Its easy to criticise Governments based on all sorts of criteria, running a nation is not easy. However today’s publication by the National Audit Office on the issue of Homelessness reveals holes in the fabric of the Government that are so large they compete on the scale of incompetency with its failure to plan for the outcome of the referendum and then failure to do anything meaningful to prepare for our departure from the EU in the following year. According to the NAO there were 77,240 households in temporary accommodation in England in March 2017, an increase of 60% since March 2011 when the Tory led coalition had been running the country for nearly a year. These households included 120,540 children, an increase of 73% from March 2011. Homelessness at present costs the public sector in excess of £1 billion a year. More than three quarters of this – £845 million – was spent on temporary accommodation. The report found that the Department for Communities and Local Government, the department responsible for tackling homelessness does not have a published cross government strategy to prevent and tackle homelessness! It has, however, acknowledged the scale of the challenge and plans to improve the data the government holds on homelessness. However according to the NAO the Department took a light touch approach to working with local authorities. This contrasts with the more interventionist approach that it has taken during previous periods of high homelessness. Although the Department requires each local authority to have a homelessness strategy, it does not monitor their content or their progress!

In case there is any risk that such analysis should be seen as having a political edge, as the website states “The National Audit Office (NAO) was formed to scrutinise public spending for Parliament. Their public audit perspective is intended to help Parliament hold governments to account and improve public services. They audit the financial statements of all central government departments, agencies and other public bodies, and report the results to Parliament. Our other work comprises value for money studies, local audit, investigations, support to Parliament and international activities. The Comptroller and Auditor General Sir Amyas Morse, leads the NAO and is an officer of the House of Commons. He and the staff of the NAO (about 800 people) are independent of government. They are not civil servants and do not report to a minister.”

It is this Government who have just been granted the power to change laws without scrutiny from Parliament as part of the EU departure. The three men who have led the Department are pictured above, Eric Pickles is the man who must take most of the responsibility for this chaos as he was Minister from 2010 to 2015, Greg Clark was in charge from 2015 to 2016 and Sajid Javid has been in charge for the last year and a bit. Between them they need to be held to account. If this was a business, they would all be sacked. Pickles is no longer an MP but he continues as the Anti Corruption Champion for the Government which seems particularly ironic! The big question is what will the Government do in the light of this damning report, or perhaps what will Parliament do?