In February 2026, the Minister for Housing and Planning told Parliament that Birmingham has around 31,000 people living in around 11,000 units of supported exempt accommodation — significantly more than anywhere else in England. MPs put the annual cost at close to £400 million, roughly half the country’s entire exempt accommodation spend.

Birmingham City Council’s own published position is that the city “has sufficient supported exempt accommodation.” Its supported housing strategy lists reducing the number of units as a priority. A 2021 needs assessment found around 50 per cent oversupply, and that only 42 per cent of provision was meeting local need.

If you place people for a living, you will have an opinion about that, and it probably involves a waiting list. But there is a point in it worth taking seriously: the problem in Birmingham is no longer the number of beds. It is what happens inside them. A placement that breaks down in week three does not add capacity to the system — it consumes it, and your client comes back to the front door with one more failed tenancy behind them.

This page is about that. Not how to refer — we cover the mechanics in our guide on how to refer a client to supported accommodation in Birmingham. This is about why placements fail, and what both of us can do about it.

Birmingham holds providers to a standard no other city does

Alongside the ordinary regulatory picture, Birmingham operates a Charter of Rights and a set of Quality Standards for supported exempt accommodation, both launched in March 2021. The Charter was created by Spring Housing Association with the University of Birmingham and co-produced with residents. The Quality Standards were developed by Birmingham Voluntary Service Council with the council, based on the government’s National Statement of Expectations.

They run together under a single application and assessment, and the council’s position is unambiguous: a provider cannot be fully accredited as an approved provider unless they have signed up to both.

Here is the part that should shape how you choose a provider. The council publishes the list of award holders, and at present it runs to 34 organisations — six Gold, five Silver and twenty-three Bronze — in a sector that an MP told Parliament is only about 15 per cent accredited. In a city with roughly 11,000 units of this accommodation, 34 providers hold a quality award.

So the questions worth asking every provider you deal with, including us, are simple ones: are you accredited, at what level, and when were you last assessed? A provider who cannot answer clearly is telling you something.

Enforcement in Birmingham is not theoretical either. The council’s supported housing improvement team — housing inspectors, social workers, planning officers, anti-social behaviour investigators and a seconded police officer — has recovered or prevented £8.8 million in housing benefit, carried out around 2,600 anti-social behaviour investigations and removed over 9,000 severe hazards from properties. The proportion of inspected properties meeting the Decent Homes standard rose from 44 per cent.

What we provide

Our properties are shared accommodation, normally two to four bedrooms. Each resident has their own room and shares the kitchen and bathroom with a small number of other people. Every house is:

  • Fully furnished, so a resident can move in the same day without having to find furniture
  • Inclusive of all bills — gas, electricity and water are covered, so there are no utility accounts for a resident to set up, fall behind on, or be cut off from
  • Available with no deposit. A service charge applies and the amount depends on the property, but there is nothing for a resident to find up front

Small houses matter more than people expect. A two to four bedroom property is a household, not an institution. The dynamics are manageable, one difficult relationship does not destabilise ten people, and a resident coming out of hostel accommodation can usually feel the difference inside a week.

Why placements break down

In our experience almost every early breakdown traces back to one of five things. None are complicated. All get skipped when a placement is arranged at four o’clock on a Friday.

1. The risk picture was incomplete

This is the big one. A referral arrives with the difficult parts left out — the arson history, the arrears, the reason the last placement ended — usually because the referrer fears that full disclosure means a refusal.

We would far rather have the whole picture and say no than have half of it and say yes. A refusal costs you a phone call. A failed placement costs your client their accommodation, costs the system a bed for several weeks, and makes the next placement harder to arrange because the history is now worse. Tell us everything and we will give you a straight answer.

2. The person had never seen the place

Someone moved into a house they have never visited, with people they have never met, in a part of the city they do not know, will frequently be gone inside a month. It is not ingratitude. It is that nothing about the arrangement belongs to them.

Where it can be arranged, we want the person to see the room and meet whoever manages the property before they move in. It costs a day. It changes how long placements last.

3. The support had not started

Accommodation and support are different things, and transitional housing only works when both arrive together. Where support is still being commissioned or allocated at the point of placement, the first fortnight is when it comes apart — the benefit claim is not made, the first appointment is missed, the arrears begin, and by the time a support worker is allocated the placement is already in trouble.

Tell us who is providing the support, how often, and who we contact when something changes. If it is not in place yet, say so and we will agree a realistic start date rather than taking the placement and hoping.

4. The housing benefit position was not settled

Where accommodation is provided with care, support or supervision by a registered provider, housing costs are generally met through Housing Benefit rather than the housing element of Universal Credit. Birmingham scrutinises these claims closely, and given the figures above, rightly so.

Getting the position right before the move is the difference between a stable placement and one that collapses into arrears by week six. Because our properties are fully furnished and include all bills, there is also no separate stack of utility debt building up alongside the rent — one of the quieter reasons placements fail elsewhere. If you want the detail, our guide to exempt accommodation and who it is for sets it out.

5. Nobody knew what happened next

Transitional means transitional. A placement with no move-on plan becomes a permanent placement by default, in accommodation that was never designed for it, and then it is one less bed for the next person.

In Birmingham that pressure is severe. There are over 35,000 households on the housing register. Around 57 properties are advertised each week against roughly 500 new applications. Nobody is moving on quickly, which is exactly why the plan has to exist at the start rather than be improvised at month nine.

Tell us at the point of referral what the intended next step is — the housing register, private rented, a return to family, a different level of support — and roughly when. It shapes how we set the placement up.

What this means in a city with city-wide Article 4

Birmingham’s city-wide Article 4 Direction has been in force since 8 June 2020. Since then, converting a family house into a small HMO for three to six people has required planning permission anywhere in the city, and since June 2023 smaller HMOs of three or four occupants have also needed an additional licence.

Combined with the council’s position that the city already has sufficient supported exempt accommodation and a strategy to reduce the number of units, the direction of travel is clear: Birmingham is not going to expand its way out of this. Which brings it back to the same point. In a city that is not short of beds but is short of placements that hold, the thing worth investing in is the quality of the match and the groundwork around it. That is a shared job, and it is mostly done before anyone moves in.

How to refer

Email us at [email protected] or call 0203 370 6999. Please have the following ready, because it lets us give you an answer rather than a holding reply:

  • The support needs and the risk assessment, in full
  • The benefit position, and whether a claim is already in place
  • Who is providing support, how often, and the named contact
  • The intended move-on route and a rough timescale
  • Any conditions attached to the placement

If your client would rather make contact themselves, they can fill in the application form on our Tenants page. Our team contacts applicants within 48 hours.

If we cannot hold a placement, we will tell you quickly and tell you why. We would rather be useful than leave you waiting.

Working with us

MKM Housing Ltd has provided shared and supported accommodation since 2020, operating across Birmingham, Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent alongside registered provider partners. Read more about us, or get in touch.

Sources: Westminster Hall debate, Supported Exempt Accommodation: Birmingham, 11 February 2026; Birmingham City Council supported exempt accommodation pages, including the Charter of Rights and Quality Standards and the published list of award holders; Birmingham City Council written evidence to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, February 2022; Housing Options in Birmingham Pack, July 2026; Birmingham City Council city-wide Article 4 Direction relating to Houses in Multiple Occupation, in force 8 June 2020.