MD2620 Life off the Streets – extension of rough sleeping services

During 2019/20, 10,726 people were seen sleeping rough in London - more than double the number in 2010/11. Of these, 66 per cent were new to the streets, 52 per cent were non-UK nationals, and 30 per cent were from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Around three-quarters had one or more support needs, with 47 per cent having a need related to mental health, 39 per cent to alcohol, and 39 per cent to drugs.

Since 2016, the Mayor has coordinated efforts through his Life off the Streets taskforce to identify, implement, lobby for and monitor the effectiveness of interventions to tackle rough sleeping. In his London Housing Strategy published in 2018, the Mayor set out his aim that there should be a sustainable route off the streets for every rough sleeper in London. In June 2018, he published his Rough Sleeping Plan of Action which outlines the steps that need to be taken by City Hall, the Government, and others to achieve this.

Since taking office, the Mayor has been expanding the pan-London rough sleeping services which the GLA funds and commissions. These services collectively form his Life off the Streets programme. They are services for people with experience, or at risk, of sleeping rough, or initiatives to tackle rough sleeping, that cannot or would not be provided at a London borough level, as they are pan-London, or multi-borough, in their remit. A budget of £33.8m for these services was approved for the period 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2020 (see MD1532). There are currently seven services under contract, with annual values ranging from £200,000 to £3.8m, as well as a number of grant-funded initiatives. The contracts for these core services are for three years, with two extensions of a year exercisable at the discretion of the GLA. The first of these two one-year extensions was approved in MD1532.

The GLA’s rough sleeping budget for 2020/21 is at least £11.22m. £8.275m of this is required to further extend and expand the Mayor’s Life Off the Streets programme and to continue contracted services and initiatives for people rough sleeping in London.

The proposed £8.275m spend will comprise:

• £7.851m to enable the core suite of rough sleeping services to run for a further 12 months (2020/21). The commissioned services and initiatives that make up the core element of the Mayor’s Life off the Streets programme comprise:

a. No Second Night Out (NSNO) (St Mungo’s) £3,790,000

b. London Street Rescue (LSR) (Thames Reach) £630,775

c. TST North (St Mungo’s) £1,206,931

d. TST South (Thames Reach) £1,199,692

e. Routes Home (St Mungo’s) £599,406

f. Clearing House (St Mungo’s) £209,992

g. CHAIN (St Mungo’s) £214,493

• £0.063m to grant fund the Rapid Response Team (Thames Reach) (approved in MD2481) to enable it run for a further 12 months (2020/21);

• £0.172m for the expansion of CHAIN in 2020/21;

• £0.15m to continue the expansion of the Tenancy Sustainment Teams in 2020/21; and

• £0.04m to continue to grant fund Groundswell Homeless Health Peer Advocacy Service (approved in DD2193) for a further 12 months (2020/21).

Details of the services and initiatives referred to in the above two paragraphs are set out in section 2.

It is proposed that the GLA exercise its discretion to extend the contracts with the above providers for the services listed in paragraph 1.5 (a) to (g) for the final year. Extending these contracts will provide better value for money than procuring services competitively for one year only. Variations to the GLA’s contracts with St Mungo’s (NSNO, Routes Home, TST North, Clearing House and CHAIN) and Thames Reach (LSR, TST South) will be required to extend them by 12 months.

Variations to the GLA’s contracts with St Mungo’s (CHAIN, TST North) and Thames Reach (TST South) will be required to incorporate the increased spend outlined above, which requires an exemption under Paragraph 10 of the Contracts and Funding Code on the grounds of previous involvement in a specific current project or continuation of existing work that cannot be separated from the new project/work. The other services will be provided on a grant-funded basis or competitively procured.

The success of the Mayor’s rough sleeping services

The Mayor has an excellent track record of supporting people sleeping rough in London through his core Life off the Streets services:

• every quarter of each year since 2016, when the core suite of services were commissioned, over 80 per cent of those accessing the Mayor’s rough sleeping services exited rough sleeping;

• between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2019, over 4,400 new rough sleepers were brought into No Second Night Out (NSNO) from the street – 30 per cent of the 15,079 new arrivals onto the street. Partly as a result of the service, in 2018/19 73 per cent of all new rough sleepers in the capital did not spend a second night out – compared to 57 per cent prior to the service commencing in 2008/9 (when the number of new rough sleepers was only about a third of what it is now);

• between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2019, the Clearing House facilitated sustainable lettings to Clearing House properties for over 750 rough sleepers;

• the Tenancy Sustainment Teams support over 1,900 people in Clearing House properties at any one time, with an average of 97 per cent of tenancies sustained each quarter;

• between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2019, the Routes Home Service worked with almost 700 non-UK nationals who had been found rough sleeping in London. 87 per cent of Routes Home service users exited rough sleeping;

• between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2019, the London Street Rescue pan-London outreach service helped over 2,400 people to move away from the street - an average of over 800 each year; and

• the CHAIN database of London’s rough sleepers is currently used by almost 1,100 users in a wide range of services. It contains details of tens of thousands of rough sleepers that have slept out in London since the late 1990s and has around a million actions and outcomes recorded for these.

The Mayor’s Life off the Streets programme focuses on achieving the Mayor’s vision for everyone sleeping rough to have a sustainable route away from the streets. The programme is underpinned by the following overarching priorities set out in the pan-London Rough Sleeping Commissioning Framework 2017.

To work with boroughs and partners:

• to minimise the flow of new rough sleepers onto the streets;

• to ensure that no-one new to the streets sleeps rough for a second night;

• to ensure that no-one lives on the streets of London; and

• to ensure that no-one returns to the streets of London.

The £8.275m approved by this Mayoral Decision will support the extension and expansion of services as set out in paragraph 1.5. Further details of how this extra funding will be spent are set out below.

Core services

No Second Night Out

NSNO supports people who are seen sleeping rough for the first time. They are supported to access the service by outreach teams. Once at a hub they spend time with specialist staff who will establish their current situation and the best options available to them. The NSNO team then make people an offer of help based on their specific circumstances and needs, as well as supporting them to take up that offer.

The NSNO contract was awarded to St Mungo’s and entered into following an OJEU procurement exercise to identify the provider. The contract began in April 2017. The initial NSNO contract value was £14.72m over four years (£3.68m per annum) and approved by MD2031. This MD seeks approval of expenditure of £3.79m for the GLA to exercise its existing option to extend the contract for one year.

London Street Rescue

LSR is an outreach service helping people sleeping on the streets in London boroughs that do not commission their own outreach service. LSR outreach workers typically go out at night alongside volunteers to make contact with people sleeping rough and carry out casework and advocacy during the day.

The GLA’s LSR contract with Thames Reach was entered following an OJEU procurement exercise to identify a provider. The contract began in April 2016. Its original value was £3.194m over five years. This MD seeks approval of expenditure of £0.63m for the GLA to exercise its discretion to extend the contract for one year.

The GLA’s contract with Thames Reach for LSR was varied (see MD2166) to provide a new ‘night transport outreach team’ to work on the night bus and tube network in London. The team works closely with TfL which has enabled intelligence-led shifts based on TfL staff reports that feed into shift delivery patterns. The service has also developed the skills of TfL staff to improve the quality of referrals.

This MD seeks approval to extend this variation for two years at a cost of £0.25m from April 2019 to March 2021.

Clearing House

The Clearing House stock comprises over 3,700 homes ring-fenced for people who have slept rough in London. There is a turnover of 300-350 tenancies in the stock each year, with new tenants coming predominately from hostels or directly from the streets. People are referred to these properties via the Clearing House team which processes referrals and allocates the properties.

The Clearing House contract was entered into following an OJEU advertised tender. The contract began in April 2016, for an initial period of three years, with an option for the GLA to extend by up to a further two years, resulting in a maximum potential length of five years. The initial contract value for Clearing House was £1.05m over five years (£0.21m per annum).

The initial three year contract was previously extended by one year, from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020.

This MD seeks approval of expenditure of £0.21m for the GLA to exercise its pre-existing contractual option to extend the contract with St Mungo’s by a further one year, from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021.

Tenancy Sustainment Teams (TSTs)

Contract extension

People in Clearing House accommodation receive support from TSTs, of which there are currently two - one in north London, and the other in south London.

Since April 2016, the TSTs have been provided by St Mungo’s (TST North) and Thames Reach (TST South). The current providers have the technical expertise to provide this support.

The TST contracts were entered following an OJEU competitive tender process and commenced on 1 April 2016. For TST North, the initial contract value was £6.05m over five years (£1.21m a year) and for TST South £6m over five years (£1.2m a year). Each contract included an option, which allowed the GLA to extend the contract for a further period of one year.

This MD seeks approval of expenditure of £1.21m for the GLA to exercise its existing options to extend the contract with St Mungo’s for one year and £1.2m to extend the contract with Thames Reach for one year.

Expansion of service

In addition to the extension of the core TST contracts listed in paragraph 2.14, this MD seeks approval of expenditure of £0.144m (£0.129m for St Mungo’s TST North and £0.015m for Thames Reach TST South) to expand the work of the Tenancy Sustainment Teams for 12 months.

There are 208 non-UK European Economic Area (EEA) nationals and 342 non-EEA nationals currently living in the Clearing House properties, supported by the GLA-commissioned TSTs. This group require specialist support over and above that generally provided to other Clearing House residents, particularly in relation to language skills, access to advice, securing and understanding entitlements, and sourcing documentation.

During Q3 2019/20, TST North worked with 963 clients, which is well above the 750 +10 per cent threshold for active caseload set out in the contract. As a result, caseloads within the service have increased significantly and are expected to increase further over the next year. The additional investment for which approval is sought in the MD will allow the TSTs to meet minimum standards and sustain tenancies. However, the additional pressure on these services prevents them from providing the support required to transform lives and help people fully transition from homelessness.

£0.105m (£0.089m for TST North and £0.015m for TST South) of the expenditure sought is to extend the roles funded to support the above cohort approved by MD2559.

The further £0.04m will fund an additional post in the St Mungo’s TST North Team.

The original value of the TST north contract (St Mungo’s) was £6.03m. To date the contract has been varied as follows:

The original value of the TST south contract (Thames Reach) was £6m. To date the contract has been varied as follows:

Routes Home

Routes Home assists non-UK national rough sleepers with support needs to find a route away from the streets. It helps them to access necessary advice (such as immigration advice), establish their status and entitlements, and access accommodation and work in the UK. If, following advice and support, the individual decides voluntarily to return to their home country, they are supported in accessing accommodation and support there. The service provides 16 bed spaces as part of its core contract.

The Routes Home contract was entered following an OJEU procurement exercise to identify a provider. The contract began in April 2016. Its initial contract value was £3m over five years (£0.6m a year) plus option for a further period of one year. This MD seeks approval of expenditure of £0.6m for the GLA to exercise its existing option to extend the contract for one year.

CHAIN

Contract extension

The CHAIN database collects and contains limited data on those who are found rough sleeping in London. It enables the providers of rough sleeping services to record interventions and monitor outcomes and represents the most detailed and comprehensive source of information about rough sleeping in London.

The GLA’s CHAIN contract with St Mungo’s was entered following an OJEU procurement process and commenced on 1 April 2016. The initial contract value was £1.1m over five years (£0.21m a year) plus an option to extend the contract for a further period of one year. This MD seeks approval of expenditure of £0.21m for the GLA to exercise its option to extend the contract for one year.

The original value of the CHAIN contract (St Mungo’s) was £1.07m. To date the contract has been varied as follows:

Expansion of service

Further development of the CHAIN system, its recording features and improvements in analytical capacity would improve the quality of information and its interpretation, helping to inform policy and service development. Furthermore, the additional rough sleeping services proposed in the MD will place additional support and maintenance requirements on the CHAIN service.

In addition to the extension of the core CHAIN contract listed in paragraph 2.23, this MD seeks approval of £0.172m to expand CHAIN in 2019/20 and 2020/21. This expansion will enhance CHAIN with additional staffing to support maintenance and development of the CHAIN database and analysis of data associated with the other expanded Life off the Streets services.

Grant funded services

Rapid Response Team

The Rapid Response Team has been operating since 2019/20 to pilot an outreach response across London to respond to all StreetLink referrals. By focusing on StreetLink referrals, this service frees up local outreach teams and the Mayor’s London Street Rescue (LSR) service to focus on those living on the streets.

The Rapid Response Team now operates across 24 London boroughs and was able to provide an immediate route away from the street for over 500 people in its first two quarters of operation.

The Mayor approved (see MD2481) the grant funding of Thames Reach to provide this service to third parties and now approval is sought for up to £0.063m to extend the service by a further 12 months.

The Rapid Response team has scaled up over the six months since its inception. Timescales would not allow the service to be procured in the short-term. However, the intention is to competitively tender for this service in the future. Further, for a short-term grant funding agreement, there are no other providers able to provide this service at the scale required immediately.

The annual value for this financial year is less than originally anticipated due to a slow, but gradual recruitment and implementation process of this service. The service has been gradually scaled up to work across the 24 boroughs, as immediately running a new pan-London outreach team across the majority of London immediately was not feasible.

Groundswell Homeless Health Peer Advocacy Support Service (HHPA)

HHPA enables homeless people to address health issues - helping people access services and making services more accessible through the support of volunteers with experience of homelessness. Work is focused on rough sleepers and those at risk of rough sleeping, people living in hostels and using day centres.

The GLA has grant funded Groundswell to provide this unique service to third parties. Since 2012, it has supported 1,700 people to access healthcare. The current provider has the technical expertise and is the only provider that could mobilise immediately.

This grant funding will allow HHPA to be rolled out across all inner-London boroughs, embedding existing projects and piloting new models through partnerships with Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Public Health England and local authorities. Groundswell will focus on two new strands of work through this continued investment by developing a gender-informed programme and enhancing the training offered to local authority-commissioned supported housing projects to better support residents to look after their health.

This MD seeks approval of expenditure of £0.04m to grant fund Groundswell to provide this service for a further 12 months.

Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, as public authorities, the Mayor and GLA are subject to a public-sector equality duty and must have ‘due regard’ to the need to (i) eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation; (ii) advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not; and (iii) foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not. Protected characteristics under section 149 of the Equality Act are age, disability, gender re-assignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, and marriage or civil partnership status (all except the last being “relevant” protected characteristics).

Of those seen rough sleeping in 2018/19:

• 51 per cent were non-UK nationals;

• 50 per cent had a mental health need;

• 16 per cent were women;

• most of those seen rough sleeping (56 per cent) were in the 26-45 age group;

• eight per cent were under 26 years old;

• 12 per cent were over 55; and

• five people were under 18.

Those with protected characteristics of race and disability are over-represented among rough sleepers, as the client group for these services is people with a history of sleeping rough the proposals in this paper are likely to have positive impacts on BAME Londoners and those with disabilities. As the majority of people sleeping rough are men, more men than women are likely to access these services. However, the services will provide personalised, specialist support for women and non-binary people which meets the needs of these groups.

Key risks and issues

Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

See paragraph 1.2 above.

Impact assessments and consultations

The bids for the proposed extension of the core suite of services and introduction of new services and projects were developed in partnership with the Mayor’s Life Off the Streets taskforce and were informed by in-depth consultation with stakeholders from London boroughs, voluntary sector providers and the wider homelessness sector.

There are no interests to declare of any of the drafters or reviewers of this approval.

This decision requests an approval for the expenditure of £8.275m as summarised in paragraph 1.5 and detailed in section 2 above.

This expenditure will be funded from the 2020-21 rough sleeping budget of £14.01m.

Powers to undertake the requested actions

The foregoing sections of this report indicate that the decisions requested of the Mayor fall within the statutory powers of the Authority to promote and/or to do anything which is facilitative of or conducive or incidental to the promotion of social development in Greater London and in formulating the proposals in respect of which a decision is sought officers have complied with the Authority’s related statutory duties to:

(a) pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people;

(b) consider how the proposals will promote the improvement of health of persons, health inequalities between persons and to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom; and

(c) consult with appropriate bodies.

In taking the decisions requested of him, the Mayor must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty; namely the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010, and to advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment) and persons who do not share it and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it (section 149 of the Equality Act 2010). To this end, the Mayor should have particular regard to section 3 (above) of this report.

Variation of existing contracts

This decision form seeks approval of variations of the Authority’s contracts with St Mungo’s in relation to the No Second Night Out, Routes Home, Tenancy Sustainment Team (“TST”) North, Clearing House and CHAIN projects. The decision form also seeks approval for a variation of Thames Reach’s contract in relation to the TST South and London Street Rescue projects. In the case of each of the abovementioned contracts, the officers are seeking to vary the contracts by way of exercising existing options, which allow for the Authority to extend the contract for a period of 12 months. Furthermore, in the case of the CHAIN contract and TST North contract with St Mungo’s and the TST South contract with Thames Reach, the officers have sought approval to make further variations to those contracts.

Regulation 72(1)(a) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (the “PCR”) provides that contracts may be modified during their term, where the modification has been provided for in the initial procurement documents in clear precise and unequivocal review clauses. The officers have set out in section 2 of this decision form how this requirement has been met in relation to each contract.

As regards the further variations of St Mungo’s CHAIN contract, the PCR allows for a variation of a contact for additional services by the original contactor that have become necessary and that were not included in the original procurement, where a change of contractor cannot be made for economic or technical reasons and which would cause significant inconvenience or substantial duplication of costs for the Authority, provided that the variation does not amount to more than 50% of the original contract value.

This proposed variation amounts to less than 50% of the CHAIN contract. Furthermore, the officers have set out at paragraphs 2.24 to 2.28 above the economic and technical reasons why a change of contractor cannot be made.

The officers should note that in accordance with Regulations, the Authority is required to publish a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union in relation to the variation of the agreement. The officers should liaise with TfL’s procurement team as regards the said notices and the appropriate documentation, which is required to record the agreement of the parties as to the variation.

The proposed variations of the TST North and South contracts with St Mungo’s and Thames Reach respectively amount to less than ten percent of the original contract. To that end, the proposed variations fall within regulation 72(1)(f) of the PCR.

The decision form also seeks an exemption from the requirements of the Authority’s Contracts and Funding Code (the “Code”) in relation to the further variation of St Mungo’s CHAIN and TST North contracts and Thames Reach’s TST South contract. To that end, an exemption may be approved, where the service provider has previous involvement in a specific current project or there is a need for the continuation of existing work that cannot be separated from the new project. The officers have set out in section 2 above how the requirements for each exemption have been met.

Provision of grant funding

Approval is sought to vary the existing grant agreement with Thames Reach to allow for a further 12 months funding of the Rapid Response Team project. Approval is also sought to fund Groundswell in relation to its HHPA project. As regards both proposed grants, the officers reminded the need to comply with section 12 of the Code when distributing the said grant funding and of the need to ensure that an appropriate funding agreement or a written variation of same be put in place between the Authority and the recipients prior to the payment of any part of the funding.

Services for non-UK nationals

To the extent that any of the requested budget be used to provide support services to non-UK nationals, the officers should take note of the UK government’s derogation from Article 24(2) of the Free Movement Directive as regards the need to provide equal between UK and EEA citizens during the first three months following EEA citizens’ arrival in the UK (the “Derogation”). The Derogation is currently suspended until 31 December 2020. The provision of such support by the Authority beyond that date will first require a further extension of the suspension period.

The drafting of this approval has been delayed by the emergency Covid-19 response work of the rough sleeping team. Since 1 April 2020, the service providers have been delivering these services at risk, pending this approval to sign contract variations or grant agreements (and subsequently make payments) for 2020/21.