Supported housing cuts push elderly into debt

More than 27,000 elderly tenants are paying extra for their care because of shortfalls in funding for supported housing.

A report buried on a government website, and published last week, shows that 27,165 tenants, mainly elderly residents of sheltered housing, face higher charges because cuts to the £1.8bn Supporting People fund mean it does not cover their support.

In all, 148 housing providers in 46 local authorities are making the charges. Other providers are covering the shortfall from their own resources.

The announcement gave no figures for the amount tenants were charged but it is believed that typical charges vary between £1 a week and £1 a month.

Housing organisations said tenants on benefits could struggle with the additional payments. They added that the move set a precedent for future shortfalls in government funding to be met by tenants.

Nigel Rogers, director of supported housing umbrella body SITRA, said: “If this goes on we shall have a real problem. People will be getting into arrears. The idea of 27,000 older people accumulating debt becomes a political issue.”

He added that he did not think many providers were collecting the money yet.

The shortfalls had arisen because cuts to Supporting People funds meant many councils did not give housing providers extra money to account for inflation. In addition, Supporting People funding announcements have often been made too late for housing providers to take account of funding when setting their rents and charges.

Margaret Everall, business development manager at older people’s association Anchor Trust, said: “At the moment we have not charged any shortfall to tenants. We are in the process of negotiating with local authorities to get an increase and we hope it will work.” She said the association had not inflated its Supporting People bids and therefore could not meet the shortfall from its own resources.

Housing organisations urged the ODPM to clarify how providers should charge for sheltered housing. Diane Henderson, head of care and support at the National Housing Federation, said: “The ODPM need to have a quick but detailed review of how this type of contract is working and see if we can offer practical changes.”

An ODPM spokeswoman said the department “does not believe that it is reasonable for service users to have to meet the resulting charge from their own pockets”. She said there had been no significant increase in the number of additional charges and that it was up to local authorities to ensure that residents did not pay more for services.

However, she added: “The ODPM is looking at a range of different contracting models that might help to resolve this situation.”

The quarterly ODPM report, Milestones, collects data from the local authorities that run the Supporting People programme.

It also found that 81 local authorities had a potential underspend and 57 had a potential overspend, with three notably over budget.