At a meeting of North Herts Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday, September 28, councillors and officers discussed the decision-making process which saw the Lord Lister Hotel granted permission to become supported accommodation for homeless people.
Since December 2021, Keystage Housing has been providing this accommodation, based on a contract agreed with the council in August that year.
The contract lasts for 10 years and gives a grant of £20,000 per year to Keystage from the Homelessness Prevention Grant, which is distributed to local authorities by the government.
The council used special urgency provisions to agree the contract without public consultation and without going through the normal decision-making process, including asking for approval from the cabinet.
Members of the public have criticised the decision-making process. They have also complained about an increase in anti-social behaviour around the Lord Lister since Keystage began operating there.
In March 2022, 31 reports had been made to the police in the previous three months that specifically named the Lord Lister, and an impact report published by Keystage in June 2022 highlighted 26 incidents since opening, far higher than levels at similar accommodation nearby.
Earlier this year, Cllr David Levett, in his role as chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, had requested a Call to Account of the decision-making process. Most of the recent Extraordinary meeting was devoted to discussing this Call to Account.
The meeting began with a public presentation by Deborah Pollard. She said it was “disappointing” that limited material had been made available to the public, and that the public were excluded from a portion of this meeting.
She put forward questions from the local community on anti-social behaviour, the number of rooms available, the lack of public consultation, the use of special urgency powers, council impartiality, due diligence and a lack of ongoing funding.
These included:
“Can the council clarify why they felt that because consultation was going to cause controversy, it should not be done, when transparency is fundamental to democracy?”
“Why has the council agreed to a ten-year contract for provision of a service with 24-hour support for residents with complex needs for which Keystage do not have long term funding guaranteed?”
Those involved in making the decision then defended the process they had undertaken.
Strategic housing manager (SHM) Martin Lawrence and managing director (MD) Anthony Roche outlined the key dates.
Contact was made with Keystone early in 2021, when the use of hotels to house homeless people was at its peak and local accommodation providers were “maxed out”.
Council officers spoke to Luton Borough Council, who have worked with Keystage since 2019, and heard that “their results are exceptional in a housing market which is very difficult”.
After positive conversations between council officers and Keystage, a proposal was received from Keystage on June 25 with the Lord Lister already identified as the site for the project and based on receiving a £200,000 grant. This proposal was then put to the MD in late July, and a decision notice was signed on August 13.
The SHM emphasised the context in which the decision was made. The pandemic had led to a directive from government to get everybody into accommodation, and in May 2021 the council had placed 67 people into hotels, “not two or three that we had pre-pandemic".
He said that there was a long-term need for more supported accommodation, with only 50 bed spaces for a population of 133,000, and that other proposed schemes had fallen through.
The SHM also highlighted the urgency of the decision, with Keystone saying that they needed a final decision by August 24 to be able to go ahead with the project. The council had pushed them back from an initial deadline of July 5.
The MD became aware of the proposal in late July 2021. He had to consider the urgency of the decision, and said that he “was left with a very binary choice” of whether to have the facility or not, given the deadline set by Keystage – “if we waited, we would lose the opportunity”.
He also stated that before the decision was taken “the three group leaders had been consulted, two of the three ward councillors had been consulted, and the chair of overview and scrutiny had been consulted, and no one had raised any substantive issues as to why that decision could or shouldn’t be taken that way".
However, Cllr Claire Strong, leader of the Conservative group, questioned this version of events and said that she “was not consulted on the decision that was being taken”. There is no requirement for the managing director to consult all group leaders.
When making the decision, Roche also asked himself: “is this a potentially very contentious decision that I wouldn’t be comfortable making without wanting that wider political involvement?”
He admitted that “clearly, what has transpired subsequently, is it has proved to be very contentious” but the lack of objections from those he consulted meant he was happy to proceed.
Cllr Elizabeth Dennis-Harburg, leader of the council, was unsure when she had first become aware of the proposal.
She also raised no objections at the time, and said “we felt that although we knew it would more likely than not be something that residents and neighbours close to the site would oppose, balancing the needs of communities and thinking about those who have absolutely nothing and our duty to help support them, that this was probably the right thing to do".
Cllr George Davies, substituting for Cllr Tony Hunter, asked why the matter couldn’t have been brought to the cabinet meeting on July 20, 2021, given that the proposal had been received on June 25.
The SHM responded that “there were a number of assurances the council needed to make sure it was a viable option and they took some time … it was likely to go nowhere [and] took some time to unpick.”
Concluding, Cllr Levett said that the next stage is for him and the Scrutiny Officer to “prepare a report for overview and scrutiny on what we’ve heard tonight and make further recommendations on that.” There will also be a report to the full council in October.
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