{"id":659389,"date":"2025-12-28T08:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T08:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/659389\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T08:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T08:13:11","slug":"vulnerable-people-still-living-in-unsafe-supported-housing-in-england-two-years-after-law-was-passed-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/659389\/","title":{"rendered":"Vulnerable people still living in unsafe supported housing in England two years after law was passed | Housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

People are dying in unsafe accommodation and communities are being irreversibly damaged due to delays to a new law to clamp down on unregulated supported housing in England<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It has been more than two years since the Supported Housing<\/a> Act, a private member\u2019s bill brought by the Conservative MP Bob Blackman, that applies to England and Wales, was given royal assent but it has yet to be implemented due to delays in creating the regulations.<\/p>\n

It was designed to tackle the scandal of \u201cexempt\u201d supported accommodation, in which unscrupulous landlords are making millions of pounds via housing benefit, providing poor-quality homes for vulnerable people, often providing little or no support.<\/p>\n

Supported accommodation is typically used to house people who have recently been released from prison, people with substance abuse issues, people fleeing domestic violence or people with mental health problems who require support to live independently.<\/p>\n

The government launched a consultation on new regulations for the sector in February as part of the act but has yet to publish its response, and campaigners fear it could be years before the law becomes a reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m getting increasingly anxious and angry that we\u2019re in a position where this has been allowed to drift for two years now,\u201d said Blackman. \u201cIt has been left in limbo and local authorities are doing their own thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a real problem because we\u2019re not getting the right sort of impetus from the government, and as a result, I\u2019m pretty certain those rogue landlords are just making money hand over fist and increasing the number of properties they\u2019re involved in.\u201d<\/p>\n

He urged the government to move quicker to implement the act, which would introduce minimum standards, licensing schemes and a national expert advisory panel to monitor the sector.<\/p>\n

Jasmine Basran, the head of policy and campaigns at Crisis, said the charity had heard \u201chorror stories\u201d about exempt accommodation, including \u201crooms infested with mice and mould, people having to share a washing machine with 70 others, and people facing abuse and intimidation when trying to speak up\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said the passing of the act was a \u201chuge win\u201d and some rogue providers had left the sector as a result, but as the powers were yet to take effect, \u201cpeople in vulnerable situations were still at risk of exploitation\u201d.<\/p>\n

The main concern with the sector is that rogue providers are placing very vulnerable people in shared homes, which can exacerbate addiction issues and mental health problems, create violence and antisocial behaviour, and place strain on emergency services.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some residential areas, particularly in Birmingham<\/a>, which has about 30,000 exempt accommodation places, have become overrun by landlords converting family homes into eight- and nine-bed house-shares in order to capitalise on the higher rates of housing benefit it brings.<\/p>\n

Gill Taylor leads the Dying Homeless Project at the Museum of Homelessness and said there was real concern that people were dying in poor-quality exempt accommodation while delays with the legislation drag on.<\/p>\n

In its latest research, it was told about 36 deaths in exempt accommodation in 2024 across 10 local authorities, but as the vast majority of councils do not collect this data, it fears the total figure could be much higher.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are dying and people are suffering when they\u2019re not dying, and nobody knows about it,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with the data that we do have, it\u2019s quite patchy in terms of what we can really say about those people. They are dying really hidden, in potentially quite serious situations, and it\u2019s very unclear whether or not they were getting the support they deserved, or whether being in that accommodation was a factor in their deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said there was an urgent need to start collecting more data on how many exempt accommodation properties there were, and who was living in them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that local authorities don\u2019t care about this issue, it\u2019s that at the moment they simply have no way of knowing what\u2019s going on, to who, and where,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Some councils have started implementing their own measures to try to temper the growth of exempt accommodation, but campaigners said this does not do enough to clamp down on rogue providers.<\/p>\n

The market in Birmingham is dominated by five large providers, all of which have been deemed as \u201cnon-compliant\u201d by the Regulator of Social Housing.<\/p>\n

A report by administrators overseeing one recently bankrupt provider, Midland Livings CIC, said it had employed security guards to protects residents after a number of serious incidents.<\/p>\n

These included people associated with the company allegedly using \u201cthreatening behaviour and intimidation tactics to pressure residents into signing leases with other companies and to vacate premises at short notice, causing considerable distress to vulnerable tenants\u201d, as well as unlawful entry to homes, theft of white goods and diverting funds.<\/p>\n

A Ministry of Housing, Communities<\/a> and Local Government spokesperson said: \u201cThe failure to build enough safe and affordable homes has meant rising homelessness, unaffordable rents, and increased housing insecurity for millions of people across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we have set out our National Plan to End Homelessness, and just last week announced an additional \u00a3124m to help people in supported housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supported Housing Act is a priority for the government and implementation will begin next month \u2013 giving people the support they need and ensuring that providers consider the mix of people in their properties.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People are dying in unsafe accommodation and communities are being irreversibly damaged due to delays to a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-659389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115796194301565004","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}