Welcome to this afternoon’s session of the Justice Committee, which is the beginning of the second part of our rehabilitation and resettlement inquiry. We are looking specifically at the issue of accommodation for those leaving custody. We have a very experienced and expert panel who I will ask to introduce themselves after the Committee members have done their usual declarations of interest, beginning with Tony Vaughan KC.

Good afternoon. I am Pam Cox. I am the MP for Colchester. My interests are as declared on the register, but I am also the chair of the APPG on penal reform.

Andy Slaughter. I am the chair of this Committee. I am a non-practising barrister. I am a member of several trade unions, including Unite and GMB. I am the patron of two justice-related charities, The Upper Room and Hammersmith & Fulham Law Centre.

Hello. I am Sarah Russell. I am the Member of Parliament for Congleton. I am a member of various trade unions. I am a solicitor and I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on access to justice.

Hello. I am Tessa Munt. I am the Member of Parliament for Wells and Mendip Hills, in Somerset. I should point out that everything is written up in my declaration of interests, but I am also the vice-chair and a director of WhistleblowersUK, a non-profit-making organisation. I am the vice-chair of the APPG on penal affairs.

Hello. I am Vikki Slade, MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole. My register of interests is on the website, but I have no relevant registered items.

Hello, good afternoon. I am Warinder Juss, Member of Parliament in Wolverhampton West. I am a solicitor, although not practising, and I am a member of the GMB trade union executive council as well as a member of various APPGs.

Thank you very much. Gentlemen, could I ask you to introduce yourselves, starting with Dr Kerridge?

I am Dr Thomas Kerridge. I am policy manager at the homelessness charity, Crisis.

I am Gary Teper, managing director of the Housing Network. We are a specialist provider of accommodation and support to public authorities.

I am Peter Airey, the director of the Property and Community Accommodation Services at Nacro. Nacro is a social justice charity. We work with about 30,000 people a year, predominantly in the criminal justice space, but also providing a range of other supported housing and education services.

I am Andrew Bridges. I am the grandly titled strategic director for NAPA Community Interest Company, which is a tiny organisation of two very part-time staff. We are the collective eyes, ears and voice of the independent providers of approved premises within the overall approved premises sector, of which more later, no doubt.

More now, in fact, because I am going to start with some questions, which are principally, Mr Bridges, to you, although if anybody else wants to chip in they are very welcome to. For those who are watching and may not be entirely as familiar with this as you all are, we want to look at the community accommodation service tiers, beginning with tier 1, which is approved premises. I do not know whether it is unfair to say this, but this is for the most serious offenders on leaving custody and with the highest degrees of supervision. From our perspective, looking at rehabilitation, obviously we want to look at the issue of accommodation primarily—that is what this is about—but also risk and how types of accommodation deal with risk. On that basis, could I ask you, first of all, to provide a brief overview of what CAS1 accommodation, approved premises, is and how it works?

Thank you. Approved premises are what used to be called probation hostels or halfway homes or houses. Nowadays, those residences are, as you rightly say, the designated specialist providers of accommodation and other services for people being released from prison who are deemed to be high risk. There are about 90 APs—we say AP for approved premises—that are run directly by HMPPS across England and Wales. There are another 14 at the moment, and soon a few more, that are independently provided by a number of separate independent providers. As I say, NAPA is simply the collective eyes, ears and voice for those APs.

What is the difference, if there is one, between those which are managed by HMPPS and those managed independently?

Frankly, it is the arrangements for managing them. One is directly managed; the other is commissioned and then contract-managed, if you like. The other difference—it just happens to be the case—is that, as far as APs for women are concerned, although there are very much fewer of those because very much fewer women need them, of the eight that exist in total, five are provided by independent providers. We are a small minority of the overall number, but we are actually a majority of that very small number that are specifically for women.

As I think you have hinted already, the primary purpose of approved premises is to protect the public by managing complex needs and behaviours within a rehabilitative and recovery-focused environment. Is this what they are doing? Is that reflected in practice by what happens in them at the moment?

I certainly invite you to keep a close eye on the HM inspectorate reports because they have now started coming out on a regular basis, about two a month. You will find that, although, as you will have noticed, most inspectorate reports on probation delivery units and so forth have not been very good, the ones that have come out so far on APs are considerably more positive. I certainly invite you to look at the one that comes out tomorrow, which is on the first independent. You will find that their public protection work is seen as being good. What I expect to find, because this has historically been the case, is that the independents will probably come out a little better on the rehabilitation side than the state side. There are two things here: both the state and the independents are and do seem to be coming out well on public protection. There is no reason why the state ones cannot also do well on the rehabilitation side. I am sorry if that sounds a bit jargonistic, but I am just trying to keep it general at the moment.

Thank you for that. Presumably they are supposed to deal with all cohorts of offenders.

Yes, sorry.

People with mental health problems, IPP prisoners.

If they are deemed to be of high risk of harm to others, that is it. There is a little bit more flexibility in relation to female provision, but it is high need, even if it is not, directly, direct risk of harm to others.

If you are dealing with a variety of different conditions, do you have specific APs devoted to, perhaps, mental health?

Yes, there are the psychologically informed environment APs. The very first one inspected was a state-run AP in York, which had a very positive report, assisted by the fact that they have the staff they need to do the job well in a case like that. But, still, it was a great credit to them; they did very well in the report. That is an example of them. At the moment, none of the independents are what is called a PIPE, the psychologically informed planned environment, but they could be.

Part of the purpose, as I said before, for APs is that they have to effectively manage risk.

Yes.

One of the ways you deal with risk is recall, and that is another area that we are looking at. What impact does being recalled to approved premises have on efforts towards rehabilitation? How often do recalls from approved premises reflect a genuine increase in risk of serious harm?

If I start by taking a step back and say that people will be aware that there has been a huge increase in the number of recalls generally by probation, I do not think that is reflected particularly as far as the APs are concerned.

Because it was high anyway?

There was a certain number anyway, so that has not particularly changed in the last year or two. I think it is inevitable that that provision always has to be there, because, once you are released from prison and you are no longer locked up, obviously you are simply subject to rules. That means you are putting the people in authority in the position of being able to decide after the event what to do if something you did not want to happen has happened. In an AP setting, you particularly also have to remember that all the other residents are watching. Therefore, it is not surprising that there has to be some use of recall in APs on the whole. That is regrettable but understandable. What has probably increased slightly recently is that, because there are new arrangements for allocating cases to APs, and, therefore, more people are coming with later notice than there should be and are not necessarily well prepared, there are more immediate failures than there used to be. Some people blame that on the unit doing the allocating, but the way I would put it is that the unit doing the allocating, now that it is quite efficient, is actually revealing a problem in the system—that it is actually quite difficult to match cases to beds, if I can use that reductive language.

Would you say that reducing the number of recalls, while protecting the public, is difficult because it is not entirely within the hands of the AP itself?

Well, it isn’t, and it probably wouldn’t be particularly desirable. I do not think that recall is particularly an issue within the AP sector. I certainly think it is elsewhere.

Do you happen to know off the top of your head what percentage of recalls are from APs and how many there are?

It is percentages of different populations. I could not give that to you, to be perfectly honest.

No, fair enough. Is there enough provision to meet demand for those who are eligible for APs nationally, for men and for women?

The Ministry of Justice and HMPPS themselves know that they would definitely want there to be more AP places. Their projections show that they ideally want 300 to 500 more, but APs don’t come cheap.

They are not very popular when you want to build one.

No, it is very difficult to get one established anywhere, but it does happen.

You mentioned that they are not cheap. What is the price and how is it priced?

I did some homework on this, you will be glad to hear. We are looking at round about £60,000 for a bed, as the language is, for the contracts starting from next April; so that is next year’s price. You know what has been bid for and that is the figure. There is quite a bit of variability among those. It is more expensive in the south-east. If you have bigger hostels, there is a lower unit cost and so forth. If you think of round about £60,000, you are not far out.

I appreciate you may not know this, but how does it compare to the price of a prison place?

I am not fully up to date. Fifteen years ago, I was talking about £40,000 for a prison place and that was regarded as a bit low. I am not up to speed with what figure is currently being quoted, but I think you will find that HMPPS has a benchline figure they could give you. I think it is a bit less, but not by much, in fairness, because, mainly, you do not have unit cost efficiency. You are talking about very rare places and, in fact, you would not want a residence that had more than 30 beds, for example. They are usually around the 24 to 28 mark.

Is your expectation from somebody in an AP that they will move to CAS2 or CAS3 accommodation, and where do they go next? How long do they stay there, typically?

I think, in theory, they could, but it has not been set up as being that kind of progression. Forgive the language; I do not think it is a conveyor belt from one to the next to the next. Each AP has its own arrangements with local authorities, local accommodation providers, to help people move into independent accommodation. I have little doubt that Gemma Birkett will have told you about what they do at Elizabeth Fry. I could also point you to the Compass Project at St John’s in Leeds, because they have an arrangement, in effect, with a whole collection of private landlords. That is probably the best example I have seen of a structured arrangement to help people move into the wider accommodation market, so moving out of specialist accommodation and into proper housing. Until you do that, all you are going to do is bung up the provision of specialist accommodation.

Is there an average length of time that they are there?

In APs, they are required to move on after 12 weeks, with one or two exceptions. There is an exception to every rule, yes.

For a serious offender with, perhaps, mental health and other problems, you get 12 weeks, you say, in an AP. Then you are expected to move to live in temporary private accommodation.

Not necessarily temporary, but, yes, you are trying to move people on. I have also spoken to specialist housing workers at Hestia AP in London and they are very good at making the connection. There is usually a certain amount of, if you like, post-move-on support. It is quite well-known sometimes for an AP resident to come back for a friendly face and advice, and so forth, as well, so it is not quite that abrupt. But you are right in principle; it is quite an abrupt changeover, to be frank.

Presumably not everyone, but most people—men and women leaving custody—will have a home area to go to.

Yes, that is true.

Is the idea that they go to an AP in that area? Whether it matters where they are in the AP, if they are then moving to live independently, they will probably want to be somewhere they are familiar with. I would have thought that could be particularly problematic for women if there are only a few APs for women.

Nowadays that is thought to be the preferred route. I can remember 40 to 50 years ago it was thought to be a good idea to move people to the other end of the country and find a new life, but that does not seem to be the preferred option nowadays. Where possible, one tries to accommodate people roughly in the area where they come from. Of course, you are also right to point out that some people are also actually going back to a home or family home, or whatever, having been able to demonstrate that they can behave in a way that has been less risky than it was in the past.

Can you place people in APs that are close to where they come from?

Sometimes yes and sometimes no.

Is that more problematic for women, if you have only eight?

Because there are only eight in England and Wales, or certainly in England, altogether, inevitably some are quite a fair distance to travel to and, occasionally, of course, the one that is nearest to your home happens to be full at that moment and you are put somewhere else. Nobody likes this, let’s be blunt about that.

Understood. That is all from me for the time being.

We will broaden out the discussion to the CAS2 provision and I will direct my comments to Peter, if I may. Could you provide an overview of the CAS2 accommodation, how it works and the differences for provision for women as well, please?

CAS2 operates nationally across England and Wales in every probation region through one single contract covering that geography, managed through a single referral route. It predominantly has three principal aims. It is about the efficient use of custody. In almost all instances it is an alternative to custody. The highest priority cohort are bailees, closely followed by those on home detention curfew, who are the majority being housed. Within that, the accommodation is provided with frequent support. We provide an average of support for about two hours a week, with each property visited three times a week. Some of the engagement with that support is typically a condition of the licence. A second primary aim is about reporting in compliance with court orders or licence conditions. There is, in fact, a public protection duty within it. The third key outcome, which I think is the bit that, as a charity, we are particularly committed to, is about creating a platform for resettlement. In terms of that offer of support and the way we engage with people, every individual has a support plan, a safety plan. We work closely with CPPs, community probation practitioners, typically, to enable them to provide that support. As with other accommodation that has tiers, the anticipation is that we are aiming to move people on into settled accommodation afterwards. It is not that we have to select a wholly distinct offering as opposed to the kind of pathway that was described earlier. I can talk a little bit more about that or I can talk about the women’s service, in particular.

Yes. Is there a significant difference between women’s experience of this service, would you say?

I think that is what I would say. For women, what we have referred to as the female estate is a minimum of 10% of the proportion taken nationally and, again, existing in every region. It is typically our smaller accommodation. I should have said that each of the homes is between one to four beds—shared accommodation. The women’s estate is typically smaller, so it is generally two beds. Female support staff will always provide that provision. We have done a number of things in response to hearing women’s experiences that have made some recent changes. Everybody who arrives is offered a welcome pack that is particularly tailored with some of the things that you might anticipate, such as sanitary products, cleaning products, clothing, underwear—things that we know that people often do not have when they arrive with us. We have CCTV coverage across the entrances of all of our female estate, which we are actually expanding across the whole estate. We started it there to give that sense of safety, in particular, given some of the experiences that women have had. With regard to the staff there, I will be honest and say I am not sure we can, at this point, suggest that we have a fully trauma-informed service, but we are developing that progression and certainly all our staff are trauma-informed and try to use that as part of their approach. There are a number of other specific provisions. One of the things we will do is provide a family offering. At times, we will turn over a unit of accommodation purely to the family so that we can use that accommodation purely for people who have custody rights. We will also do that in the third trimester of pregnancy, for instance; we will provide that dedicated provision.

What is the scale of Nacro’s involvement in this provision?

We are the only provider.

You are the only provider.

We are the only provider across England and Wales.

When we are talking about people who are released on licence, at what point do you find out that they are about to be released on licence? How do you know what their housing needs are?

The referrals are either through courts, which typically will come through the bail information officer or through the prison offender manager; that is the accommodation and services linked to their home detention. Typically, they are bailees as an alternative to being held on remand, where there is an accommodation need that would otherwise lead to them being held on remand. We are an alternative to custody. They will stay with us until their court date, so they will stay for the duration of their bail, or seek to, until the home detention curfew. That is when they are eligible to be considered for that because of their standard determinate sentence end date. That will be assessed while they are in prison and they will be referred to us, typically, from the prison and then released to us on a home detention curfew with licence conditions. That has been a recent expansion. In the summer of this year, the eligibility timeframe was extended to a year. The home detention curfew extends out. The length of stay is relatively new and is, typically, around three months average within that service. So that assessment of need is linked to the home detention curfew eligibility.

Going back to some of the work we did earlier in this Committee about when people are released from prison and they do not have anywhere to go, despite all the provision we are discussing today, how do those gaps happen? How is it that someone walks out of prison with nowhere to go?

We have this situation because the people we are housing are still serving their sentence. Rather than being at end of sentence, that is probably the thing that is distinctly different from CAS2.

Bringing up people as well, yes.

From CAS2, but in terms of the range of things, it is the challenge, I guess, in finding that housing need at the end. Looking at the wider things that Nacro does, one of the services we provide is something called the CRS provision, which is the community rehabilitation service, in a number of geographies. We provide it as an accommodation support service that they will be referred to by prison offender managers or probation before people are released in an attempt to seek to secure their housing at end of release. The service that we provide will typically be the practical support in terms of contacting local authorities to ensure that the duty to refer is made and trying to engage people with supported accommodation referrals if they need that. But we do recognise that that is challenging; there are people who will still fall through the nets and not be released into accommodation.

That is what I am trying to get at. What is the mechanism by which they fall through the net and how can we collectively close that? We also heard from people that suicide risk is much higher if people are not securely housed within two weeks of leaving prison. That was a very clear steer we had. Does anyone else want to come in?

Yes, the duty to refer is quite a good point. We did some research recently—our homelessness monitor research at Crisis—looking at the effectiveness of the duty to refer across the public institutions that are mandated to use it. This is a duty brought about by the Homelessness Reduction Act. It is a statutory duty on most public bodies to refer someone who is at risk of homelessness to the local authority within 56 days. We have heard from our research that prisons, or the prison system, are not using the duty to refer particularly effectively in a timely manner. A lot of the referrals are made very late, which does not give the local authority enough time to find affordable and proper housing for those people. There is also an issue around the priority given to prison leavers. Broadly, single people who present to their local authority in need of housing are not given very much. They might be helped to prevent them becoming homeless in the first place, but if they do not have housing they will have pretty low priority for emergency or temporary accommodation, and particularly low priority for social housing. I suppose there is also the fact that, in many local allocations policies, prison leavers are excluded from social housing. Those are some of the prison-specific issues. There are also wider systemic issues around the access or accessibility in the supply of housing, both in the private rented sector and the social rented sector. From some research that we did—not the same research, but looking into local housing allowance, which is the welfare given to someone to pay for private rented sector accommodation—we found that in England only 2.4% of properties nationally are affordable with local housing allowance. In Great Britain it is 22.7%. So you can imagine how difficult it will be for someone leaving prison to access accommodation.

Yes, thank you. Going back to CAS2, would you say there is enough provision currently?

We are expanding the provision. We are in constant dialogue with the MOJ about that. We are expanding to the limit of the contract, which will be 1,350 bed spaces. We are rising to that level at the moment. Across the whole CAS provision, we would say it is very much in demand. There are some ways in which we seek to address that. We have some flexibility working with HMPPS colleagues to change the deployment of that accommodation. For instance, while there is always a minimum of female estate, that can be moved flexibly within the portfolio if there is greater demand, and, similarly, if there is a greater need for particular eligibility cohorts. For instance, we have an increasing population of bailees within the cohort, which are our first priority, but we also have experience of things like an increased need for the home detention curfew. It is in demand, and the demand for it exceeds the current supply, but it is growing, and we are working with the MOJ on that.

Thank you, Chair.

We are waiting for our Lib Dem colleagues to return after that exciting tied vote that we have just had in the Commons. I will ask a couple of questions before we go on to CAS3 and private registered accommodation, which comes out of what Pam Cox has just said. Is there a problem of information sharing and joint working between the housing providers and HMPPS on the one hand and local authorities on the other? Although I understand the replies you have just given, we have been previously puzzled as to why the system is breaking down. As always, with systemic failure, it is not any individual’s fault. But we were under the impression that, given the different strata of available accommodation, assessments and so forth, there was somewhere for everyone to go on leaving prison, and yet clearly that does not happen. To what extent is that because of a lack of joined-up working?

In the context of CAS3—this is post release and it is transitional—there is a hard stop. It is an 84-day transitional scheme. If the duty to refer and all the things that need to happen do not happen in a joined-up, clear way, undoubtedly we are going to have people falling off.

We will get on to that in a moment, but we are still talking about the point of leaving prison and having nowhere to go to at that point. That does happen, does it not?

I am sure it does. Our experience has been that there is quite good joined-up communication between the homelessness prevention teams and ourselves, but they are sending us bookings, as it were; they are instructing us, so we do not see what we do not see.

Quite. You know you have a job to do.

We are busy and there is lots of demand, but we do not know how many people are not engaging. We also know that a proportion of those people who are placed do not turn up, so there is something around that as well.

That could be for a variety of reasons, but who would know this? We hear this anecdotally from, say, visiting prisons, and we will be told by prison officers, “Half the people who leave here don’t have anywhere immediately to go.” Given that you are providing those services, who should be picking up that gap?

I am sorry, I do not come from that perspective, but more from the CRS provision and support services to try to support bridging that gap. I think it would be fair to say our experience of that is that there are lots of instances, and probably most of the time, when it works extremely well in terms of information provision, but there are certainly considerable gaps in our experience both in the timeliness of that information and particularly the completeness of it. We have a couple of examples of where we are chasing information and that information is not forthcoming. For instance, often things like the likely release date can be missing, or it may be to do with the quality of the information about the person’s particular housing needs, locations or restrictions as to where they can be housed. For those providers of the CRS provision, of which we are one of several, we do not have direct access to nDelius, the HMPPS system. Therefore, often it can be quite difficult to bridge that gap if that information is not forthcoming. That is certainly a significant part of it. I hasten to add that there are many places where it works extremely well, but I would certainly suggest that it is inconsistent.

We are all aware of the problems that HMPPS has in when to release people because it is on the news a lot, but is this because you are not permitted access to systems or your system is incompatible with theirs? That would resolve matters, would it not, if there was a digital transfer of information in that way and you knew about every prisoner who was leaving?

Almost as an alternative, the CAS2 experience is slightly different and slightly distinct. For about a year we have had a digital referral tool, so there is a consistent bit of information that pulls automatically from nDelius. The information to us is a consistent point and that has certainly made it much easier and more consistent from the referrer’s perspective to provide that information. It also provides a very helpful degree of oversight in the information exchange, so if there are gaps—occasionally, there will be challenges to that information and we might get examples where that needs to be followed up—that is very clearly and timely monitored, so we can then also follow it up with referral agencies in providing support on the quality of information that is needed. We have a lot of engagement with the contract management team within HMPPS. We do not have direct access to nDelius, but we do have a contract management team.

Why don’t you have direct access? Is it a data protection issue?

I believe so. It would be a challenge around data protection and data segregation, I guess, in terms of management information. HMPPS colleagues might give you a slightly fuller answer, but I think it is part of that particular problem.

I think it is NACRO’s view—tell me if I am putting words into your mouth—that one reason joint working may not work is because of the current commissioning model. Is that true?

It depends on the context in which we are providing it. I would not suggest that was true for the CAS2 provision specifically. For the CRS provision, I think it is being commissioned in a way that leads to a level of silos in terms of the nature of the support being split around accommodation, employment and welfare. We are very encouraged by the commissioning that has now started and that is looking to create that more holistic service, but under the current model that is in place that has led to some siloes and some challenges around the nature of that information provision, because there are often multiple providers involved in providing different types of support around the same individual. Again, we are very pleased to see that that has been heard and is being looked to be changed in the commissioning that is currently under way as we speak.

If someone does not turn up and you are expecting them, what happens?

We would notify the police and the offender manager. We would then notify the appropriate service to find out where they had gone and alert others because of the level of concern that that would promote. Typically, we would make sure that they were released in the first instance to try to bridge that gap. In our experience, although it does not happen very often, there will be instances where we may be expecting somebody to arrive. An incident has occurred in the prison or something has occurred and for some reason they were not able to be released. We have a very fast turn-round of our properties, so our offer of accommodation works for that day and if people do not turn up maybe that would be offered to somebody else. We are always looking to follow up where people have gone if they do not arrive. It is not a large number, but it is a number.

How many people do not arrive?

I can happily provide some specific information. I do not have that number to hand. It is not a large number. We can talk to MOJ colleagues about programmes that we might want to roll out with more through-the-gate services. The proximity and spread of our service means that, generally, we are housing people quite close to where they are either homeless or where they are released, but there are some instances where people do still have to travel quite long distances. We know that can be a factor and we are looking to find ways to bridge that gap.

Let us go back to tier 3.

Apologies for having to dash out and if you have covered any of this. Gary, can you give us a brief overview of CAS3 accommodation and how it varies, the approach to the Housing Network and, if relevant, how it differs for women?

CAS3 is a post-release scheme. It is designed to reduce reoffending by giving people leaving prison somewhere to live from the first night. It is transitional and is for 84 nights. The logic, which makes sense, is that individuals released without stable accommodation are much more likely to reoffend. We also know that about 80% of all cautions and convictions are issued to people with prior offences. The logic is: if you give somebody some accommodation even for 84 nights, you allow some stability on release. CAS3 is not about long-term accommodation, but it is about creating a stabilising environment from day one, allowing reintegration and allowing people to comply with licence conditions, engage with treatment and, importantly, get work. It is regionalised. There are 12 regions across England, and I believe the MOJ has commissioned 3,566 bed spaces at the moment for CAS3. That is the concept behind it. The way it really works is that prior to release an individual will be identified as leaving potentially homeless. Then they will be considered by the probation practitioner and HPT—the homeless prevention team—within each region as to whether they are eligible and suitable for CAS3 and whether there is CAS3 accommodation for them. The first we get informed is when a booking form comes through. That booking form will have a whole host of information relating to risk management plans. Potentially, an individual may be designated “no lone worker” or “no lone female worker”—that sort of thing. Then, on the day of release, the ex-offender will go through to their probation office where they will sign a compact. That sets out the expectations and rules. Then they will make their way to our accommodation, where they will be met by one of our specialist supported housing officers. They will go through an induction. We give them a welcome pack—much similar to what you do—which will have food or hygiene products, bedding, towels, the usual stuff, so they can live there. Then we begin to engage with them over the 84 nights. We will be visiting or engaging with them face to face at least once a week and once every other week as a minimum. Our focus is primarily on tenancy sustainment, monitoring what is going on in the property, and reminding them that 84 nights is a transitionary period and they need to be prepared to move on. Invariably, while that is what contractually we are required to do, we do a whole host of extra—additional—things. Last week, a colleague told me that one of the residents had their bike stolen and, as a result, could not get to work. We went out and sourced a bike. It is things like that. There is lots of added value: food bank vouchers; making medical appointments. A whole host of things is needed, but we are just one component in the service. The commissioned rehabilitative services that we talked about earlier are there to provide more specialist support. There is housing support; ETE—employment, training and education; debt management; substance misuse. There is a specialist group for females. We will come on to them in a moment. They are really there to provide a much broader range of support for residents. We work to a very detailed specification—CAS3 has a detailed specification—and then there is a contract management team who will ensure that we are meeting our KPIs, and they also do quality control. Every time we have any contact, we are sending that contact digitally through to the probation practitioner and the homelessness prevention team so they can do that. They also visit properties and things like that. In relation to women, about 9.44% of CAS3 residents over the last quarter were women. We have a requirement that 50% of all the accommodation we provide are single-person units, so one-bedroom properties. That means there is provision for women. We obviously try, wherever possible, to use a female support worker to engage, and, as I say, there is dedicated specialist support commissioned for women in CAS3.

We know that 80% of offenders are reoffenders, but do you have any information about how many of those are homeless offenders? If CAS3 is being used for offenders who do not have a home to go to, and we are focusing on those, as we absolutely need to, is there a blind spot where people who are not being offered CAS are going back to their homes and reoffending because they are back in a particular environment? I wonder whether from that perspective there is enough capacity of CAS3 and the option should be broadened out to people who do have a home to go to help them in that journey to complete independence.

That may be true. To follow on from that, one other point is that somebody could leave prison with somewhere to go and within one, two or three days have a fallout and then they are not eligible for CAS3. There is undoubtedly the risk that there are groups who go back to environments which are unsuitable or, indeed, they become homeless quite soon after getting back to what was thought to be stable accommodation. That is not within the provision.

If funding were available, would it be something that you think CAS3 could extend to offer a broader runway?

There is nothing inherently different about it; it is just that you need to have a very clear mechanism for bringing people into the service. One of the benefits of CAS3 being a pre-release scheme is that you get to do all the work before release so that when they come out we already have a risk management plan; we have all the information we require; we have identified suitable accommodation. I am not saying it is impossible; it would just be a different mechanism. It would be interesting to look into that.

You talked about there being a regional space and obviously 50% is single-user accommodation, which is great. Are all of the regions sufficiently provided for? Are there areas of the country where there is not enough CAS3, and what about people who might have higher support needs, whether they have disabilities, addictions, or mental health issues?

We work in the private rented sector, so we are finding properties across the country. There are areas where finding property is really challenging. To try to find property for ex-offenders in Cornwall is really tricky and we work in the south-west, so, yes. I think there is enough provision. There could be more. We have only several hundred bed spaces per region, so to expand that would not be particularly difficult. I think that is quite easy. What was your second question?

It was about people who have additional needs.

One of the things I feel most strongly about is that, unfortunately, a group of people who end up in CAS3 are not suited to independent living at that point. They come in because they are at risk of homelessness, but the service is not built for the level of support and intervention that they require. We know that because we as an organisation provide supported housing to local authorities where we provide trauma-informed, step-up-step-down pathways, which are extremely effective at working with those cohorts. If you are coming into accommodation and are placed there for 84 nights, but you are going to get a visit every two weeks and a couple of phone calls, and maybe some additional support from wrapped services which primarily are not going into the property, it is challenging. I believe very strongly that, if there was an off-ramp for a certain proportion of the cohort to a different solution which is a bit more intensive and supportive, not only would it help them but it would help the other cohorts within the rest of CAS3, because it is the usual 80:20, 90:10 rule. We are spending a huge amount of time on a small proportion.

On a technicality, I think you said that you work in 12 regions.

No. I said there are 12 regions and the Housing Network works in five of them.

I am intrigued, because I thought there were nine regions in England, so maybe I missed something.

I suspect the reason is that they break up London.

Oh, do they?

I should also say that I think Wales and Manchester have a slightly different model where the local authorities deal with it, as opposed to HMPPS.

Thank you very much. I just wondered whether we were all working at cross-purposes in different areas and doing all sorts of different things in different schemes.

I think what you have said to me is that you are not sure whether the eligibility might need to be a bit more fluid. You have identified some people who might get to CAS3 and not be appropriate for CAS3. Do you think there needs to be any change in how people are assessed for CAS3? If they are CAS3 and it is, “Actually, this isn’t right,” is there a scaling back so you can go back into CAS2 or approved premises? Is it a two-way process?

I am not sure about approved premises.

It isn’t a kind of cascading pathway. We are slightly distinct because we are still within sentence as opposed to end of sentence. We have a slightly distinct model with a slightly distinct cohort. We do provide an added level of support, but in our efforts to aim to move people into longer-term accommodation, if there was less that we would make as a provider, it is greater provision of quality- supported accommodation. We find that, often, to be a particular challenge for this cohort to access because of the threshold of need and just the general challenges of demand and supply. I think CAS3 is very often there for some people but it can be quite a challenge.

And we can identify it very quickly. If you spoke to one of our support workers, within the first hour of their conversation with a new resident they would have a reasonably good idea whether that person would succeed or fail. Don’t get me wrong: for the majority of residents, CAS3 is exactly what it is designed for, but there is a subset who just have greater needs and are not quite ready for independent living, which is what CAS3 is, so at one level we are setting them up to fail.

As for people who might not be appropriate for CAS3 accommodation because of their level of need, I would suggest that Housing First might be a good model and good approach for people with particularly complex needs. We provide Housing First services for people with intersecting needs related to homelessness, drug and alcohol misuse, and mental health issues. We find that tenancies sustained with outcomes are really high through Housing First. Because of the level of support and flexibility and person-centredness of that support, and the length of time that a Housing First programme lasts for, we find that over 90% of people sustain their tenancies after a year.

I am aware of Housing First. As a former council leader, it is something we talked about quite a lot, and it is in the report as well.

We are coming on to some questions on that.

My final question is about moving between tiers. Is there sufficient in the system that allows a CAS3 provider to have that conversation with Housing First, or for NACRO to come in and say, “We’re providing this rehabilitation and it needs to go further”? We were out for a bit and may have missed it, but it does sound as though this system is a little bit siloed and perhaps there needs to be a bit more of a web approach.

I would not see CAS1 to 3 as a pathway. I think they are distinct. CAS3 is post release.

Post release is able to provide some of that rehabilitation work within CAS3. Is that right?

We are a distinctly commissioned service, so we provide CAS2 and also some rehabilitative services.

The point to remember is that a large proportion of the cohort who do not find their own accommodation through the private rented sector are then going on to local authorities. Some local authorities do run Housing First. I suspect that the numbers that might be suitable for supported housing would be greater than the numbers that Housing First could accommodate. In CAS3, in the past 12 months, we have had over 6,000 individuals in our five regions; there are 12 regions. So we have had over 6,000 people through our accommodation in the past 12 months. If 10% or 15% of those have higher needs than CAS3, it would be a very large number who would be looking for support.

Beyond the 84-day period, what is the success rate for people finding suitable accommodation?

First, we won’t have the information to monitor that, but what I can tell you is that we do exit surveys for residents two to three weeks before they leave. About 75% of those who respond tell us that, if they were not in CAS3, they would either be homeless or uncertain where they would be, but two or three weeks before the end that is already down to 35%, and it is probably even lower by the end. The majority of people during those 84 nights are making arrangements for their move-on, but I do not have figures for the long-term success rates.

Would it not be massively useful to you as an organisation to have that data?

It would be amazing.

Can you not chase it down?

We are here in the period we are. I suspect that, if you asked the same question of HMPPS, it would be able to give you a little bit more information because it is managing the relationship for a longer period.

We are in a penal crisis where people are being released from prison homeless and are not being housed. Many are and many are not, and they are committing offences very soon after release. We have not touched on drugs yet about how you keep your premises drug-free. We are in a post-release crisis and to my thinking there seem to be lots of gaps here.

Eighty-four days is a hard stop.

It is a hard stop, and that can be quite challenging. To take a more extreme example, in the past two or three weeks we had a resident who was coming to the end of his stay and was really stressed out about it. He did not have move-on secured and so threatened a member of staff. In his mind he was problem-solving, thinking, “If I threaten somebody I’ll be recalled.” That is a really poor piece of problem-solving, but it is unfortunate that he thought it would be better for him to threaten somebody he had been working with really well in order to be recalled rather than leave and be homeless.

Is that because 84 days is too short a period?

We would probably have the same question at 100 days and 120 days, if we are honest. As for some of the challenges, there is the move-on to local authorities and the way they deal with the duty to refer; some of it is the system as a whole, with the CRS and the housing support providers doing their bit. I would suggest it cannot be less than 84 nights, but you will always have dates. You could have a situation where a little more discretion is given if there is a sensible reason. We have had situations where people have move-on sorted out, but it just has not come through.

You have no flexibility at all.

We have no flexibility as the supplier. That would be a question for HMPPS.

The answer to Pam’s question would be of great interest to you and to us, which is: what percentage of people are homeless after 84 days? You do not know that.

I do not know that, but I would suggest that of those who get to the end it will be quite a small number—less than 15% to 20%, I would imagine.

I want to look at your experience of the other end, if you like, where local authorities offer incentives to private landlords and accommodation for ex-offenders through local authorities and other Government support that might be available. How do you feel that is working in reality?

In reality, there is the AFEO scheme, the ex-offenders accommodation programme. Apparently, it has been quite successful. I do not have any direct involvement within it, but it is a grant scheme of £28 million over the past four years. The challenge is not just for ex-offenders but for the homeless generally. It is very hard for local authorities. The private rented sector is under stress; the rates that landlords are expecting are high. If you phone up a landlord and say, “I’d really like to take your property to give it to ex-offenders,” it is just not for every landlord, particularly when there are other cohorts who might be perceived as easier or better to work with.

Do any of the other witnesses have any comment to make about that?

The AFEO scheme in particular does not necessarily have to be used for, say, landlord incentives. Our critical time intervention service in Merseyside, which is a similar type of scheme to Housing First but with people with lower needs, is funded through AFEO funding. That has been funded for a few years through that grant. That has very good outcomes. Currently, we are doing an evaluation of that service, which we will definitely be able to share with members of the Committee.

That would be helpful. Could you elucidate on some of the barriers faced by people who are trying to access something in the way of more long-term housing? You have identified some things. Looking at that, whether it is social housing, supported housing, or private rented accommodation, I recognise there is heat in the market, but is there anything else you would identify as being problematic?

I suppose there are a few things. Those are the primary drivers. If I am honest, it is either most commonly the private rented sector and supported accommodation or back with family and friends, and part of what we provide is that reconnection service. In terms of the challenges and the prevention, we have certainly touched on a few of those challenges in accessing the private market. The only other thing we have not referenced so far is that we know that some local authorities will consider people to be intentionally homeless sometimes because of the nature of the crime they have committed, which then means they are able to discharge or not take up that duty to house them. We would appreciate greater clarity on that. Sometimes, depending on the particular nature of the offence, that might be relevant and appropriate to the housing, but we find, quite commonly, that that is a real barrier to accessing housing and the support.

Can you expand on that a little?

If somebody is deemed of their own volition to be intentionally homeless, in a more typical setting it may be because they have been evicted because of rent arrears. That would mean that the local authority does not have the same duties to provide that housing. What we find are examples where local authorities are suggesting that individuals are made intentionally homeless because of the offence that they committed prior to their incarceration.

It is not related.

It means that it is very difficult to engage with some of the local authority support that might be available. In effect, they are suggesting that, because somebody has made themselves intentionally homeless, they do not have the same duty. It can be a real barrier to challenge that and I know the colleagues who provide the CRS provision really struggle with that. It is another area, I would suggest, of inconsistency that can be very difficult.

Can I stress test that a bit? Is that where somebody has come from area A and they have returned to area A and lost their accommodation? It might have been social housing or whatever. Is that what you are talking about, where somebody has come back into their own area and they are not able to pick up on their accommodation?

Somebody will have lost their housing because they have served a custodial sentence. In effect, the suggestion is that the person is “intentionally homeless”—that is the term—because they have committed a crime which has led to their incarceration, which has led to them losing their accommodation. Given the particular challenges that we know about the impact of homelessness on reoffending, which are well documented, it is especially unfortunate that that is the interpretation of intentional homelessness.

There is the A and B to your example earlier where somebody comes and is claimed not to have a local connection.

Indeed; I was going to ask you about that next.

That does of course happen. Look, local authorities are under enormous pressure. They understand the problem, but they are faced with enormous competing demands, and so sometimes their problem solving is not optimal.

Is the situation different, or maybe the statistics are different, for women coming out of prison? Is there a difference, or does everybody get treated equally?

In terms of the level of homelessness?

Yes.

I am afraid I do not have that specific breakdown, but I imagine we should be able to provide it.

If it is a single person, as I mentioned earlier, they will get pretty low priority in terms of support and access to emergency or temporary accommodation irrespective of whether they are a man or a woman. As has been discussed, there is a lack of women-specific supported accommodation nationally, which could be another option to move into if they find themselves experiencing homelessness. If a woman has experienced quite significant trauma through domestic abuse, which might be fairly likely, they might not want to move into an HMO with shared facilities. That really does reduce the housing ecosystem that women can access. I think that is quite a big issue. As an addendum, when someone is released from prison and they have their first meeting at the jobcentre, they also have to wait five weeks to receive universal credit, which puts them on the back foot immediately in terms of receiving welfare to support their housing costs.

When women have children and they are reunited with their family perhaps, does different stuff come into play?

They will tend to have more support if they have children; they will be given a higher priority. The issue of priority is fundamentally an issue around the lack of housing supply. If there were more housing supply, the threshold for what priority need is currently would be much lower. Currently, you need to have quite substantial vulnerability to be in that category A priority.

Okay. I noticed that you, Andrew, were nodding a little more vigorously.

Yes. I am in some difficulty because I find myself looking at this from a perspective of 52 years since I started in the Probation Service. I have seen so many different things that I find it very hard to generalise. On one level, the very idea of there being a CAS1, CAS2, CAS3 is quite startlingly new, and it is the sort of thing that I might have thought was a considerable help when I was a main grade officer in the 1970s. One of the problems is that when you start having a provision you can always think of reasons for having more of it.

I do not think the housing crisis was quite as bad in the 1970s.

No, but there were different difficulties. That was the second point that I was going to come to. It is terribly important, as Dr Kerridge has said, to see this in the context of the overall housing issue, which is much more acute, and you could argue that that is why HMPPS has needed to do this. On one level, it is certainly of credit to them that they have. This only started about four years ago. In that sense, it is a pretty good start. Of course, as soon as it happens, you can see all the things where it would be better if this happened or that happened. You are quite right that there will still be people coming out of prison saying, “I’ve got nowhere to go.” Every case is different and every circumstance is different. I find it very hard to generalise. In the inspectorate, in the same area you would find exceptional examples of really good practice and then someone else just not getting it right at all. To say, “Therefore, this area is a failure,” or, “This area is brilliant,” does not make sense when there is a variety of practice and variety of circumstances at various times in various places all over the place. That is where I struggle a bit. It is good that we have these specialist provisions, but what we have highlighted is, of course, how we move on from them. The context that I would offer is that it is roughly 55,000 people coming out of prison every year. Most of them have addresses to go to. About 2,000 go into APs. You have just told us, and I have already forgotten what the number was—

It is about 4,500 a year.

That is pretty good, but of course there are going to be gaps, and people are sometimes difficult. You are dealing with that as well.

Just while we have those numbers, which is really helpful, it is 55,000 out of prison, 2 k, roughly, in AP, and 4,500 going to Nacro.

Two thousand to APs.

Yes. How many are going to CAS3?

In our five regions in the last 12 months, 6,000, but that is only five of 12.

He is talking about in a year.

There are people who do have homes and families to go back to in their own accommodation, presumably. It is still a large number of people—12,000 or something like that.

Everything that I was going to ask has probably been covered by other people while I was out of the room, I suspect, so I will allow you to move on, Chair.

So far as I can tell, this covers people who have planned leaving prison having served a sentence, but what happens to people who either are released having been found not guilty or are found guilty but released immediately on the basis of time served on remand?

Usually not very good—it is as simple as that—because you have not been able to plan for it.

Even without planning, we have same-day move-ins. We get notified. Of course, the system has to work and the machine has to get everything in order, but we definitely have people who are released but have nowhere else to go and are put into CAS3.

From the CAS2 perspective, we accommodate bailees on remand. The length of service is tied to the court date. Whatever the outcome is, that gives some opportunity to plan. They would not get time served in that instance, but if they were found not guilty we can make those contingencies or try to make those plans with individuals so that they have somewhere else to go.

Do you have any idea how many people are becoming homeless having been through that version of the system? About 70% of people are being released from prison on a court date either, as I said, because they are not guilty or time served. We are talking about a relatively small proportion of people coming out of prison. The majority who are coming out of prison are not going into the system that you are talking about. So I wonder what happens to them, because there are more of them than you guys are handling.

They would need to go to their local authority.

It is presumably going to say, “We don’t have a statutory obligation to house you, so good luck.”

Yes, and then they will be homeless, and then they might be swept up or something else.

It again depends on the person. There will be an obligation to house someone who is deemed by the local authority to be particularly vulnerable. Homelessness in and of itself is not a vulnerability that meets that threshold for support, nor is being a woman. It tends to be quite high. A lot of people will be sleeping rough or sofa surfing having gone to the local authority, if they even go to the local authority, because there are tremendous issues around lack of trust and also lack of knowledge about what provision is out there. It is not a great picture, as has been mentioned.

That is not a point I had thought of. When we are dealing with remand prisoners released in different categories—time served, on conviction, but also acquitted—and for the reason that they have been incarcerated, they do not have anywhere to go, do you pick them up at all?

I do not think they are ineligible for CAS3. I just think the mechanisms there might not be as well planned as they would be if they were in a planned release. We definitely have individuals who are released and have nowhere else to go, and so immediately come through to CAS3.

Even if they have been acquitted.

I believe so, yes.

You are right. I do not think there is a provision. There is not a statutory role for HMPPS in those circumstances.

That is interesting. It would be interesting to know what number—

And never has been that I can recall.

No, but we have a much higher remand population.

Yes, absolutely.

It is not a new thing.

I understand.

Maybe we could try to get those numbers, because that is very significant. Thank you. I interrupted you, Tessa.

That is fine; don’t worry.

Prison leavers who are aged between 30 and 49 are more likely to be homeless or sleeping rough when they are released compared to other age groups. It is a question for all of you. Why do you think that is the case?

I would suggest that is quite reflective of the homelessness population in general. The majority of people experiencing homelessness are around that age. That is probably to do with the lack of familial and social resources that they can fall back on. They might have experienced a relationship breakdown, a family breakdown or have exhausted friends who they can live with. Unfortunately, that is generally reflective of the wider homelessness population.

As a generalisation, most people do not start offending around about 30. Therefore, they probably have a much longer record of continuous reoffending, whereas the demographic lump of most people grow out of offending in their late 20s, so you have the more protracted offenders, if I can use that phrase, at that stage. That is definitely a factor. They are more likely to have all the grave, additional social problems that go with that. I know that is a terribly sweeping generalisation, but in big picture terms that is certainly a factor.

Are there any other views as to why they are more likely to be homeless?

No, I was going to say very similar things to colleagues. That is our observation. At that age—again, it is a generalisation—they are more likely to have gone through cycling, potentially, in and out of prison more than once. There are entrenched challenges and a wider set of needs that come with that but also potentially not yet meeting the threshold for the supported accommodation, or the ranges of support do not necessarily meet the threshold for some of the particular kinds of provision that might be targeted at younger or older cohorts. It is a multitude of things. In broad strokes, that is why.

On the positive side, it is a good opportunity sometimes. If you catch the right person at the right time when they are ready, that is a brilliant time to do some really rewarding work as a probation officer. But it is partly judgment and quite a lot of luck to get that right.

Those who are serving longer custodial sentences and those who have had longer custodial sentences, on release and three months after release, seem to have better prospects of having accommodation compared to others. Is there any explanation for that? Why should having served a longer custodial sentence—

It should be planning. I would like to think the reason is planning. Throughout my career, it is the idea of the home probation officer taking an interest in their allocation of cases serving a prison. If you have someone doing a long sentence and you go and see them twice a year, you have the opportunity to build a relationship and build plans for the future. A factor that has already been mentioned is that the many changes that happen with release dates are quite difficult to manage when you are talking about managing accommodation and other facilities and services on release. That will be one of the more difficult things to manage as a consequence of the idea of earned remission, which in many ways is a good thing but it creates a different difficulty down the line at the point of release.

The next question is probably quite a difficult one to answer. MOJ figures published in October reveal that those who are released from custody and are homeless or sleeping rough are more than twice as likely to reoffend. There is a direct correlation between being homeless and rough sleeping and reoffending. Beyond what is already being done, what more do you think the Government could do to help prisoners so that when they are released they are not homeless?

It will be about being able to focus the attention and indeed pre-release planning in the right case. Probation caseloads have always been high. They are probably not higher than they have ever been, to be honest, but the number of demands now of things that you have to keep doing with every case has definitely continued to increase. That has definitely shown in the poor planning that you have already heard about in relation to short notice referrals. I am afraid it also applies with APs. To my mind, if you are going to have to arrange for an AP place and you know you are going to have to do it for a certain date, you might as well get on with it then and not wait until the week before. But, of course, there is a lot of turnover within probation, and those may be factors that affect the quality of planning. To your point, you would have to focus attention. Some of that will be to do with the difficulty of the person who you are dealing with. We have all had cases of, “I don’t want to go to a hostel.” “No, I don’t want to go there.” “No, I don’t want to go there.” If you are going to work with and through that, you will need more time than most probation officers have nowadays, I would have thought. That would be quite difficult to organise, in fairness. Don’t forget, you then have to get it in the right place. Which locality are you dealing with? There is a mentality with a centralised service that you think about how you would operate it in London because everybody is all living within a tube journey of each other, but once you start going out to Dorset, Northumberland, or whatever, it is not so easy to locate how you are going to organise that. That is not to say it cannot be done. What I am saying is it is difficult.

Do you think having more probation officers who have more time to spend with prisoners before they leave could affect the likelihood of them being homeless?

It is always easy to argue for having more staff. I am conscious of that. I am a bit wary of indulging in wishful thinking, to be honest. I realise that it is your brief to ask. What are we asking probation officers to do? Bear in mind that, at best, they have 40 to 45 minutes a week per case. I think, in reality, it is probably a bit less. That is not only to see people individually and spend a bit of time with them, but actually do all the work that results from that case. You keep talking, rightly, about liaising with other agencies, how good the communication is, whether you can do the referral, liaise back and inquire of the police, and this, that and the other. You have to do all that in that time. In principle, that is what you would look for. Youth justice services usually have about 10 per practitioner. They are doing very well, and that is great. These are considerations that one has to bear in mind looking at it rationally. What are we asking people to do with what is available to them?

We really welcome the priority and focus that the MOJ has given particularly over the last five or so years on housing, but our view would be that the MOJ cannot do it alone. We would really value a more joined-up, cross-governmental focus as part of the homelessness reduction strategy specifically recognising the needs of business. I am not sure that is as clear or as strong as we might like. The MOJ has picked up some of that, but it feels quite siloed across Government. We know that there are discussions at the moment about the increased investment in probation, which again we would welcome. You might expect me to say this, but the role of the voluntary sector and particularly some of the small, local voluntary agencies in that can be very good at navigating services and finding those particular solutions. In terms of opportunities for added value, there is a real place for that in supporting and bridging some of those gaps, because it is complicated and needs are individual, and demographics and geography have particular needs as well. They can be very well placed to support that.

It is easy to think about ex-offender homelessness as a housing issue, but it is as much a social care issue, and in fact maybe more a social care issue. Giving somebody a set of keys can sometimes be setting them up to fail. Back to that joint cross-departmental thinking, it is moving away from thinking about this as a housing problem and looking at it more as a care and social care issue.

I would re-emphasise the importance in the upcoming homelessness strategy, whenever we get it, of the different Government Departments really working together and for the strategy to include specific national targets for those Departments in relation to rates of homelessness. As I mentioned earlier, systemic housing issues and welfare issues act as massive barriers to people accessing housing in England, the LHA rate being chief among them. There are also things like the benefit cap and the shared accommodation rate, which is the rate of LHA for younger people, which is nowhere near enough to enable someone to even rent a room in shared accommodation. That really acts as a significant barrier.

From 1992 to about 2005, there was a supported accommodation scheme that the Home Office required every probation service to set up. That was about working with your local partners and commissioning various services locally. Early in the 2000s, that was then absorbed back into local authority specialist housing strategies. I cannot remember the correct name for that, but they took it back in. Inevitably, if a local authority is trying to make provision for what they might call disadvantaged groups, people who have committed offences will not necessarily do as well as some of the other disadvantaged groups in a given area. The supported accommodation scheme in that sense ebbed away, and that is why you have this dilemma. What is happening now is that HMPPS is very directly saying, “Right, this is for people coming out of prison.” But, on one level, if you are being really harsh, you would say it is just postponing the problem because they have to go into the accommodation market at some point.

Currently, if a prisoner leaves custody and they do not have settled accommodation, they could be held to be in breach of their licence conditions and then they could be recalled again. Do you think that is right?

It depends. The evidence that I submitted to you made a distinction between whether you have come to the end of your sentence or you have been released early. The new sentencing provision rather muddles those two concepts somewhat, so I am in greater difficulty answering you now than I would have been in January. If you are being released early, you are required to stick to conditions and, in principle, you can be returned to custody. If you have completed your date, you should not be subject to conditions that could possibly return you to prison. That ought to be straightforward to manage. Having looked at the provisions as now in the Sentencing Bill, I am less clear how that works, to be perfectly honest with you.

As a matter of principle, do you think it is right that somebody who has not been able to get settled accommodation is therefore held to be in breach of their licence conditions and gets recalled?

It is on the presumption that you have been released with an address. With APs, you are going to an address. Let us say you are going early. Yes, I am afraid it is a reasonable thing. I certainly do not think it is reasonable if you have found an address after release. I do think that we are going a bit overly enthusiastically into the distribution of conditions and requirements on people on release, which are more and more things that you can get wrong, which is bad for the person and is also, incidentally, bad for the authorities. Every time it happens, you have to decide whether you are going to breach it or not. If you do not it looks weak, and if you do they will say, “Why are you doing all these recalls?” A lot of this overenthusiasm is misguided.

It is funny you should mention the new sentencing proposals. Pam, were you going to ask about that?

I was all ready to do so. Since you raised the Sentencing Bill and the reforms coming our way, they are likely to lead, are they not, to an increased use of community supervision, as we know, and an increased demand on let’s call it offender accommodation, broadly defined? How are you as a sector preparing for that increased demand?

We are waiting to see what is commissioned.

I was about to say exactly that. We are commissioned. All providers will address demand. If the commissioner came forward to us and said, “This is what we need,” there is capacity in the market to address additional space—of course, not infinite but significantly more, certainly in CAS3. That is, I suspect, a question more for HMPPS. I do recognise that if you are going to be providing more supervision in the community you require stability in housing.

Are there any steps that you can take as a sector in preparation for that beyond waiting for what HMPPS does?

We can engage, as we do with HMPPS a lot. We talk regularly about the challenges of the housing market, the opportunities there are and what we can and cannot do. If somebody phones you on a Tuesday and says, “I need more properties tomorrow,” that is much harder than if somebody says, “We can see a horizon where this might be happening. Can you start to do some preparatory work?” The more notice anybody is given, the more likely it is that they will effectively be able to deliver.

The other new thing that is coming down the track is, of course, devolution. We will probably see a return to more locally commissioned services of the kind that Andrew talked about. How are you as organisations engaging with the devolution process now?

In this context, I do not think we have seen a huge amount of engagement. My organisation works with over 100 authorities on any given day. We think we would be well placed to engage with devolved areas coming together as opposed to on a national basis.

You are waiting for them to engage with you. Is that fair?

I think that is fair.

Is it the same with Nacro?

Similarly, we are preparing. We are certainly having those conversations with colleagues in HMPPS about what the direction of travel might be and how we might prepare for them. It is difficult to fully commit to investing in particular directions while we are waiting to hear more, but we are making some preparations. In terms of devolution, similarly, we have done internal preparedness. We operate nationally in every region across England and Wales. We have heartlands where we have a wider range of provisions and are having more in-depth conversations with those local authorities and commissioners to think about how we can better respond perhaps in some areas should there be a change. But it is difficult to respond as robustly as we might want to do at the moment without greater clarity at this time.

Thank you. They are all my questions.

Thank you very much. Unless anyone else has questions, I have a couple of wash-up questions. One is to Dr Kerridge. Crisis is trialling critical time intervention at the moment. Could you tell us a little bit about that? I have a more general question for everyone. Are there other examples of best practice that we have not touched on that you might want to highlight or indeed anything that you might want to highlight before we finish this afternoon?

Critical time intervention, as I mentioned, is a programme founded on those Housing First principles of accommodation without preconditions—someone not having to be deemed tenancy-ready to take on a tenancy—as well as the provision of support. The CTI, critical time intervention, workers in our Merseyside and South Wales programmes work with people for a period of nine months before, during and after release. In terms of before, it is to ensure that there is a home for them to go to on day one. That could be trying to maintain a tenancy or maintain the home that they had previously. We find that can be quite difficult because we go back to what we talked about previously about the joined-up working and information sharing where we might not be told with enough time that a person has an existing, viable tenancy, and we cannot then arrange discretionary housing support to pay for that tenancy while they are in prison. A lot of the time it will be finding them a new tenancy, which is not as efficient as retaining their existing tenancy. We make sure they have that tenancy on day one. We make sure they have an appointment with the jobcentre on day one, because, as I said, there is that five-week wait to get universal credit as well as the housing element of universal credit. We make sure that happens on day one and we make sure they have a real engagement with all the additional services that they might want to engage with—health, GPs, social care, etc. That is all done for them so that they do not have to find and navigate all of that themselves on day one. We then provide quite intensive support to those people once a week. That then tapers off to once a month as we find they build resilience and capacity. After the nine-month period, we essentially discharge them into the community. We have built up enough capacity and resilience, we have enabled them to engage with community organisations and services, and we have helped them to access employment so that we do not have to continue that support after a nine-month period. As I mentioned, we are currently evaluating both services in Merseyside and South Wales. We found that, like our Housing First services, tenancy sustainment is really high and people’s sense of self, wellbeing and meaning in life is generally pretty high too, and reoffending rates are much lower. It is a really useful tool and one that probably is underutilised in England as it is something that has come from America and latterly Europe, where there is much more of a body of evidence around the effectiveness of critical time intervention. We think that if the Government wanted to really seriously consider homelessness post release and how to address that, CTI, critical time intervention, would be a really useful tool.

Thank you. Are there any other final comments?

In terms of good practice, there are a couple of particular things that I want to draw on from the CAS2 experience. It is a move- through service; it is not settled accommodation, but does have the aim of achieving settled accommodation at the end. There are a couple of things within that. One of the very first contract changes that we made after award was to work with the MOJ towards an employability scheme. While it is rent through housing benefits at market rates, for anybody who works within that accommodation, there is provision so that the most that anybody pays is the local LHA arrangement. There is always the facility for somebody to work and for the rent to then be affordable if they are working there. It is the focus on the integration of the housing management with the support inside that allows us to make that planned move-on really understand the needs. While the level of information we get is generally good, there are always things that we discover, it would be fair to say, after people have moved in as to the level of support that they have and what the best opportunity is for them to move forward, with a view to extending it. This is more of a broad thing of having worked in supported housing for 25 years or so: getting that right at the beginning and enabling people to have that clear plan and particularly the barriers. The employment thing for me is significant because, while it is relatively short term, knowing that there is that clear opportunity and aspiration, and it is not just about housing but about aspiration and about having somewhere you can go, is really important to enabling people and to support people engaging with their settled accommodation. People have a complex range of challenges.

I will mention three APs, if I may. First of all, because you have Gemma Birkett with you, I am sure she will tell you about Elizabeth Fry AP for women and the creative initiatives work that is done there. I will also mention Eden House in Bristol because the inspection report is out tomorrow, so you do not have to take my word for it. You can look at what it has to say about the quality of work and APs for women. It is difficult stuff, but it is done well, which you can deduce from that. Because of the discussion we had earlier, particularly about the hard stop at the end of the provision, I want to draw your attention again to the Compass Project that St John’s runs in Leeds, which appears to do very well, and has done so consistently for a period of time, in getting the residents from its AP into the local accommodation market. That is quite an achievement. Those are my three best offers there.

Thank you very much. Slightly off subject, but given your great experience, Mr Bridges, in the Probation Service over many decades, the changes introduced by the Sentencing Bill put a great deal more emphasis on the community, whether that is alternatives to custody or early release, and there is more resource to deal with that. Can you make any assessment, given you have seen a lot of rather radical changes in the service, I imagine, over the last many years, about whether you think that is the right approach? Are there any barriers to success there?

Yes, they are putting more money into probation. You have to recruit them and then keep them. I have seen Lord Timpson in a personal capacity about the drawbacks of the way that HMPPS manages probation practice. I do not think you can do it by long lists of instructions to carry out with the resource available. As I have described earlier, there is a different approach that would work better and would fit the resources available better. The other drawback that we have coming at the moment is that if community sentences and community provision are coupled with more and more requirements, as I touched on earlier, it is very likely to have the opposite effect that is intended. Over the last 50 years, the prison population has continued to go up. When people say, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll not send somebody to prison; we’ll give them a conditional sentence,” it has always ended up actually continuing to increase the prison population. The only dip that you will see in the continual rise in the prison population was from about 1990 to 1992 when there were virtually no conditional sentences and they were focusing on short sentences. The drawback to that was that it lost the credibility of the public. You will remember the big reaction from about 1993 onwards that led to the ballooning of the prison population from 1995 onwards and everything came back. Although you are right in this context to focus on homelessness as a factor, in terms of the prison population as a whole, most of it is due to longer sentences, and the biggest nuisance value within it is the recalls we are having, which are of doubtful value, and I am not talking about the AP recalls.

Yes. It may address some of the issues on recall, albeit in a fairly arbitrary way. I do not think it addresses the issue of sentencing inflation, but who knows? Thank you very much. I thank all our guests for coming today. Thank you particularly for admirably keeping to time. Not all our witnesses do that. Thank you very much, as always, to the Committee.