FOI request (FOIR-316624882)

Policy and practice documents concerning housing affordability assessments

Requested Tue 16 March 2021
Responded Thu 22 April 2021

We act for Shelter, National Campaign for Homeless People Limited (registered charity number 263710 (England and Wales) and SC002327 (Scotland)) (Shelter, in relation to its training, policy and research activities, as well as targeted litigation related to homelessness.

We write to request certain information from your authority's housing department, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). We would like to request copies of all your authority's documents currently in use relating to how housing officers assess whether a household's last settled accommodation was affordable for them, when they present in need of housing advice and assistance.

The Request

1. Please can you send us copies of all documents currently used by your housing officers to conduct these housing affordability assessments (such as guidance notes, briefings, training sessions and template forms). If any of these documents are already in the public domain, please can you send a link to where we can retrieve these exact documents?

These documents could include (but not be limited to):

(a) Guidance for housing officers on how to carry out affordability assessments;

(b) Training materials on how to assess affordability;

(c) Template income and expenditure forms;

(d) Details of what costs are regarded as essential living needs; and

(e) Costs of essential living needs, for different family types, used in affordability assessments.

2. If not included in the above documents, please can you send us the following information:

(a) A list of items that are regarded as essential living needs, for the purpose of assessing affordability; and

(b) A list of costs of essential living needs, for different family types, that are used for the purpose of assessing affordability.

Please share your authority's information excluding any information which could be considered personal information under the Data Protection Act 2018.

This information will be used for Shelter's research and work around homelessness during COVID-19. The research will help us and Shelter to understand the different ways that local authorities are responding to the current situation and to help influence national policy.

Response

Q1(a) For deposits and rent in advance: no written guidance, cases are discussed with managers on an individual basis. For homeless applications, officers consider Samuels (2019) case law.

Q1(b) For deposits and rent in advance: no written guidance, cases are discussed with managers on an individual basis. No training materials for homeless applications, officers consider reasonable expenses in the context of the Samuels (2019) case law.

Q1(c) See attached Budget Sheet document.

Q1(d) For deposits and rent in advance: cases are discussed with managers on an individual basis. For homeless applications, reasonable living expenses are considered on the facts of the cases and will vary from client to client.

Q1(e) For deposits and rent in advance: cases are discussed with managers on an individual basis. For homeless applications, affordability is assessed by looking at the reasonable living expenses for each individual case.

Q2(a) For deposits and rent in advance: cases are discussed with managers on an individual basis. For homeless applications, these are specific to each individual case in accordance with Samuels (2019) case law.

Q2(b) For deposits and rent in advance: cases are discussed with managers on an individual basis. For homeless applications, these are specific to each individual case in accordance with Samuels (2019) case law.

Attachments

• FOIR-316624882_FOIR-316624882_1-Budget_Sheet.doc