MPs back plans giving councils more time to house those at risk of homelessness

Independent

28-03-2025

Proposals to give local authorities more time to find accommodation for those at risk of homelessness have been supported in the Commons.
Conservative MP Bob Blackman said his Homelessness Prevention Bill aims to reduce the risk of people in 'highly vulnerable positions' being forced to sleep rough.
Under current rules, local authorities must take reasonable steps to help secure accommodation for any eligible person who is homeless or at risk of homelessness within 56 days.
Mr Blackman's private member's Bill proposes to increase the prevention duty timeframe to six months, in addition to placing a requirement on local authorities to keep a record of the steps taken to prevent homelessness.
Speaking to the PA news agency, the MP for Harrow East said he was 'delighted' the Bill had passed its second reading, adding: 'I applaud the wisdom of the House in allowing this to get through to being considered further in committee.
'The whole idea is to extend the prevention duties on local authorities from 56 days to six months, so… we don't end up with more people sleeping rough on our streets.
'There's still a long way to go before it comes into law, but I had a meeting with the minister last week where we discussed this in some detail and hopefully, eventually, we will get this on the statute books and ensure that people in highly vulnerable positions that are potentially being forced to sleep rough will be assisted by local authorities instead.'
Mr Blackman said the Bill would build on the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which he introduced to Parliament in June 2016 to place duties on housing authorities to prevent homelessness.
He said 1.4 million people had been assisted as a result of the Act, adding: 'The Homelessness Reduction Act was to reduce the number of people becoming homeless, this is the natural follow-on that says that local authorities basically will have a statutory duty to prevent anyone from becoming homeless.'
Elsewhere in the Commons, a Bill which sought to ensure children entering the care system are only placed out of their local areas in exceptional circumstances failed to get Government support.
The Looked After Children (Distance Placements) Bill by Labour MP Jake Richards ran out of time on Friday.
It would have required councils to collect more information about children who have been placed in distance placements.
Local authorities would also have to put together plans to assess the capacity for them to look after children. The Government would need to write a national plan along the same lines.
Mr Richards, Rother Valley MP, said he wanted to ensure 'there is good, safe care places in every locality across the country, so that children are not placed miles and miles away from their communities, their families, their schools and their friends'.
Mr Richards said freedom of information request data showed nearly 10% of children in care in England are living more than 50 miles from home, and 4% are living more than 100 miles away, with some being placed across national borders in Wales or Scotland.
He said: 'These are not decisions taken through incompetence.
'They are a result of a system that lacks capacity, co-ordination and meaningful planning, and the impact on children's lives, their education, their mental health, their relationships is profound.
'This Bill does not ban distant placements, as I've already touched upon there will always be cases where a child must be moved. But what it does say, and says firmly, is that distance should never be the default. It should never be driven by gaps in provision, lack of planning, or market dysfunction.'
Responding on behalf of the Government, education minister Janet Daby said: 'I'm clear that a child should only ever be placed far away from their home where it is in their best interest.
'But in the current system we know that the lack of availability and suitable placements in their local area is too often the deciding factor for far too many children being placed in care too far away from their home and their community.'
She added that local authorities already have 'an existing duty on them to collect data on out-of-area placements'.
She said: 'Since being the minister I've come to realise this data is actually published every year, therefore the proposals in this Bill (are) unlikely to tell us anything new about local authorities sufficiency that will help.
'This data tells us that, on the 31st of March 2024, more than two-thirds of children were placed less than 20 miles from their home, but that 45% of children are placed outside of their local authority boundary.
'This is not good enough, but there are also many situations within these statistics where a placement further away is in the child's best interest, and is part of their care plan.'