1. Housing LIN Technical Brief ‘Funding Extra Care Housing’
Jon Head

2. The Challenge
‘The nature of Extra Care Housing creates challenges for commissioning and funding structures not necessarily designed for the flexibility it entails.’
‘Charging in Extra Care Housing’, Housing Learning and Improvement Network (LIN)– 2010

3. Aim of Technical Brief
“……we need Extra Care Housing to evolve and develop on as large a scale as possible – enabling it, well into the future, to respond to the aspirations and needs of the growing numbers of older people who are looking for affordable, high quality homes in which their future support and care needs can be met with dignity, and in ways that support their independence and wellbeing”
Financial viability clearly critical – funding development and recovering costs.

4. Main Parts of the Technical Brief
Introduction/Scene Setting
Capital Funding-Ian Laight’s session this morning
Revenue Funding
Housing
Care and Support

5. Changes in Extra Care since 1st edn., 2005
Tenure change –much more focus on private / mixed tenure Extra Care Housing
Tightened FACS criteria
Supporting People
Personal Budgets
Models generally much more diverse

6. Changes in Extra Care since 1st edn., 2005
Recent/current:
Reduced Grant levels – review of scale /facilities
Legislation – Health and Social Care Act, Care and Support Bill
Care and Support Housing Fund
NHS changes
Welfare Reform Act
Future of Exempt Accommodation?
More awareness of Risk

7. Focus of the Technical Brief
Extra Care Housing - defining characteristic for the Technical Brief: ‘24/7’ on site care service
Contents also relevant for:
Other older people’s housing with enhanced levels of facilities, services and care input – but not a 24/7 on-site care presence.
Other modern specialist housing for older people without, necessarily, a care focus, for example as advocated in the HAPPI report

8. Technical Brief – audiences?
LA ASCRs (LAs with Adult Social Care Responsibility
LHAs (Local Housing Authorities -also with HB role)
Registered Providers
Private Extra Care providers
Care and Support Providers
NHS bodies

9. Capital and Revenue crossover issues
Separate sections but many links;
Capital costs and servicing loans must be covered through the rental income stream and /or through the sale of leasehold properties.
Need realistic estimates of initial and later void periods - lettings and sales
Rents and service charges must cover operating costs unless the scheme is to receive subsidy from elsewhere.

10. Capital and Revenue crossover issues
Expected income from sales receipts must be modelled around current state of the housing market
Revenue forecasts should build in the risk that 3rd party income may not be continuous
Different impacts for different models e.g. how care /support/ housing are configured and who provides which elements

11. Revenue Revenue section covers: Benefits
Housing Management and other accommodation- related services – funding and cost recovery
Care and support services – funding and cost recovery

12. Revenue Revenue section also covers:
Assistive Technology and alarm services
Funding quality of life and wellbeing services.
Crossover issues –housing/care/support funding

13. Revenue - Key themes Extra Care - first and foremost housing
Extra Care Housing brings together a number of different funding streams
Needs a robust approach to which cost components 'fit' within which income streams
Residents are individually liable to pick up the majority of a scheme’s housing operating costs via rent and /or service charges.
They need to access financial support and assistance via the benefits system where individually eligible

14. Welfare Benefits
Technical Brief is not a guide to benefits, but includes summary information, since
Benefits system has key role in maximising residents’ disposable incomes - thus helping them to meet both their housing costs and care and support costs.

15. Welfare Benefits
Housing providers (both RPs and private sector providers) need to
maximise the no of people who can meet their housing costs
minimise the risk of people being unable to meet the costs of their tenancies/leases.
Access to benefits ‘traditionally’ a key concern mainly in social rent Extra Care Housing, but relevant for any provider aiming to include people with lower/modest incomes and savings within their ‘target’ market.

16. Welfare Benefits Also relevant for
LA ASCRs - incentive to ensure residents can afford to fund:
their eligible care and support needs from own resources
other care and support needs that are not eligible for LA ASCR assistance, but which may prevent/delay eventual reliance on more costly forms of social care and health care
Housing Authorities
Care and Support providers

17. Impact of Welfare Reform Act (WRA)
Many well publicised impacts of WRA do not have an immediate or direct impact on Extra Care Housing (benefit cap, bedroom tax)
The Technical Brief refers to
Expected changes with Housing Benefit and Pension Credit
New processes/systems for handling of benefit claims, queries etc.
Linkage between rents and Local Housing Allowances for private rented Extra Care Housing.

18. Impact of Welfare Reform Act (WRA)
Treatment of Service Charges in Universal Credit Regs. (but don't apply directly in Exempt Accommodation)
Council Tax Benefit.
Disability Living Allowance
Future arrangements for funding supported housing and ‘Exempt Accommodation’.

19. Housing costs recovery
Housing costs - parallels with ‘ordinary’ housing . The Technical Brief refers to :
The range of housing costs that arise in Extra Care Housing.
The way these costs are normally grouped into different income streams (e.g. ‘rent’ under various social rent regimes – and service charges).
How this allocation varies according to the tenure concerned and the type of provider.

20. Housing costs recovery
And to
how the various cost categories align with the benefits system; which costs are eligible to be met by benefits; and which are not.
WRA implications
Telecare
Catering
and ‘crossover’ issues – housing /care/support –Sue’s presentation

21. Watch this space / after we went to press….
Exempt Accommodation –definition - Lord Freud’s letter to SITRA, 4th April, also…
Sheltered housing and welfare reform –NHF briefing
Consultation on revised ARHM Code in response to concerns such as confusing service charges (lack of competitive tendering for maintenance contracts, high transfer fees, high commission charges on building insurance etc.)
What will come after Affordable Rents in 2015? - CIH ‘ We need to talk about rents’

22. Funding Care and Support Costs
Over to Sue……..

23. Thank you! C/o EAC 3rd Floor, 89 Albert Embankment London SE1 7TP
tel:
website: