Glossary of policies

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1996 Housing Act: This Act provides the current legal definition of homelessness in England and Wales. The 2001 (Housing) Scotland Act introduced slight changes to the legal definition in Scotland. Click here to read the full1996 Housing Act.
2001 Housing (Scotland) Act: This Act increased the rights of homeless people in Scotland by giving every homeless person the right to temporary accommodation while their case is assessed, every non-priority applicant the right to advice and information and temporary accommodation for a reasonable period, everyone a right to review homeless decisions, and ministers the power to establish minimum rights for people in hostels. It also strengthened the strategic function of local authorities, by placing a duty on authorities to produce homelessness strategies, and make advice and information free of charge and available to all.
2002 Homelessness Act: This Act applies in England and Wales, and requires local authorities to periodically develop homelessness strategies. It enhanced the level of assistance available to homeless people through the extension of priority need to include new groups of vulnerable people and through the requirement that all homeless people, even if not in priority need, receive advice and assistance which meets minimum standards.
2003 Homelessness etc. (Scotland) Act: The most important change in the Act was the committment to the abolition of priority need by 2012, which will mean that all unintentionally homeless households will be eligible to permanent accommodation from their local authorities. Other changes include greater duties towards those who are intentionally homeless, and the suspension of local connection.
A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering People to Work: The January 2006 DWP Green Paper outlined reform plans for the welfare system, including Housing Benefit Reform, which broadly constitutes a national roll out of the Local Housing Allowance scheme in the private rented sector.
Adult literacy and numeracy strategy: This is one of the two main adult learning programmes in Scotland. It does not have a specific agenda relating to homeless people, although they may be covered by some of the services.
Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS): This programme, which operates in England and Wales, enables a company (e.g. Boots) or a charity (e.g. Crisis) to go to a Primary Care Trust and request money to employ a GP or health care professional to deliver a particular type of service. This means that, unlike the Personal Medical Services or National Ehanced Service for Homeless People programmes, both the initiative, and the focus and shape of the consequent services lie with the voluntary or private sector provider.
Barker Review of Housing Supply: The 2004 Barker Review sponsored by HM Treasury provided a review of housing in England and found that the provision of social housing should be increased, to address the back log and keep up with demographic trends.
Better health, better Wales (1998): This is the Welsh Assembly's key health strategy, although it makes no explicit mention of homeless people.
Better Homes for People in Wales (2001): The national housing strategy for Wales recognises that home ownership is generally the tenure of choice, but also recognises the need for an adequate supply of decent, affordable rented accommodation in both the private rented sector and social sector, for those at the margins of home ownership.
Careers Scotland: Provides support primarily targeted at helping people aged 16 to 19 to address any barriers to getting into education, training or employment, which might include homelessness.
Community learning programme: This programme, which operates in Scotland, is centred on learning and social development work with individuals and groups in their communities using a range of formal and informal methods. A ‘community' can either be a geographic community or a specific group of people who share one or more characteristics, such as homeless people. The programmes and activities are developed in dialogue with the community itself, depending on their needs.
Connexions: This programme, which operates in England, provides support for young people aged between 13 and 19, its main focus is to get young people back into learning but also provides advice and support across a wide range of areas including housing advice, family mediation, and drug and alcohol services.
Employability Framework: The Employability Framework was established in Scotland in 2004 to improve access to jobs as well as quality of jobs, for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Five working groups have been set up, one of which will deal with the ‘workless', which will look at barriers to work, and initiatives that can help disadvantaged groups (one of which is homeless people).
Empty Homes Initiative: This initiative operated in Scotland between 1999 and 2003. It aimed to encourage owners of empty properties to voluntarily lease them to the local authority or a Registered Social Landlord (RSL) to supplement social housing stock.
Extending entitlement: supporting young people in Wales: The Welsh youth policy sets out ten key entitlements of young people, including advice on health, housing benefits and other issues provided in an accessible form. It aims to guide and encourage young people to take up their entitlement. It is likely that homelessness will become one of the national priorities of Extending Entitlement, which will mean that the delivery agents will be expected to shape their agenda around young homeless people.
Health and Homelessness Action Plans: These plans set out the actions that Scottish NHS Boards will take to address the health needs of homeless people in their area, it is understood that some of these plans have led to the development of new services for homeless people, such as joint training, hospital discharge protocols to prevent homelessness, service user involvement, health improvement initiatives and raising awareness of health issues.
Health and Homelessness Standards: Launched in March 2005, these standards for Scottish NHS Boards aim to raise the standard of health and homelessness planning and ensure that homeless people have the same level of health services across Scotland as the rest of the community.
Homelessness: an action plan for prevention and effective response: This is the final report of the Scottish Homelessness Task Force, which highlighted the importance of addressing all the varying needs of homeless people individually to ensure that housing solutions will be sustainable. The report highlights the need to: address the supply of affordable housing; secure sufficient resources for implementation alongside realistic timescales; recognised the crucial role of support of various kinds; the importance of cross-departmental working and the empowerment of people experiencing homelessness. The recommendations were fully endorsed by the Scottish Parliament, and those relating specifically to homelessness were taken forward in the 2003 Homelessness etc (Scotland) Act.
Homelessness code of guidance for local authorities: This ODPM guidance for local authorities in England provides statutory guidance on how local authorities should discharge their functions and apply the various statutory criteria in practice. Substantial guidance is provided on housing issues, however there is limited substantive guidance on issues of training and employment, which is limited to a list of organisations and government schemes that may be of use.
Homelessness Task Force final report: See Homelessness: an action plan for prevention and effective response.
Housing Benefit: 16-hour Rule: This rule stipulates that anyone over the age of 18 cannot claim Housing Benefit if they are studying for more than 16 hours a week. This can impede the efforts of claimants to gain further skills and break free of the low skill-low wage cycle.
Housing Benefit: Benefit Run-on: The benefit run-on policy means that claimants, who have previously been claiming Income Support or JobSeeker's Allowance for at least six months, retain their Housing Benefit entitlement, unchanged, for 4 weeks after taking up employment. . The job must also last for five weeks or more for claimants to be entitled to the run-on.
Housing Benefit: Non-dependent deductions: The non-dependent deduction is a measure whereby when an occupant or family member reaches 18, a deduction is made from the total HB received by the family unit. The reduction is dependent on the income of the non-dependent, if they work for more than 16 hours a week
Housing Benefit: Single Room Rent Restriction (SRR): Claimants under the age of 25, without dependent children, currently qualify for lower levels of Housing Benefit than those aged 25 and over. The amount of HB they are eligible for is restricted to the average cost of renting a room in a shared house.
The Housing (Right to Acquire and Right to Buy) (Designated Rural Areas and Designated Regions) (Wales) Order 2003: This piece of legislation means that local authorities now have the option to restrict re-sale through Right to Buy, to those that have lived in the area for three years, or to insist that the local authority is given the first refusal.
Lead tenancy schemes: Since 1992, Registered Social Landlords in Scotland have been funded via a grant system to enter into arrangements with private sector landlords to provide reasonable quality housing for rent.
Learn Direct: This progranmme which operates in England and is funded by the Learning and Skills Council, aims to provide a flexible way of learning with no rigid commitment necessary. The courses are potentially accessible to homeless people, since all that is needed to register is an email address.
Learning Community Accounts: Wales: This policy aims to enable communities to identify learning needs and to support them in developing and engaging in learning activity, they are linked to national priorities, with an emphasis on basic skills and employability skills.
Modernising the Right To Buy: This Scottish legislative change means that local authorities can apply to be considered for ‘pressure area status', and therefore suspend Right To Buy, if they meet certain conditions.
More than a roof: a report into tackling homelessness: The homelessness policy programme for England set out in this 2002 report emphasised the importance of research to develop evidence-based policy focussing on cost effective measures of preventing homelessness, including: further development of partnerships (e.g. between local authorities and voluntary organisations involved with homeless people); improved access to advice, assistance and information; the development of schemes to help people maintain tenancies; and housing solutions such as encouraging private rented accommodation and wider use of rent deposit schemes.
National Enhanced Service for Homeless People (NES): This contract is available to GPs in England and Wales, who provide a specialised service according to specific guidelines drawn up to help disadvantaged groups (one of which is homeless people). It differs from Personal Medical Services in that the GP remains in a General Medical Services (GMS) contract.
National Homelessness Strategy: Wales: The Welsh homelessness strategy is based on the principle that everyone in Wales should have access to a decent affordable home and sets out the definition of homelessness as "any person who lacks accommodation or where the tenure is not secure". The strategy includes a number of targets for April 2008. Please click here to view the National Homelessness Strategy for Wales in full.
National Housing Strategy: Wales: See Better Homes for People in Wales
National Standards for Housing Information, Advice and Services: This Scottish policy outlines the quality standards that local authority housing advice is expected to meet.
New Deal and Building on the New Deal: local solutions meeting individual needs: The New Deal programme offers counselling and guidance to UK job seekers, provision of education and training to the unskilled, and provision of work experience. The programme was adapted in April 2004 to make it more suitable to Homeless people. Building on the New Deal (June 2004) outlined plans for a national strategy for the most disadvantaged.
New Futures Fund Initiative: This pre New-Deal approach in Scotland consisted of a pilot between 1998 and 2005, and aimed to involve chaotic service users and those for whom Job Centre Plus initiatives are too structured and difficult to access. The project has had a considerable impact on homeless people, with 19 of the 71 projects directly targeting homeless people, however no results for outcomes for homeless people are known. Some have continued where funding has been available.
ODPM policy briefing on homelessness and employment: This June 2003 ODPM (now DCLG) policy briefing stated that local authority homelessness strategies are the main and most effective way in which training and employment opportunities can be improved for homeless people. However, it provides little guidance on what the strategies should say on training and employment.
Personalised Medical Services (PMS): This service is available in England and Scotland, and comprises a locally agreed contract between GPs and their local Primary Care Trust to provide a service to a particular group of people in their area, which can include homeless people.
Priority Need (Homeless) (Wales) Order 2001: This Order broadened the categories of people to be considered in priority need in Wales: in addition to those set out in the Housing Act 1996, the following became priority need categories: a care leaver or person at particular risk of sexual or financial exploitation aged between 18 years and 21; a 16- or 17-year-old; a person fleeing domestic violence or threatened with domestic violence; a person homeless after leaving the armed forces and a former prisoner homeless after being released from custody. Please click to read Priority Need (Homeless) (Wales) Order in full.
Progress to Work/Progress to Work Link Up: Progress to Work (P2W) is a tailor-made employment support programme linked into Jobcentre Plus programmes, which is designed specifically to help drug mis-users back into work. P2W Link Up is the same programme, but expanded to cover other groups with support needs, including homeless people, ex-offenders, and alcohol mis-users. The schemes are typically operated by specialist service providers (such as Turning Point) on behalf of Jobcentre Plus.
Rent guarantee schemes: Following recommendations from the Homelessness Task Force, all local authorities in Scotland had a duty to provide access to rent guarantee schemes by 2004. These schemes guarantee the deposit of a tenant, and no money is actually handed over.
Right to Buy: See Modernising the Right to Buy (Scotland) and The Housing (Right to Acquire and Right to Buy) (Designated Rural Areas and Designated Regions) (Wales) Order 2003
Scottish Homelessness Employability Network (SHEN): This network was set up in Scotland to improve employment opportunities and promote employability for homeless people, particularly to ensure the mainstreaming of provision piloted under the New Futures Fund Initiative. In 2005 SHEN published a strategy entitled "Working it out: towards an employability strategy for those facing homelessness".
Skills and Employment Action Plan: Of particular interest for homeless people in the Welsh skills and employment action plan is the ‘Employability Package', which will develop a programme to include information, advice and guidance; innovative and flexible provision to suit individual needs; mentoring support; and a continuum of learning, which will enable people to progress from pre-employment training to workplace training. No specific mention is made of homeless people in relation to the ‘employability package', but the plan does recognise homeless people as a group requiring sustained help into employment.
Skills for Life: The 2001 English skills strategy identified homeless people as a group in particular need of skills development, but the definition of homelessness used only covered those who have successfully applied to their local authority to be classified as homeless.
Skills: Getting on in business, getting on at work: This 2005 White Paper applies to England, and talks in general terms about helping disadvantaged groups, but makes no specific reference to homeless people. There is also little indication that the proposed methods for tackling skills disadvantage have taken specific account of homeless people. The 2003 Skills strategy 21st century skills - realising our potential similarly does not mention homelessness specifically.
Social inclusion: opening the door to a better Scotland: This document formed part of Scotland's social inclusion strategy before the Homelessness Task Force was introduced and reveals the high priority of homelessness issues in Scotland, including a discussion about homelessness and, in particular, raising the need for local homelessness prevention strategies. The lack of homeless related targets in subsequent social justice strategies is likely to be due to the emphasis given elsewhere e.g. Homelessness Task Force.
Supporting People: This programme, launched in 2003, which operates in England and Wales, was a new single grant programme to rationalise existing funding streams for housing related support services for vulnerable people, including those who might be at risk of homelessness. The type of provision offered includes housing management, housing related support (such as independent living skills), home care, meals services and personal care. It was a new single grant programme to rationalise existing funding streams.
Sustainable Communities: Building For The Future: This 2003 English housing strategy document explicitly stated that "a return to social housing is inappropriate, since home ownership is the tenure of choice", although for many homeless and potentially homeless people, whilst ownership may be an aspiration, it is simply not a viable option due to its cost.
Sustainable Communities: Homes For All: The 2005 English housing strategy states that the government is committed to tackling existing shortages by increasing the annual supply of new social homes by 50%, providing an extra 10,000 social rented homes per year by 2008 and by bringing empty homes back into use.
Sustainable Communities: Settled homes; changing lives: 2005: This English homelessness strategy sets out the Government's plans for reducing homelessness and halving the number of households living in insecure temporary accommodation by 2010.
Unsuitable Accommodation (Scotland) Order 2004: The Order requires temporary accommodation for families and pregnant women to meet certain standards (for example, 24-hour access, exclusive use of toilet and sink, access to cooking facilities, suitable for children, etc), if it does not then the accommodation will be deemed unsuitable and families cannot be accommodated in it. In practice, the Order mainly targets bed-and-breakfast accommodation since many of them do not meet the basic standards and will therefore be deemed unsuitable.
Working Tax Credit: Introduced in April 2003, this is the first tax credit which people in work but without children can apply for. However, to qualify, a single person must be working at least 30 hours per week and must be aged 25 or over, despite neither of these restrictions applying to people with children. This is likely to mean that many single homeless working people do not qualify, given that many often only work part-time and that homelessness disproportionately affects young people.
Youth Gateway service: This is the nearest equivalent to the English Connexions programme in Wales, it is run by Careers Wales, and was established in 1999 following concern about the high number of young people in Wales who were not in education, employment or training. It aims to address the barriers to non-participation, a major one being homelessness.

Page last modified on 30/06/2006 at 12:34

Glossary of policies

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