Next Workshop:
Thursday, 6th November, 2025.
Full-Day Workshop: (9:40 - 4:30)
Workshop Fee: £280 (No VAT)
Book 3 places and receive a 4th place FREE.
Also available for In-House Bookings - Online or at your own training venue. We also provide a separate Programme on this topic aimed at the RSL / Landlord Sector. Please contact us for details.
The Workshop is primarily aimed at local authority HB officers making decisions about supported accommodation cases, and managers planning the shape of their future services.
(We provide a separate Workshop and Programme for Accommodation PROVIDERS.)
HB & Supported Housing - Key Issues
An In-Depth Look At Practitioners’ FAQs
This day focuses on a small number of frequently discussed issues raised by local authorities in our postbag and on discussion forums. We approach the topics in roughly the order in which they would logically be considered when the Council is presented with a new scheme proposal.
We begin with the question whether a landlord satisfies the non-profit requirements in the definitions of “exempt” and “managed” accommodation. It is increasingly common to find accommodation providers incorporated as a Community Interest Company limited by shares, typically adopting model Articles of Association. Unpicking the key clauses in the different versions of the model Articles, we will consider whether a CIC is necessarily always a non-profit body. More generally, HB officers continue to be concerned by non-profit bodies that have a very slender real-world presence when they are slotted into a for-profit business structure involving care providers and property investors who often share members/directors with the non-profit body. We will see what the case law tells us about related party dealings and whether this undermines a provider’s non-profit status.
As well as being the right kind of landlord to provide specified accommodation, the landlord also needs to provide care, support or supervision if it is to satisfy the definition of “exempt accommodation”, which is necessary to avoid automatic rent restrictions such as LHA and bedroom tax. Here we will consider the recent increase in landlords relying on a Service Level Agreement between itself and the care provider under which it is claimed that some of the activities of care staff amount to support or supervision on the landlord’s behalf. Using two of the earliest exempt accommodation cases, R(H) 2/07 and the related WalsallJR case, we will consider what it takes for someone to be “interposed” as an “agent” for the landlord. We will also consider the wider question of what exactly is “more than minimal” support in various different types of scheme: supported living, single homeless, older people’s sheltered housing … and when it does and doesn’t affect the HB outcome!
If exempt/specified accommodation status is achieved, the next question is how much eligible rent should be allowed for HB. We will look at the available rent restriction mechanisms – those which apply automatically and those which involve discretion/judgement:
We close with the perennial favourite: Intensive Housing Management: can it be relied on as support to satisfy the exempt accommodation definition? Is it eligible to be funded by HB as a service charge? There are two landmark cases: CIS/1460/1995, and the more recent Allerdale UT case. These decisions need to be read carefully in the context of the Regulations as they stood at the material time – we will see how the treatment of “support” and services “connected with adequate accommodation” have evolved over time.
Delegates might well have their own cases that they would like to put forward for discussion during the day: With sufficient notice we can incorporate your questions as case studies so please feel free to forward anything you would like to have raised!
Presented by the “HB Anorak” Peter Barker who has many years’ experience dealing with complex supported accommodation case work and representing both local authorities and providers in appeal cases.
Topics Covered:
Non-Profit Bodies
· CIC model Articles
· Connections with property owners and care providers
Care, Support And Supervision
· SLA with the care provider
· What is “more than minimal”
o Supported living
o Single homeless
o Older people’s housing
Eligible Rent
· Restrictions
· Evidence
· Registered housing associations and others
Intensive Housing Management
· Support for exempt accommodation purposes?
· Eligible as a service charge?
Contact us for In-House & Online booking information.
We are always pleased to arrange most of our Workshops, such as this one, for staff from an individual organisation to be held at their own training venue or by Zoom/TEAMS. Please email us with your requirements for details.