Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): As members are aware, Colm Gildernew, the Chairperson, is the sponsor of the Housing (Amendment) Bill. Therefore, I am taking the chair for a short time to deal with this item in line with procedural advice on the handling of a Bill when the sponsor is also the Chairperson.

The officials who have joined us today are Ross Connolly and Eleanor Thomson.

Eleanor, I believe that you will start, after which Ross will talk about his paper. Eleanor, over to you. Thank you.

Dr Eleanor Thomson (RaISe): Thank you very much, Chair and members. We are here to discuss the Housing (Amendment) Bill. For time purposes, I will focus the majority of the briefing on the jurisdictional comparisons and the principal issues that members may wish to consider. Ross will then take over on the financial implications of the Bill.

At its core, the Bill is a relatively narrow legislative proposal that contains three clauses and seeks to amend article 3(6) of the Housing (Northern Ireland) Order 1988 by extending the period during which a person is regarded as "threatened with homelessness" from 28 days to 60 days. The Bill sponsor believes that the current statutory period does not provide sufficient opportunity for early intervention and that extending the time frame would allow the Housing Executive to engage at an earlier stage, potentially preventing homelessness before accommodation is lost. While earlier intervention may reduce the number of households that ultimately become homeless or require temporary accommodation, lengthening the period of statutory responsibility could also increase Housing Executive caseloads, staffing requirements and temporary accommodation need.

In the paper, I have outlined the current policy position in Northern Ireland, including duties under the Housing Order 1988. I have also outlined the operation of the full duty applicant status. If you are happy, I will not go into too much detail on that at the moment, but I am happy to take questions on it.

The Committee heard from the Bill sponsor on 2 July, when he provided detail on the proposal and the rationale for bringing it forward. He also gave detail on the impact assessments, the consultation that was undertaken and engagement with stakeholders, so, again, I will not go into too much detail on that. I have outlined that information in the paper.

I have also outlined some key reports that members may wish to note. Those reports have identified pressures in the existing homelessness system and have noted the importance of prevention-based approaches. They include the Northern Ireland Audit Office's 2025 report, the Public Accounts Committee's report from earlier this year and this Committee's report on homelessness from April of this year, which notes that the 28-day "threatened with homelessness" period is considered outdated compared with the 56-day and two-month prevention windows elsewhere. That report makes other recommendations of which members will be aware.

I turn to the comparisons with other UK jurisdictions. Members might find it useful to have a look at table 1 in the paper. Northern Ireland is the only UK jurisdiction that has a 28-day threshold. All other jurisdictions have a prevention window of 56 days or longer, and Scotland and Wales have introduced legislation to move to a six-month statutory period. The Republic of Ireland does not operate a comparable statutory "threatened with homelessness" time frame. I have given some detail on that in the paper, but I will not go into that detail now.

Although extending the statutory period from 28 days to 60 days may appear to be a relatively modest change, it is important to understand that the longer prevention periods that operate elsewhere are generally accompanied by significantly broader prevention duties. Independent reviews of homelessness legislation have taken place in England and Scotland and, more recently, in Wales. I have included details of those in the briefing paper. Those reviews shifted the emphasis towards a more statutory approach to homelessness, particularly homelessness prevention, and a requirement for specified public bodies to work in cooperation with housing and homelessness services to identify and assist people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness.

In England, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 widened the definition of "threatened with homelessness" from 28 days to 56 days and introduced a prevention duty that applies to all eligible applicants. Importantly, that duty applies regardless of intentionality and priority need. Where a local housing authority is satisfied that an applicant is threatened with homelessness and is eligible, it must take reasonable steps to help the applicant to secure accommodation, make an assessment of the applicant's case and prepare a housing plan. The Act also places a duty on certain specified public authorities, such as the police, social services and health boards, to refer cases of homelessness or cases of people who are at risk of homelessness to the relevant housing authority. In England, provision of temporary accommodation is not part of the prevention duty; that is accommodated elsewhere in the Housing Act 1996.

Under the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987, a person is considered to be threatened with homelessness if they are likely to become homeless within two months. However, the more recent Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 extended that time from two months to six months. Among other preventative measures, that Act provides a strengthened statutory prevention duty, requiring intervention by local authorities to take place earlier and be more proactive; an "ask and act" duty requiring public bodies to ask about an individual's housing situation at an early stage and to take meaningful action wherever such a risk is identified; and improved expectations of cross-sector cooperation in preventing homelessness. Where a local authority is satisfied that an applicant is threatened with homelessness, it must remove or, where that is not possible, minimise the threat of homelessness to the applicant, and it must secure accommodation to be available for occupation. That is a materially stronger duty than the prevention duties in England and Wales, where local authorities are generally required to take "reasonable steps" to prevent homelessness but are not required to secure accommodation at the prevention stage simply because that prevention duty is owed.

As with Scotland, an extension from 56 days to six months has recently been introduced in Wales through the Homelessness and Social Housing Allocation (Wales) Act 2026. That period includes instances where the person has received written notice to give up their accommodation, where an application has been made to the High Court or the County Court for a possession order or where it is likely that the person will become homeless within six months. The last test applies regardless of whether the first two are met. When a local housing authority is satisfied, it must help to ensure that suitable accommodation does not cease to be available by taking reasonable steps that are likely to achieve that. When a local authority considers that a duty is owed, it must prepare and maintain a prevention, support and accommodation plan for the applicant. Again, separate statutory accommodation duties arise elsewhere for eligible homeless applicants. As with the reforms in Scotland, there will be a phased implementation of the reforms in order for government and delivery partners to align the implementation with increasing housing supply and local housing authority capacity.

In the paper, I have outlined some of the evidence on the impacts of those legislative changes elsewhere. Evidence from other jurisdictions suggests that extending the period when a person is considered to be threatened with homelessness can support earlier intervention and improve prevention outcomes. However, it is difficult to isolate the impact of extending the prevention window alone, as reforms have generally been introduced alongside wider homelessness prevention duties and legislative changes. I ask members to bear that in mind.

I will highlight a few of the key findings. In England, the extended prevention duty was viewed as the most positive aspect of the reforms, with 67% of respondents agreeing that it enabled earlier and more effective prevention. Data showed that 58% of prevention duty cases resulted in households securing accommodation. However, authorities reported larger caseloads and increased administrative and staffing pressures, as well as an increase in the use of temporary accommodation.

An evaluation took place in Wales in 2018 following its legislative changes. That is when it went to the 56-day window, which is not factoring in the new six-month period. That evaluation found that the prevention period was a key strength. It gave services more time to assess needs, engage with landlords, implement support plans and provide increased opportunities to sustain the existing accommodation. The evaluation found that 65% of households assisted under the prevention duty had homelessness successfully prevented and that temporary accommodation was reduced by 18% in the early years following implementation. More recent Welsh statistics show that homelessness was successfully prevented in 61% of "threatened with homelessness" cases during 2025-26.

It is important to stress that the evaluations considered the wider reform packages and cannot be taken as evidence of the extension of the statutory period on its own.

Members may wish to explore the following principal issues: why has a period of 60 days been selected, and should consideration be given to a six-month period, particularly in light of developments in Scotland and Wales? Will extending the statutory period on its own produce meaningful change, or should additional prevention duties also be considered? There are resource implications for Housing Executive caseloads, staffing requirements and operational costs, and Ross will go into more detail on that. Finally, how does the proposal fit within the ambitions for a broader homelessness reform agenda and the proposed work of the Minister to establish a homelessness commission?

That concludes my briefing on the Housing (Amendment) Bill. I will pass to Ross, who will talk about the financial implications.

Mr Ross Connolly (RaISe): Thank you, Eleanor. Good afternoon, Chair and members. This briefing will summarise my paper on the potential financial implications of the Housing (Amendment) Bill if enacted as introduced.

Before turning to the Bill, it is worth noting the wider public finance context. Northern Ireland continues to face significant budgetary pressures, and a multi-year Budget has not yet been agreed. In responding to the draft Budget, the Housing Executive said recently that the outlook for the housing sector was extremely challenging and warned that it could reduce investment capacity and housing supply. Against that backdrop, it is particularly important to understand the Bill's potential financial implications. The Committee may wish to engage further with the Department during the scrutiny process to obtain further detail on what resources could be made available to implement the Bill.

Homelessness is a growing issue in Northern Ireland and has wide-ranging financial and social impacts. Over the past decade, the number of people with statutory homelessness status has grown by 111%. At the same time, housing supply has not grown consistently. Accordingly, departmental spend on support for those who are homeless or are threatened with homelessness has increased significantly over the same period.

It is important to lay out the current picture regarding expenditure on temporary accommodation, as that has formed much of the discussion on the Bill thus far. The Minister advised the Chamber last Tuesday at the Bill's Second Stage that net spend on temporary accommodation was around £40 million in the past year alone. During the Bill's consultation process, the Housing Executive said that, between 2019 and 2024, the cost of providing that temporary accommodation rose by 360%. In 2023-24, around 35·5% of the temporary accommodation spend was on non-standard temporary accommodation, such as hotels and Airbnb rentals. Perhaps most strikingly, the Department stated in March 2025 that spending in that area had risen from £670,000 in 2017-18 to over £12 million in 2023-24. That is a rise of over 1,600% or an 18-fold increase on previous levels. That suggests that that area of expenditure is experiencing exceptionally rapid growth, which raises questions about its long-term sustainability.

As Eleanor outlined, the Bill has a single clause that would extend the definition of those threatened with homelessness from the current 28 days to 60 days. The Bill's explanatory and financial memorandum (EFM) outlines that:

At the same time, the consultation responses detailed in the EFM note that, while there was strong support from respondents for the thrust of the Bill, there were concerns around current capacity to meet the requirements of the Bill. The Housing Executive has stated that the Bill would have detrimental financial implications for its work. More recently, it has provided the Minister with a cost estimate associated with the Bill of £2·5 million annually. On the other hand, the Bill sponsor has indicated that he:

particularly in the context of the Communities Minister's previous announcement that the Housing Executive would be permitted to purchase up to 600 new homes to be used as temporary accommodation units over three years. It is notable that, as we stand, no homes have been purchased under that scheme.

The paper identifies several areas in which the Bill would be likely to generate additional costs. First, it is likely that the Bill would place additional pressure on Housing Executive staff and resources. The Bill would make a larger cohort of households eligible for additional support over a longer period. That would be likely to generate costs, potentially including increased staffing need, in the Housing Executive. Housing Executive staff may also need to be redeployed internally, which could create pressures elsewhere in its service delivery. Furthermore, it is possible that workplace stress among Housing Executive staff could increase, leading to a drop in productivity, which could have material financial implications.

The Bill would also be likely to create additional demand for temporary accommodation, particularly in the short term. I refer to Eleanor's data, which showed that that has been the case after similar legislative changes elsewhere. However, the scale of the financial impact would depend on the scale of caseload increases stemming from the Bill. It is difficult to model that out. Although I have examined evidence from other jurisdictions to get a sense of scale, there are, as Eleanor said, different contexts, with changes usually being made as part of much broader legislative packages. The financial impacts are therefore not overly comparable or helpful in drawing out inferences for Northern Ireland.

The Bill's EFM argues that most people seeking support:

and that the extension of the support window will give the Housing Executive:

It would, however, be reasonable to assume that those other solutions, including, potentially, mediation, would have their own requirements for Housing Executive staff time and resources, albeit that those would be likely to be more cost-effective than providing temporary accommodation.

A further consideration is the profile of households likely to present as threatened with homelessness. Those already in tenancy agreements for their household may not require temporary accommodation until their statutory notice to quit period expires. If that is broadly the case, the additional demands on temporary accommodation specifically due to the Bill might be less than expected by the Housing Executive. The Committee may therefore wish to ask the Department whether it can provide any additional information on the different categories of people who present as threatened with homelessness.

RaISe engaged with the Housing Executive during the preparation of this paper to understand its position in greater detail. During the initial engagement, it stated that it was difficult for it to provide meaningful cost estimates. However, as I referenced, at the Bill's Second Stage, the Minister for Communities quoted new estimates from the Housing Executive that implementing the Bill could cost around £2·5 million a year. Following that, RaISe engaged further with the Housing Executive; however, we have not yet been able to obtain the detailed modelling or data that was used to calculate that figure. The Committee may, therefore, wish to seek further clarity from the Housing Executive on that point.

The Bill sponsor's argument that the Bill could generate a longer-term positive financial impact mirrors the thinking that underpinned similar legislative changes across England, Scotland and Wales. For example, the financial memorandum prepared for the Housing (Scotland) Bill argued that, whilst there would be associated costs, particularly in the early years, over time they would be offset by savings from reduced pressures on public services due to lower homelessness rates. That is an area of potential financial and social benefit.

The evidence suggests that the Housing (Amendment) Bill would generate financial implications for the public purse in the short-to-medium term. Those would principally be through increased demands on the Housing Executive and on temporary accommodation provisions. At present, the scale of those costs is uncertain, although the Housing Executive has now quoted an estimate of around £2·5 million annually. RaISe has not seen the methodology that underpins that estimate, so it is not possible for me to provide a robust assessment of it at this time. Particular scrutiny may be warranted of the capacity of the existing temporary accommodation supply; the affordability of any increased demands on the Housing Executive's staff and resources; and the Department's plan to reduce reliance on non-standard temporary accommodation. A central issue for consideration when scrutinising the Bill is whether any short-to-medium-term expenditure would be offset by longer-term reductions in homelessness and the associated pressures across housing, health and other public services. Current evidence points to both additional short-term costs and potential longer-term benefits. However, the balance between them remains uncertain at this time and merits further examination by the Committee as part of its scrutiny process.

In the interests of time, members, I close my remarks there. I am happy to take questions on the financial implications of the Bill.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): Thank you very much.

Members, as is normally the case, please indicate if you want to put questions to Eleanor or to Ross.

On the basis of the 2023-24 figures, if we achieve the same cost reduction in the amount of temporary accommodation required as in Wales, that would be a reduction of over £6 million a year. The £2·5 million that the Housing Executive has identified would, obviously, be well covered with that. Off the top of my head as an employer, I calculate that, if we roughly took the employers' cost as £70,000 a year, that would be 30 to 35 new jobs that could be made available in the Housing Executive. What I am trying to say is this: if the level of money that is going to the Housing Executive for temporary accommodation costs was maintained for a year, the savings that the Housing Executive would be encouraged to make by preventing people from going into temporary accommodation could cover its additional staffing costs. On the basis of the temporary accommodation costs, is there any reason why the Department could not allocate that amount to the Housing Executive? Is there a reason why it gives the amount that it gives? Is it based on predictions by the Housing Executive? Do you know that?

Mr Connolly: Unfortunately, I am not sure of that, but I can find that out for the Committee.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): We can look into that.

Mr Connolly: The effects of the Bill will be reliant on any number of assumptions and behavioural responses. It is extremely hard to model those. Certainly, the costs of temporary accommodation have been rising dramatically, and a reduction in that would free up a lot of funding to put towards prevention.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): Absolutely.

Eleanor, you mentioned that England does not provide temporary accommodation: is there any clarification of when temporary accommodation is provided in Northern Ireland? Is it before or after the notice to quit period is finished?

Dr Thomson: To clarify, temporary accommodation is provided in England. It sits under a different duty. It does not sit under the prevention duty; it sits under a separate housing one, once the criteria are met. It is not rolled together, as it is here.

On the question of when a person is eligible for accommodation here, it does not have to be at the end of the notice period. There are individual circumstances in which someone might need to leave accommodation before that notice to quit period expires. The Housing Executive works with the women's sector, and there are times when people may need to leave sooner.

To qualify for that, you need to meet the statutory tests of the Housing Executive. Those are the full duty applicant status criteria, which I have here. The Housing Executive also has an interim duty to provide temporary accommodation if a person is already homeless.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): OK. Did anything come out of the process that the Housing Executive or any other housing authority follows during the period of being at risk of homelessness? Is there anything there? You talked about the mediation potential and things like that. Is anything written down in regulation or in anything that you looked at that explained what they did?

Dr Thomson: Yes. The Housing Executive has duties. It has a duty to provide free advice and information to anybody in Northern Ireland who is threatened with homelessness or wants information. It has a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent homelessness and — I have it here somewhere; I have too many notes — to provide information. It has a duty to investigate cases of homelessness or threatened homelessness when a person presents. Therefore, it has a duty to look at a household's case, to take reasonable steps to prevent the loss of accommodation and to provide advice. However, as it stands, there is no statutory prevention duty as exists in England, Scotland and Wales to do upstream prevention work.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): OK. Thank you.

Mr Bradley: I will be brief. Your paper is not complete because you do not have the figures to complete it. Is it possible to get those figures from the Housing Executive?

My other point is this: every constituency is different. My constituency has the added pressure of being largely coastal. The rental sector is reducing weekly because it is more profitable to have an Airbnb and so on. Homelessness is greater in my area than it is in some other areas for different reasons. While I welcome the increase to 60 days, I am worried that, instead of waiting until the 28 days expire with the Housing Executive, it is now just kicking the can down the road to a 60-day period where someone presents as homeless and then takes the temporary accommodation or whatever is available at the time.

The information that you have provided is invaluable. It is amazing. However, without the figures, it is incomplete.

Mr Connolly: Certainly, we have used the information that was available to us. I have made the point in the paper that it would be worthwhile for the Committee to follow that up with the Housing Executive, as we have tried to get those figures but were not able to obtain them in time for the presentation. We are aware of the estimate, as members will be, and it will certainly be worth exploring that further as part of the Committee's scrutiny process.

Mr Bradley: Yes. Chair, we need figures from the Housing Executive, the Communities Department and the Department of Finance on what money is available to put into this.

The other thing that bothers me is that there are areas of Northern Ireland where there is a lack of capacity because of a lack of infrastructure for water, waste water etc. We do not realise how valuable it would be to have an interactive map that can be overlaid to identify where there is potential for housing but no infrastructure to build. I have asked for that a few times. Until we get that information, we are at a dead end. Chair, can we write again and ask for that?

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): I think that we got word back from the Department that it was not doing it, but the Housing Executive thought that it was valuable. We are due to get that.

Mr Bradley: It needs to be interactive so that we can overlay one map on the other.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): Yes.

Mr Bradley: Thank you very much for your presentation. It is food for thought, and you have put an awful lot of effort into it. Well done.

Mrs Cameron: Thank you for your presentations. They were useful and interesting.

This is probably less of a question and more for clarity. In both your presentations, you said that, while you have tried to compare — we are always fascinated by what is happening everywhere else and how everybody else is dealing with the problems that we all have in housing and those pressures — we are not really comparing apples with apples because the systems are different. The proposal in the Bill does not match up with what has been done in other jurisdictions to include additional requirements to make it work to its fullest extent.

There are question marks over cost. Nobody has any issue with spending money on doing something good, but, clearly, there are issues if it will be detrimental, will not take things any further forward or will take money from A and put it into B, meaning that houses cannot be built at C. It is probably not for you to answer this. I consider that it would make more sense to do all that we need to do at the same time so that it is cost-effective and actually works, rather than doing something that sounds good but, although we want to do it, may not achieve the right outcome.

Is there anything that you can add to give us more clarity on the differences between what we are looking to introduce through the Bill and what has been done in other jurisdictions?

Mr Connolly: I will add briefly to the point about the difficulty with comparing different areas. There are differences in the legislation in the jurisdictions, but there are also different contexts in terms of the housing stock, deprivation and other factors that will drive this. Although I have included one or two indicative estimates in the paper, I would caution against using them as robust estimates of what it could cost. As you said, it is not comparing apples with apples; there are many differences that need to be accounted for.

Dr Thomson: From a policy perspective, similarly, it is not comparing apples with apples. However, extending the prevention period was a key part of the reforms that took place in those other jurisdictions, and there is evidence that that has had a good impact. I know from evidence that the Bill sponsor has given that, following implementation, even if there were a commission and a more robust legislative review, that will take time. What has happened elsewhere is a good example for those legislative reviews and reforms. The amendment would do something in the meantime by providing an extension to the window. It could help prevention work, even while waiting for those broader reforms.

Mr Gildernew: My first question is on the temporary accommodation issue and that figure of £2·5 million. Do we know whether that is based largely or solely on non-standard accommodation?

Mr Connolly: Unfortunately, we are not aware of how the Housing Executive put that figure together. I would not like to speculate on how that was done. I suggest that the Committee follow up directly with the Housing Executive on that.

Mr Gildernew: Further detail and clarification on that would be welcome. That £2·5 million is in the context of what the Minister said to me about there being a cost of £40 million. He was not definitive about that: he said that he would come back to me with the information, so it could be more than £40 million. That is that element of it, let alone all the other things. The fact that the debate has been centred on temporary accommodation underlines an issue. There is so much more to preventing homelessness than deciding what we do when people present, and that is what my Bill is designed to address. Are there any other places across the water where a person can get a notice to quit at 56 days but have no statutory right to support until half of that period has expired?

Dr Thomson: In other jurisdictions, the local housing authorities have a duty to act and intervene as soon as that prevention duty begins. There are stronger prevention duties there.

Mr Gildernew: Yes. OK. When it comes to other staffing costs, there could be diversion of staff into prevention. My Bill is designed for exactly that purpose, however. That is not an unintended consequence but very much an attempt to get upstream and move into the prevention space. Do you have any idea of what staff resource that would take? A more important question might be this: do you have any idea of what the outcome might be for preventing homelessness if more staff were turned to that part of the work rather than to housing people after they have become homeless?

Dr Thomson: It would be beneficial for you to talk to the Housing Executive not only about its projections for its capacity following the changes, if they are introduced, but about its current capacity and to see how it operates its caseload management. At the moment, the prevention window is 28 days, and it could be useful to get a broader sense of how the Housing Executive copes with that. That would set the stage for asking how that would work operationally, if the 60-day period were introduced.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): One more question?

Mr Gildernew: One more.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): You have let me in for one more, Colm, so I will let you in.

Mr Gildernew: This is not so much kicking the can down the road as picking the ball up and running with it earlier. Do we have any sense of the cost of homelessness more broadly to the public purse or of the benefit to the public purse of reducing homelessness in terms of all the other costs? For example, I am dealing with a case in my constituency of a family who have met with homelessness. As a result, the three children are being taxied to schools that are some distance away. Is it possible to capture any of the additional benefit that may flow from my Bill?

Mr Connolly: Not in the evidence that I have looked at so far, but, in general, preventing or reducing homelessness certainly has wide-ranging financial benefits across all public services, be that health, social care or, possibly, the justice system. Putting a number on such things is difficult, unfortunately, but there is a general benefit to the public purse from reducing or preventing homelessness.

Mr Gildernew: Thank you.

The Acting Chairperson (Ms K Armstrong): Does anyone else have any questions? I am just checking. No.

Thank you very much, Eleanor and Ross. You have given us a lot to think about, which is much appreciated. I appreciate that it is difficult to get specific figures, because, to be honest, the number of people who have become homeless rises every week. Thank you very much for that.