The government has admitted that it made a mistake in the funding announced for new schemes under Supporting .
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister wrote to councils last week apologising for the error in the funding for pipeline schemes that open before March 2006.

ODPM officials originally told councils the pipeline fund figure included the social housing management grant as well as Supporting People money. In fact SHMG pipeline funding was not included in the figure.

Ken Davies, spokesman for the Supporting People Advisory Network, representing supported housing providers and councils, said the announcement would help to calm the sector's worries about the new funding regime for supported housing services, which comes into force on 1 April.

Davies said councils would be able to judge the impact of the change when they received their revised figures from the ODPM and the Housing Corporation.

David Smith, Sunderland council's lead officer for Supporting People, said the council's pipeline funding still had a shortfall despite the announcement.

The revenue funding for the schemes, covered by Supporting People, was too low and this would not be helped by SHMG, which covers capital costs, he said.

Meanwhile, the ODPM has issued guidance for councils on service reviews in a bid to ease providers' fears about cost cutting. The guidance said services should have a year's notice before closure or major change. Supported housing providers had feared that councils would give short notice periods, such as three months, in a bid to make savings during the first year.

The guidance also said early service reviews should focus on:

  • services opened very recently
  • services that are expensive for their sector
  • services identified as poorly managed before they received their Supporting People contracts
  •  services that do not meet grant conditions, like care services shifted to Supporting People from social services budgets
  • services that do not fit strategic objectives, such as reducing homelessness.

It suggested that other budgets could contribute to the cost of running services. It also appeared to suggest that newly created floating support services, which councils may have started in order to bulk up their Supporting People funds, should be the first to close if there was no need for them.

Source

Housing Today