Recommendation 12

The dearth of data on exempt accommodation shows how successive Governments have been caught sleeping. The Government does not know how much exempt accommodation there is or how many people live in exempt accommodation. The Government claims that poor providers are a minority but has no data to back this up. The Government does not know how many providers are regulated and by which regulators. We know there have been acute problems in Birmingham, for example, which the then Minister for Welfare Delivery said were not happening across the country. Without data, however, it has been very difficult to ascertain the extent of these problems across the country. We welcome the data review commissioned by the Government, but it will only provide a snapshot in time. We also welcome the steps the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is taking to improve data collection, but since this will apply only to new claimants it will take time for a reliable national picture to emerge.