The Social Housing Bill, whose main purpose is to introduce reforms to the Right to Buy, has been passed by the House of Lords and is now being debated in the House of Commons.  The Bill received its Commons Second Reading on 10 September and will begin its Committee Stage on 27 October.

The Government has announced its intention to lay new amendments to strengthen homelessness prevention and ensure social housing is allocated to those who need it most.

• Duty to Collaborate  -a new Duty to Collaborate will compel key public services to work together to prevent homelessness and support those who are at crisis point. Building on the existing Duty to Refer, it will require certain public services to be more proactive in identifying those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. It will also require those public services to take meaningful steps to prevent or relieve those individuals’ homelessness.  This reflects the government’s commitment to shifting the focus from crisis response to prevention and delivering the long-term reforms needed to tackle homelessness.
• Ensuring social housing is allocated to those who need it most  – the National Plan to End Homelessness  committed to consider levers to require social housing landlords to rehouse statutory homeless households referred by the council.  Councils will be given new powers to refer homeless households to private registered providers of social housing, strengthening collaboration between housing associations and councils, helping to reduce reliance on temporary accommodation and improve access to housing for those in greatest need. This will be similar to the provision in section 5 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 which has proved to be an important tool in providing access to housing for people owed a statutory homelessness duty.  There are many examples of strong partnership working between councils and housing associations to ensure social housing allocations are used effectively to prevent and end homelessness. This measure is intended to strengthen that joint working. Private Registered Providers will retain the ability to refuse referrals where there are good reasons.
• Disposals  – the Social Housing Bill already has a new disposals notification requirement, which will give councils and other social housing providers better opportunity to purchase social homes before they are sold outside the sector – which will help to retain our much-needed housing stock. The government has now set out that it intends to extend the notification period to from four weeks to eight weeks. Rachael Massey (copied) and team are leading on this measure.

The government’s Press Notice, outlining the new measures can be found here: Social Housing Bill to strengthen homelessness prevention and protect social housing stock – GOV.UK.