the Liberal MP for the Isle of Wight, who bravely undertook to promote that as a private Member’s Bill in 1976, a time when he could have easily adopted other causes that might have been more popular in his constituency. I know from talking to him at the time that he was determined to do something hugely important for society, not just take on something that would be popular and help him to win a marginal seat in the ensuing general election, so I pay huge tribute to him. He did so with the support of the then Labour Government, which had a wafer-thin majority, so Liberal support was important. The two parties worked together, and that legislation was the product of Labour and Liberals working together to give rights to homeless people.
“I am sorry to say that the Conservative party at the time opposed that legislation. It voted against it and fought it literally clause by clause through this House. However, it got onto the statute book and made a difference. It changed attitudes towards the homeless, and it ensured that provision for homeless people was brought into the mainstream of housing provision, rather than being something on the margins that separated them from the rest of society. That continued throughout the 1980s, until in 1996 a Conservative Government sought to weaken the safeguards for homeless people. In Opposition, we in the Labour party fought that unsuccessfully, supported by the Liberal party—I think they were the Liberal Democrats by then—who were absolutely at one with us in defending the 1977 Act against the Tory Government’s attempt to weaken it. I welcomed that support.
“In 2000-01, when I was Minister for Housing and Planning, I had the privilege of introducing the Homes Bill, which reinstated the principal safeguards of the 1977 Act which had been weakened by the 1996 legislation, and also introduced the concept of local authorities developing homelessness prevention strategies. That Bill did not reach the statute books immediately—it fell because of the 2001 general election—but it was re-introduced by my successor immediately after that election, when I had moved to another responsibility, and made it on to the statute book. That was passed by a Labour Government with the support of the Liberal Democrats. In fact, I well remember the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), who led the Opposition for the Liberal Democrats in the Committee that discussed the Homes Bill in the run-up to the 2001 general election. He was pressing us to go further, rather than saying we should weaken in any way our commitment to homeless people.
“This is what really saddens me about what is happening now, because we are seeing here a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats weakening a piece of legislation that should be a proud monument to parties working together to advance the prospects of disadvantaged people and help those in difficult circumstances to get back on their feet. I am delighted that the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay has—to a degree—maintained the honourable tradition of his party in seeking to safeguard the position of homeless people. I hope when on Report he will continue to do so with a commitment to voting for his views, rather than simply articulating them.
“I say to this Committee, and to all Members of this House, that this is a retrograde step. This is weakening the safeguards for homeless people…. it will expose more people to a position where they are subject to a dependence on benefits; where the work incentives are to very large degree taken away by punitive rates of taxation because of the withdrawal of benefits; and where they do not have the security to be able to rebuild their lives because they live in insecure lettings where they cannot be certain they can stay from one year to the next and continue to occupy it as their home, providing they pay the rent and meet the tenancy obligations. This is a sad, retrograde step, and I believe that the House will ultimately regret it and will come to realise that if it passes the clause, and the Bill, it will have made a serious mistake.”
Old fashioned social housing was originally to support the majority of working people with decent homes at a low rent, for the long term, in stable communities. Indeed, right at the beginning social housing was reserved for those working and often working on better incomes than the average.
It became a tenure in which we housed the poorest and most vulnerable who could not afford the housing they needed in the market. It provided for them a long-term home and the chance to build a life in a community.
In both cases, there was a clear rationale for what social housing was for, even if the latter did not succeed always in creating the prosperous or sustainable communities.
‘Affordable Rent’ is at an intermediate rent level, but the government still say it is for the poorest and those in need on council waiting lists. It can only do this job however once combined with housing benefit to make up for the higher rents which the poorest can’t afford.
But even then, housing benefit will not cover the new higher rents in many places. So housing associations want to pitch the homes higher up the income chain, to those working on low to medium incomes.
So is it more accurate to say that this is a sub-market rent for working families in stable communities, as traditional social housing was? That is, it is not the option for the poorest.
Well, not really. It will force many working people on to housing benefit when in the past, the low rents of social housing kept them out of benefit dependency. And the government’s tenure reforms (fixed-term and when your ‘need’ ends you move out) makes affordable rent more like a safety net only for the most vulnerable in certain circumstances.
I can only see that the purpose of this ‘affordable rent’ product is to help the government keep up affordable housing stats. Who in the real world is it designed to help? It’ll help some people depending how housing associations use it and any new homes are needed, but it hasn’t been designed with any family, household or ‘end user’ in mind.
Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.
‘Neigbourhood Watched’ on the BBC seems to be achieving cult status, ‘The Wire’ without the guns (and without the Americans). Although I’m not sure whether I’m more disturbed by Michelle and Laura, two of the ‘stars’ of the last episode, or some of the twits who tweeted about it.
It is refreshing to have a programme about the work and challenges facing housing officers. They came across as caring and business-like, offering the families chances to change but then being decisive when the chances were spurned. The focus of the programme on anti-social behaviour may have given a distorted view of what housing officers do, but it demonstrated that it is a serious blight in many neighbourhoods and can ruin an estate. For a family to nickname a small child ‘asbo’ is pretty disgusting. I may have missed it but the one weakness in the approach was that I can’t recall any reference to Children’s Services being made. The families will live somewhere when they are evicted, the children will still be there, things may get worse not better, and there are no housing officers paying attention in the private rented sector.
Most of us go into housing because of Bill and Elsie and have to put up with Michelle and Laura. After a good life bringing up their children in their council home (the distinction between the council and the housing association seemed irrelevant to them) all they wanted was a sheltered flat with no stairs as they approached their 80s in declining health. The housing officers knew the house would be in high demand for a family but it was touch and go whether they would qualify for a sheltered flat. How crazy is that? But their story demonstrated the huge significance of a decent affordable home to the quality of life of ordinary decent people – and in my experience they are far more representative of social housing tenants than the stereotypical spongers we read about everyday.
I expect the programme is available on BBC i-player if anyone missed it. I hope there are more Bills and Elsies in the rest of series. They make the struggle worthwhile – for resources, for more affordable homes, and for decent treatment of tenants as human beings not chess pieces to be moved around the board every year or two.
Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.
In previous posts we welcomed the Government’s decision to implement John Healey’s proposals to reform council housing finance through ‘self-financing’. We expressed a couple of doubts about the new proposals, notably that the Government had abandoned Labour’s plan to allow councils to retain all of their capital receipts from council house sales.
One other noteworthy distinction between the two sets of plans concerns the operation of the Housing Revenue Account ‘ring fence’ – ie the rules governing transfers between the HRA, which records income and expenditure on council housing, and the General Fund, which covers the rest of council spending.
John Healey’s ‘Prospectus’ published a year ago showed the need for gradual reform of the way the ring fence operates to make the system fairer for tenants. It showed that at least 40% of general management costs are incurred on what it defined as ‘non-core’ services, services that arguably should not be met from rents but from the general income of the council. This one statistic makes a mockery of any accusation that tenants are ‘subsidised’. Therefore, over time, it was proposed that non-core services should be regarded as services provided by the landlord but funded from sources other than rent. The consultation showed virtually unanimous support for the continuation of the ring fence and the Prospectus proposed that new updated guidance should be issued.
In the Tory proposals ‘Implementing self-financing for council housing’ published in February 2011 the ring fence merits a single paragraph. On the principle it accepts that the system should ensure that ‘council taxpayers do not subsidise services specifically for the benefit of tenants and that rent is not used to subsidise functions which are for the benefit of the wider local community’ – although that statement is open to several interpretations. My concern is that it states ‘In line with our emphasis on localism we do not intend to issue new guidance on the operation of the ring-fence. We expect local authorities to take their own decisions, rooted in the principle that ‘who benefits pays’.’ The last guidance was issued in 1995 when council housing finance was very different from today.
Although the legal position will not change, the lack of guidance, the dilution of Labour’s plans for independent regulation of council housing, and the message the government is sending out that the operation of the ring fence is down to local discretion, combine to create a real danger for tenants. Council Finance Directors and local politicians of all hues will look enviously at a fairly well-funded HRA and see opportunities to shift resources to help their beleaguered General Funds.
The ring fence is easily breached and open to manipulation. In one council I worked with, there were more than 60 types of transaction between the HRA and the General Fund. These ranged from recharges for council overheads and democratic costs, to dozens of service level agreements with charges for items like central accountancy and HR, to procurement of office furniture, to rent for council premises. Then there are age-old practices where council tenants are charged twice, as rent payers and as council tax payers, for a single service – for example paying towards general street lighting but also paying extra for lighting on estate roads.
These charges have often been set historically with little challenge. One of the many benefits of ALMOs was that the process of setting up the management agreement required recharges and SLAs to be identified and renegotiated, a process sharpened by the need to obtain 2 stars in the inspection, which led to better services and significant cost reductions. My fear is that local discretion will reverse this progress and cost tenants dear over time. The temptation will be just too great – and it will undermine the move towards council housing being run as a self-financed business within the council, with services paid for out of rents in a very transparent way. The case for central guidance is strong.
Tenants have been vigilant on this in the past – witness the ‘Daylight Robbery’ campaign a few years back. In future, detailed tenant scrutiny of the local arrangements will be essential, and well-informed campaigning tenants groups could make a real difference.
In the details of the government’s affordable housing plans there was a section on the allocation of funding to London. There was no fixed quota, but the paper suggested that it would be in line with past allocations of grant, i.e. London would get 27% of what was available. “Under the 2008-11 Programme, London received funding estimated to deliver around 27% of national outputs. The HCA will seek to deliver a similar percentage of outputs from the new programme in London. The final figure will depend on the relative value for money of offers in London and elsewhere”
If we assume that affordable housing starts will be proportionate to the amount of funding available that means of the (up to) 85,000 new homes being built over the next 4 years, London will build 23,000.
That’s not going to redress the projected collapse of affordable housing in London that Alison Seabeck and Ken Livingstone recently warned of using the HCA’s own figures.
It may be worse than this. Affordable housing is more expensive to build in London, especially larger family homes that Boris Johnson has said will be his priority. They may need more grant per unit to make the finances of new development stack up.
Alternatively, the new affordable rent model does allow housing associations to make far more revenue by increasing rents in London, Increasing ‘affordable’ rents to 80% of market rents represents a very large increase in their income.
But there’s no guarantee that they’ll use that extra revenue to build more new homes in London – many housing associations may choose to build outside of London, where they get more bang for their buck and building is easier.
The future for affordable housing in London looks ever grimmer.
Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.
On top of the policies that have come out of Communities and Local Government department since the Election, which are bad enough, many people in the housing and local government world have been infuriated by the style of political argument adopted by Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps. It all seems so unpleasant.
Anybody with a contrary view is rubbished and serious debate about the huge and sweeping cuts to frontline services is reduced to a few soundbites about the salaries of some senior officers or a couple of funny-sounding job titles. The fact that Tory and Liberal councils are making huge cuts to frontline services is brushed aside as Labour councils are denounced for making supposedly politically-inspired cuts.
Shapps raised the political temperature by accusing Liverpool of a ‘disgraceful attack on the vulnerable’ when it made cuts to its supporting people programme. This was believed to be not entirely unconnected to the fact that the council pulled out as one of the vanguard communities for the Big Society – because of the scale of the cuts enforced by the Government. Last weekend Pickles accused Labour councils of adopting a “bleeding stump” strategy.
According to the BBC, Pickles said that Labour councils are making bigger than necessary cuts for ‘politically motivated reasons’ and that he ‘is angry about councils publicising spending cuts and blaming them on ministers.’ Even his own coalition partners have had enough: last month a large group of Lib Dems complained about his approach and said he was engaged in ‘gunboat diplomacy’ with local government.
It is therefore good to hear that the Cabinet Secretary has officially rebuked the Prime Minister over the ‘unacceptable’ behaviour of Pickles’ special advisers and the way in which they brief the media. Cameron has been told to ‘restrain his aides’. Politics is a rough old trade, as they say, but this action appears to be unprecedented. The Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell’s letter, according to PR Week, read: ‘This behaviour is unacceptable. I trust you will agree with me and take necessary action to make sure that people understand this will not be tolerated.’
All over the country Labour councils have been struggling with huge front-loaded cuts to their budgets. There have been large demonstrations at many council budget-making meetings by community organisations seeking to save their services, and Labour councillors dedicated to serving their communities have faced impossible decisions. Pickles ‘bleeding stump’ comment adds insult to injury and will cause enormous resentment.
It is probably unconnected, but last week I signed up to Twitter for the first time, only to receive an email within minutes which read “you are being followed by the Conservatives”. It’s an alarming thought.
Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.
This week the House of Commons Committee examining the Localism Bill moved on to Part 6 of the Bill, the part dealing with social housing. Over the coming few sessions, the Committee will look at the various government proposals for homelessness and allocations, social housing tenancies, mobility, regulation, HRA reform, complaints and the Ombudsmen function. It is a huge agenda of change, much of it controversial.
In the first debate on this part, Shadow Housing Minister Alison Seabeck set out some general comments on the government’s approach and that of the Labour opposition, extracts are included below.
Readers interested in the detail of the Bill and the Parties’ stances on the issues coming up can follow the full debate clause by clause through the ‘They Work for You’ website. Start the housing section of the Localism Bill here.
The Committee has a coalition majority and its members (all parties) currently are:
Extracts from speech of Alison Seabeck MP on 1 March 2011
“Social housing is an integral part of the housing mix in this country. It provides secure and affordable accommodation for low-income families, for pensioners and for people who are unable to work or who cannot find a job and are vulnerable. Historically, it has been a safety net ensuring that the most disadvantaged in our community, as well as those in housing need for a very broad range of reasons, retained the human right to a roof over their head. Housing is a human right that was upheld by the Supreme Court in a ruling on Manchester City Council v. Pinnock, and more recently in the case of Hounslow LBC v. Powell, in which the judges who heard the appeal talked about “respecting a person’s home”.
“Most importantly, social housing—I would prefer not to label it in that way—forms an essential part of many communities. They are homes, sometimes occupied by successive generations of the same family, which make up communities. Communities come in all shapes and sizes, but even those that may be seen by the outside world as difficult areas have a sense of strong community.
“The most recent statistics from the Department for Communities and Local Government show that 17% of households in England live in social rented housing; for pensioner households, the figure rises to more than a fifth. About a quarter of ethnic minority households live in social housing. The median household income in 2007-08 in social housing was just £10,900 a year. Those living in social housing are not in a land of milk and honey, as is sometimes suggested. Many are vulnerable, many are poor and any changes to the social housing system need to be approached carefully and with sensitivity. If only the Government had taken such an approach.
“We know that the proposals in the Bill did not feature in manifestos; they were either opposed or denied by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The Miniuster (Andrew Stunell) repeatedly put his name to early-day motions in the previous Parliament on matters which now fall within his portfolio. We want to understand at which point he changed his mind on the importance of security of tenure and affordability. Was it before or after he was appointed to a position within a Government led by a Tory Prime Minister?
“We seek to amend the Government’s proposals in order to increase protections, defend the long-held rights of those in social housing and those who expect to move into social housing, and provide safeguards for homeless families within the framework of the Bill.”
Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.
On 28 February, in answer to a Parliamentary Question, the Minister of State at Work and Pensions, Steve Webb, admitted that his department “has not estimated the proportion of tenants in social housing likely to claim housing benefit if rents for new tenants are let at 80% of market rates”.
This would seem a crucial piece of information and illustrates how much prejudice and how little evidence was used to determine the many changes to Housing Benefit the government is committed to introducing.
Fortunately others in the real world have been doing some background. At pretty much the same time as Mr Webb was making his admission, Family Mosaic Housing Association was publishing research based on real life calculations for a sample of their properties and tenants. This showed, in their words, that “setting rents at 80% of market rent would increase our clients’ requirement for housing benefit by 151%”.
Like a lot of housing associations, Family Mosaic does not seem to be hostile to the government’s proposals to introduce flexible tenancies or to put rents up to some extent to fund new development. It appears that quite a lot of landlords think that they should have more ‘freedoms’ and that their tenants should enjoy fewer rights (this is the long-term character flaw in my view). But at least FM deserve a little credit for digging into the issue and publishing the results.
The report states that “the impact on tenants will vary by location, with those living in inner London the hardest hit: for most of those in Essex, social rents are already at 60-80% market rates” and concludes that “for those tenants receiving benefits, the proposed new affordable housing model creates, or worsens, the poverty trap, acting as an additional disincentive to gain employment.” Rents for their properties in London would increase by over £100 per week and in some cases by over £200 per week. The worst affected people will be those on benefits facing large increases in rent but who are also likely to be caught by the overall benefits cap of £26,000, as Tony has pointed out in previous Red Brick posts.
If (when) the new rent regime comes in, income to FM to support their development programme would indeed increase, but this would be significant only in London. The cost would be shared by the new tenants paying higher rents and by Housing Benefit. If the increased cost in HB terms is anything like the figures published by FM, there will be a head-on collision between Godzilla – Eric Pickles’ policy of moving towards market rents as a way of funding development – and King Kong – Iain Duncan-Smith’s policy of cutting housing benefit to the bone.
Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.
As I lived in Westminster for nearly forty years, readers will forgive me if I have a sharper focus on what goes on there. There is normally plenty to report. Mostly over the forty years it has been bad news. Always run by the Tories, they sank from being a paternalist council that built an astonishingly high number of council houses in the late 60s and early 70s to the depredations of Lady Porter and the post-Porter policy of shipping as many homeless people as far away from the borough as possible.
But it is their policy on street homelessness that demonstrates that they have been, and remain, fully paid-up members of the nasty party. The latest event in a long history is their plan, through a new bye-law, to ban soup runs and make sleeping on the streets illegal in a defined zone of the city, around Westminster Cathedral in Victoria. (It was in the Daily Mail, under a headline containing the word ‘callous’, so it must be true).
There is a contradiction in the stance taken by Tory Cabinet member for Housing, Angela Harvey. She complains that, of the people attending the soup kitchens, “The majority will not be rough sleepers… you see them going off with large carrier bags stuffed full of food which is for them and their house mates.” Now if that is the case, logically you might ban the soup runs. Or you might exercise your mind and wonder why it is that people need to come out on a freezing night to find free food. But why would you ban street sleeping if the people attending the soup runs are already housed?
Old Etonian and millionaire Cabinet member Sir George Young once said (or ‘quipped’ if you prefer the softer version in Wikipedia): “The homeless? Aren’t they the people you step over when you are coming out of the opera?” Quip or not, it reveals an attitude which many long-term observers of Westminster Council think also reflects the council’s real motivations: keep the place tidy and get the poor out from under our feet.
There is a genuine debate about the effect of soup runs, and whether they save lives daily or encourage people to stay out of hostels and on the streets. Westminster knows it is a balanced argument because it sponsored research from LSE which produced a sensible assessment of the pros and cons in a report less than 2 years ago. The research identified the downsides of soup runs but concluded that they “provide a safety net by making available food and social contact to those who are unable or unwilling to access other services.”
But even if you think soup runs should be banned, the first article of the Bye-law is not about that. It bans street sleeping itself. “No person shall lie down or sleep in or on any public place.” And “No person shall at any time deposit any materials used or intended to be used as bedding in or on any public place”.
As Ken Livingstone put it:
“The idea with all the other problems we’ve got, with crime, that we should have police diverted to seizing their soup is just bizarre. I think this is just another: ‘Can we move the poor on from Westminister?’”
