Let to Birmingham: 2016 case study report

Social Lettings Agencies (SLAs) have been described succinctly by Shelter Scotland (Evans, 2015) as agencies that “help people access the PRS who are homeless or on low-incomes”. SLA is a general term applied to schemes that secure access to decent, affordable private rental accommodation for households in need and on low incomes who would previously have been likely to access social housing. The growth of SLAs has been a consequence of the falling supply of social housing, growth in the private rented sector, expansion of ‘housing options’ approaches since the Homelessness Act 2002 and discharge of homeless duties in the private rented sector since the Localism Act 2011. The West Midlands Housing Officers Group has supported this project by the Housing and Communities Research Group at the University of Birmingham to explore the current and potential future role of SLAs in the region. Its relevance to current policy has increased considerably since the time of its commissioning. This report covers the ‘second wave’ of research on Let to Birmingham undertaken in Autumn 2016. It supplements our earlier report in Autumn 2015 which covered the background to the establishment of Let to Birmingham in January 2014 as a social lettings agency by Birmingham City Council in partnership with Omega Lettings (now a division of Mears) and the first 18 months of its operation (Mullins, Joseph and Nechita 2015).