Cathy Sod off! The end of the homelessness legislation?

Abstract

The Department of the Environment (DoE) has recently issued a consultation paper, Access to Local Authority and Housing Association Tenancies, in which it advocates substantial changes to the homelessness legislation currently contained in Part III of the Housing Act 1985. The DoE recommendations may be seen as a logical extension of the Thatcher and Major governments' preference to reduce the scope of state involvement in social service provision. To the extent that the consultation paper envisages that any reform to the law will be pursued through the visible and contested forum of the parliamentary process, the proposals may be welcomed as, in constitutional terms, a procedurally legitimate exercise of governmental power. However, the substantive legitimacy of the new policy is far less clear. It is suggested that the DoE's proposals lack a sound empirical basis, and also seem to be informed by several rather elementary misunderstandings of both the existing legislation itself and the administrative law framework within which any new statute would have to be implemented.