---

Housing and Regeneration Bill

Our sympathies are with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. She is being heroic in speaking. I can tell her in response to her amendment that I met the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to discuss the concerns raised by Shelter. The last thing we want is to set up family intervention tenancies to fail because so much depends on the work the family itself is prepared to do, and the effort family members are prepared to put into it. Essentially we want FITs to provide a platform by which families can regain a footing in the community without causing further damage and distress to their neighbours. Any eviction from a FIT due to a family not having been given the level of support it needs in a way that it can use and build on would be a failure on the part of the project, so we are very much at one with Shelter on this. However, the amendments go too far in seeking to address matters beyond tenancy law. I explained to my noble friend that while we could not accept the amendments, we take the notion described as the ““thin definition”” in behaviour support, and that we intend to see how we can prevent the social situation the noble Lord drew attention to. We have therefore undertaken to look at how we can ensure that family intervention tenancies are used only to aid the delivery of behaviour support services that are intensive in nature. I think that my noble friend has already said that this meets the concerns expressed by her and by Shelter, and I am happy that that is the case. I turn briefly to the other amendments tabled in the group. As the noble Lord said, we have tabled an amendment to achieve the same purpose as his, and indeed our amendment goes a little further. It requires us to take the affirmative route when seeking to vary as well as remove any of the requirements set out in the Bill. In doing this we are responding to a recommendation made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I turn to Amendment No. 114C. Again I can tell my noble friend Lady Jones that we support the spirit of the amendment in that we want evictions from family intervention tenancies to be rare events. What is encouraging is that the work that has been done so far with intensive support projects suggests that families remain engaged with the support. These are extremely expensive and intensive projects, but they do work. The amendment addresses the nature of the review procedure we are providing. Tenants of a local authority would be entitled to a review where a landlord decides to take possession under a family intervention tenancy. We are taking a power to lay regulations that will make provision for the procedure to be followed in connection with such a review so that landlords and tenants are clear on how such a review should be conducted. Normally, a review of this nature would simply involve the landlord reappraising his decision to take possession in the light of representations made by the tenants or their representatives, but in the case of these tenancies, we think it is sensible—as the amendment also proposes—that the professionals involved in delivering the support programme should feed in their views to inform the landlord's final decision. I want to make it clear that we would expect the landlord and the support programme to work closely together from the outset. Any decision to take possession would normally be agreed between the two, and if other agencies had an interest in the case, we would want them to be involved as well. A scenario where the landlord seeks repossession against the professional judgment of the support workers is, frankly, most unlikely, so it follows that in the vast majority of cases, any evidence brought forward by support workers at a review would strongly support the landlord's decision. I am happy to put on the record my view that future regulations should address the issue of the type of evidence that the review should consider, and that that may include evidence from those who may have been providing the tenant with behavioural support services. On that basis, I hope noble Lords will agree that it is unnecessary to highlight this issue in the Bill. The power to make review regulations is already broad enough to allow us to cover the points to which I have referred. Turning briefly to my own amendments in this group, Amendments Nos. 114AZA, 114AZB, 114BA and 114BB concern identical provisions, albeit that they apply to the two different types of social landlords, local authorities and RSLs. We want to make sure that families are clear about what a family intervention tenancy is, why it is being proposed that they should accept it and what the consequences might be if they do not abide by its conditions. This is obviously heavily linked to their support programme. Our aim is to make sure that a family will sign such a tenancy only having properly considered their options; they must know, they must agree, they must be fully informed and fully signed up. Accordingly, provisions require that a family be served a notice before they sign a family intervention tenancy agreement. Clause 296 provides details of our requirements as to what the notice must contain. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has accepted that the negative procedure is appropriate for regulations which add further requirements. However, in recognising the importance of the requirements we wish to fix on the face of the Bill, it wants to make sure that any regulations which seek to remove or amend them should attract the affirmative procedure. It is unlikely that we would want to make regulations to this effect but it is sensible that we take the power that would enable us to do so. We are very happy to accept the committee's recommendations.