By Neil Merrick
16 October 2009
Support services for vulnerable people managed by housing associations and other providers might be at risk because of funding changes, the Audit Commission has concluded.
The ring fence that has protected the Supporting People programme since its launch six years ago is being removed this year. From 2010, government allocations to councils will be included in an area-based grant.
According to the commission, ring-fencing enabled the programme – worth £1.6bn in 2009/10 – to ‘punch above its weight’. Local authorities and service providers had an incentive to make savings, it said, because money could be reinvested and used to pilot new approaches.
‘Maintaining service funding without a ring fence will be harder,’ said the programme’s annual review, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government and published by the commission on October 9.
Half of all service contracts are due to end within the next two years. ‘There are fears among providers that the timing is deliberately linked in with the end of the ring fence,’ added the report.
Helen Williams, assistant director at the National Housing Federation, praised the report.
‘Urgent action is required to ensure that more freedom and flexibility over funding delivers better services and does not squander the achievements of the past six years,’ she said.
16 October 2009
Support services for vulnerable people managed by housing associations and other providers might be at risk because of funding changes, the Audit Commission has concluded.
The ring fence that has protected the Supporting People programme since its launch six years ago is being removed this year. From 2010, government allocations to councils will be included in an area-based grant.
According to the commission, ring-fencing enabled the programme – worth £1.6bn in 2009/10 – to ‘punch above its weight’. Local authorities and service providers had an incentive to make savings, it said, because money could be reinvested and used to pilot new approaches.
‘Maintaining service funding without a ring fence will be harder,’ said the programme’s annual review, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government and published by the commission on October 9.
Half of all service contracts are due to end within the next two years. ‘There are fears among providers that the timing is deliberately linked in with the end of the ring fence,’ added the report.
Helen Williams, assistant director at the National Housing Federation, praised the report.
‘Urgent action is required to ensure that more freedom and flexibility over funding delivers better services and does not squander the achievements of the past six years,’ she said.
