Speech: Housing for Domestic Violence Victims

20 March 2018

Wera spoke on the flaws in the Secure Tenancies Bill...

The Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill ensures that lifetime tenants of social homes, provided either by a housing association or a local authority, who need to leave their home to escape domestic abuse, are granted a further lifetime tenancy in their new home where they are being re-housed.

This bill is a welcome step towards providing increased security and stability to those fleeing domestic violence when they are rehoused. Survivors should never be trapped in an  abusive relationships for fear of losing their right to secure housing.

However the government’s plans to change refuge funding will undermine the aims of this bill. By removing refuges’ last secure form of funding from housing benefit payments, the proposed changes will prevent survivors from escaping domestic abuse.

Conservative cuts to local authorities have meant that funding for domestic abuse services have suffered, with some services having to refuse referrals from victims due to a lack of capacity.