Part of the School of Law PhD Seminar Series
Carla Reeson (Housing/Homelessness law)
Abstract
For local housing authorities, 2018 has been a year of significant turbulence. Within a period of retrenchment to the broader welfare state and cuts in local authority budgets, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA) emerged. This ambitious piece of legislative reform introduces new and expanded duties on local authorities to assist cases of homelessness and threatened homelessness. Alongside the largest change to English homelessness legislation in 40 years, a new system of national homelessness data collection was implemented.
The new system, H-CLIC, moves from a quarterly aggregated report submitted by local authorities, to case level reporting of local authority actions, and collects vastly more information than its predecessor. This new system was introduced to local authorities on 3 April 2018 to coincide with the HRA entering into force - creating a perfect storm.
Knowing how the first year of the implementation of the HRA has gone is important. My PhD research conducting ethnographies within two local authorities explores this on the ground, but a large indication could have come from the picture provided by national homelessness statistics. My research has indicated however that H-CLIC is struggling to collect reliable data.
This presentation will discuss the issues that have arisen within local authorities relating to the introduction of H-CLIC; excessive administrative burden, a gap in their own local level data collection and lack of confidence in the quality of their own data submissions. It will consider the implications of these ongoing issues for service delivery and for measuring the effects of the HRA. The first MHCLG statistical release based on H-CLIC data raises more questions than it answers, which will be demonstrated through a closer look at data on temporary accommodation. As housing officers work to get to grips with the new system, deeper questions around governmentality and audit society also arise.