A home in your name, and help to keep it
- The home
- An agreement in your name
- The support
- Housing-related, never personal care
- Reply
- Within one working day
Not a placement. This is the shape of moving into a home of your own, so you know what you would be signing, what it asks of you, and what stays yours if the support changes.
Who you would be dealing with
The question that decides whether any of this works, so it gets a band of its own rather than a line in a list.
The same small team
Wherever the rota allows it. Support only works if you are not explaining your own history to a stranger every fortnight, and continuity is the first thing worth asking any provider about.What we check before anyone starts
Photography TBD
An adult and a support worker at a kitchen table with paperwork between them, mid-conversation, the adult holding the pen. Daylight, an ordinary flat, no uniform.
Before anyone starts we will run the checks the standard requires for their role: identity, right to work, full employment history with any gap explained, references taken up directly, and a DBS check at the level that role is eligible for — with the adults’ barred list where it is, and without it where it is not. We have not recruited yet. The detail is in our safeguarding policy.Trained for housing work, and supervised after that
Tenancy law, benefits, safeguarding, fire safety and how to spot damp are trained subjects, not instincts. TBD — Bluebell has not confirmed its training programme or its refresher interval, and we would rather leave that open than describe it vaguely.How many, and where
Photography TBD
An adult letting themselves in at their own front door with shopping, in daylight. An ordinary terrace or block. Nothing that identifies an address — no house number, no street sign, no scheme signage.
TBD — the number of homes, the areas covered and whether anything is open have not been supplied, and our terms page says plainly that Bluebell is not yet accepting placements. Ask us and you will get a straight answer for your address rather than a map that flatters the coverage.
What supported housing actually is
Two things, deliberately kept apart. The first is a home: you occupy it under an agreement in your own name, on the terms that agreement sets out, with the rights it gives you. The second is housing-related support: someone works with you on the things that decide whether a home lasts — the rent account, the benefit claim, the bills, the repair that needs reporting, the appointment that needs keeping. They are separate arrangements on purpose. The support can change, or stop, without the home going with it, and the home is not something you have to earn by accepting help you do not want.
What the support actually covers
Housing-related support is help to keep a home. Three of these are what it is. The fourth is what it is not, and that one matters just as much.
- The agreement
Holding on to the home
Understanding what you signed, keeping the rent account straight, and dealing with a letter about arrears or a notice while it is still a letter rather than a court date.
- Money
Benefits, bills and what is left
Making the housing benefit or Universal Credit claim and keeping it right when something changes. Setting up the utilities. Working out what a month actually costs. Done with you, so it gets easier rather than staying done.
- The home itself
Repairs, safety and living there
Reporting a repair and chasing it, letting the gas engineer in, knowing what to do about damp before it spreads, and staying on good terms with the people next door.
- The line we do not cross
Support is not personal care
Washing, dressing, eating and using the toilet are personal care. That is a regulated activity in England and Bluebell is not registered to provide it. If you need it, it comes from a provider who is — alongside the housing, on an arrangement of its own.
What starting actually looks like
- First
A conversation, not a form
What has happened, what you want, what you can manage and what you cannot. If supported housing is the wrong answer for you, we would rather say so here than three weeks in.
- The home
An agreement in your name
You see the place and you are given the agreement in writing before you sign it. TBD — Bluebell has not confirmed which form of agreement it grants, and the form is what decides your security. Ask for it by name and read it before you move.
- The support
A second agreement, written down
What will be done with you, how often, and by whom. Separate from the housing on purpose, so it can be changed, reduced or ended without the roof going with it.
- After
Reviewed with you, and it should shrink
Support that only ever goes up was never about you. The review is where it comes down, and where moving on gets planned rather than sprung on you.
What it costs
Two bills, not one. Rent is yours; the support is funded separately.
No figure appears here, and none appears on our locations and rents page either, because none has been set. What follows is how supported housing is funded in general — the mechanism, not a claim about us — so you can put the right questions to us and to anyone else you are speaking to. The long version, with the regulations quoted, is in how supported housing is paid for. If the model itself is new to you, start with what supported housing actually is.
TBD — how a Bluebell rent would be met is not stated anywhere on this site. Bluebell’s corporate form — whether it is a for-profit company, a registered charity or a voluntary organisation — and then, scheme by scheme, the housing benefit basis each local authority has actually accepted, evidenced by a written decision. Both are needed before any statement about how a Bluebell rent is met can be published, and the first decides whether the exempt accommodation route is open to the company at all.
- Rent and any eligible service charge are due under your agreement. Help with them comes through housing benefit, which the council administers, or through the housing costs element of Universal Credit — and which of the two depends on the accommodation rather than on you.
- Specified accommodation is the category that decides that. Where accommodation falls inside it, help with rent is met by housing benefit even for someone otherwise on Universal Credit, and it is also left out of the benefit cap and the social sector size rules. The definition sits in the Housing Benefit and Universal Credit (Supported Accommodation) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
- Exempt accommodation is the narrower category inside that, defined in Schedule 3 to the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit (Consequential Provisions) Regulations 2006. It has a provider test before it has anything else: the landlord must be a non-metropolitan county council, a housing association, a registered charity or a voluntary organisation, and a housing association for this purpose is a body that does not trade for profit.
- It also has a support test: that body, or someone acting for it, must provide care, support or supervision that is more than minimal and is connected to the accommodation. Support that floats free of the housing does not qualify.
- Where both tests are met, the rent is assessed under the older housing benefit rules rather than capped by the local housing allowance. It is not a discount and not a blank cheque — the council still has to be satisfied the rent is reasonable, line by line.
- No provider is “approved” or “registered” for any of this. The entitlement belongs to the resident, and the local authority decides each claim on its own facts. Anyone telling you they hold an exempt accommodation status is describing something that does not exist.
- The support is funded separately — by a local authority, through a commissioned contract, or by you. It does not come out of the rent, and a provider who cannot say which pot pays for what has not thought about it.
- TBD — how a Bluebell rent would be met is not stated anywhere on this site. The company’s own corporate form has not been confirmed to this project, and that is what decides whether the exempt accommodation route is open to it at all; after that it is a question for each council, scheme by scheme, on a written decision. Nothing about funding is published here until both of those exist.
Photography TBD
An adult at their own kitchen table with a laptop open on a benefits claim and a bank statement beside it, a support worker sitting alongside rather than opposite. The adult is doing the typing. Daylight, an ordinary flat.
Regulation and registration
Supported housing is housing. The duties that bite are the ones that bind any landlord of a dwelling: section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which puts the structure, the exterior and the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation, heating and hot water on the landlord and cannot be contracted out of; the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, which requires the home to be fit to live in at the start and throughout and lets the occupier enforce that in the county court; Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004, under which the council can inspect and act on a hazard; and the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, which require an annual check and a record.
What does not apply here is care regulation, and that is a statement about the model rather than a gap. Personal care — help to wash, dress, eat or use the toilet — is a regulated activity under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and cannot lawfully be delivered without registration with the Care Quality Commission. Bluebell holds no CQC registration and needs none, because it does not deliver personal care. A supported housing provider quoting a CQC rating is either describing a different organisation or describing a different service.
The regime that will govern this sector is the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, which provides for local authority licensing of supported housing and for national supported housing standards. Neither exists yet: no licensing regulations have been made and the standards have not been published. So there is no supported housing licence to hold, nobody can be compliant with standards that have not been written, and this page claims neither. What the Act does do, and what the Government has said it will do next, is set out in the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, and what is coming. TBD — Housing Ombudsman Scheme membership, and any registration with the Regulator of Social Housing, have not been supplied to this project. Neither is claimed anywhere on this site, and both are fair things to ask us for before you go further.
Before you get in touch
The questions people ask about supported housing, answered as straight as we can while some of the detail is still open.
- Is the home actually mine?
- You hold the agreement, in your name, and it says what you are entitled to and what is expected of you. How much protection it gives depends on which form of agreement it is — a tenancy and a licence are not the same thing. TBD: Bluebell has not confirmed which it grants. Ask, and read it before you sign it.
- Do you provide personal care?
- No. Support here is housing-related — the agreement, the claim, the bills, the repairs, keeping you connected to the services already in your life. Help with washing, dressing, eating or the toilet is a regulated activity and comes from a provider registered for it, on a separate arrangement. Anyone offering you both in one package should be able to show you two registrations.
- Can I turn the support down and keep the home?
- Our own commitment is that we will not make support a condition of keeping the home — it is one of the nine on our approach page. Be careful with any answer to this elsewhere, though. In a lot of supported housing the agreement does require you to engage with the support, because that is how the scheme is funded, and it should be written in plain words in the agreement you are given rather than explained to you afterwards. TBD: Bluebell has not confirmed what its own agreements say. It is the second question to ask, straight after which form the agreement takes.
- Could I be asked to leave?
- Not without the notice your agreement and the law require, and in most cases not without a court order. What that process looks like depends on the form of agreement, which is the TBD above. If something goes wrong before then, make a complaint — it is the same route whoever you are, and the two stages and the time limits are set out in our complaints policy. If you already live in one of our homes, the residents page gathers the repair, safety and complaint routes in one place.
- Who pays the rent?
In most supported housing the rent is met through housing benefit, administered by the council, rather than through Universal Credit — and whether that applies depends on the accommodation meeting the definition of specified accommodation. The entitlement is the resident’s, and the council decides each claim on its own facts. No provider is approved or registered for it, whatever anyone tells you.
TBD — how a Bluebell rent would be met is not stated anywhere on this site. The company’s own corporate form has not been confirmed, and that is what decides whether the exempt accommodation route is open to it at all. The cost band above says what has to exist before anything about funding is published here.
- Can you house someone now?
- Ask us and you will get a yes or a no rather than a maybe. TBD — no scheme, area or availability has been confirmed to this project, and our terms page says in terms that Bluebell is not trading or accepting placements yet. If you need somewhere tonight, your council’s housing options team has a statutory duty to you under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996, and that is a better first call than us.
Not sure which part of this you need?
Tell us the situation and we will point you at the right route, even if the answer is that it is not ours.
Commissioners and professionals
Local authority placements
Framework, spot purchase and block contract enquiries go to the commissioning team, not the resident inbox.
Partnerships and commissioning