Agenda item
SAFEGUARDING AND MEETING THE NEEDS OF HOMELESS PEOPLE
To consider a joint report by the Principal Manager and Service Manager: Community Support Services (copy attached) seeking the Committee’s views and support for the Council’s corporate approach towards preventing homelessness
10.10am – 10.45am
Minutes:
The Lead Member for
Well-being and Independence introduced the report and appendices (previously
circulated) the purpose of which was to outline the progress made to date with
the new corporate approach to dealing with homelessness in the county. The
report included the new draft Corporate Homelessness Action Plan along with
details of the recent restructure of the Homelessness Prevention Team which
formed part of the Council’s Community Support Services. Also detailed in
the report was the Council’s corporate approach towards preventing
homelessness, providing emergency/temporary accommodation to individuals and
families who presented themselves as homeless, and how the Council then worked
to move those in emergency/temporary accommodation on to long-term sustainable
housing solutions. During her introduction the Lead Member emphasised
that homelessness was an increasing problem across Wales and as a result the
Welsh Government (WG), similar to Denbighshire and other local authorities, had
identified the need to address the matter as a priority.
The Lead Member
explained that part of Denbighshire’s solution for addressing homelessness
issues involved the establishment of a partnership with Conwy County Borough
Council to trial a pilot project across both counties called Housing
First. Details of the project were contained in Appendix 6 to the
report. Grant funding from the WG’s Housing First Trailblazers fund,
totalling £330K, had been awarded to the pilot project which had resulted in the
establishment of a new team to assist homeless people with high and complex
needs. The Team’s aim was to ensure people were settled as quickly as
possible into their own home and provided with the relevant support.
Support would be available to them for as long as they needed it in order for
them to be able to sustain their tenancy. Evidence gathered from across
the UK and other parts of the world indicated that this type of innovative
approach had the potential to deliver a sustainable way out of homelessness, improve
health and well-being and enable social integration. Housing First in
Conwy and Denbighshire expected to welcome its first tenants before the end of
July 2019.
Denbighshire’s
decision to adopt a corporate approach towards tackling homelessness and
appointing a Corporate Director to lead that work underlined its commitment to
reducing the number of individuals and families presenting themselves as
homeless in the county. In future the delivery of the Homelessness
Strategy Action Plan would be led by the Housing Strategy Group. The
focus of the Action Plan was early intervention and prevention. The
introduction of the Single Access Route to Housing (SARTH) had assisted the
authority and registered social landlords (RSLs) to prioritise applicants for
social housing, however, the majority of the homeless households were currently
sitting in Band 2 and were not in the high priority banding. Both the
local authority and RSLs were in the process of co-ordinating the building and
purchase of approximately 370 affordable/social housing units.
Councillor Brian
Blakeley informed the Committee that, in his capacity as the Council’s
Homelessness Champion, he had witnessed first-hand the excellent work the
Homelessness Team undertook under very difficult circumstances at times, and
was confident that the Council was moving forward in its aims of addressing the
county’s homelessness issues.
Responding to
members’ questions the Lead Member, Corporate Director: Economy and
Public Realm, Head of Community Support Services and the Principal
Manager: Support Services:
·
provided
clarity on who was classed as ‘homeless’ – Denbighshire had a very limited
number of people sleeping rough. Its ‘homeless’ individuals and families
tended to be:
Ø staying with friends on
a temporary basis (sofa surfers);
Ø tenants whose landlords
wanted to sell the property where they lived;
Ø victims of domestic
abuse;
Ø people whose homes were
about to be repossessed following failures to keep up mortgage or rent
payments;
Ø young people who were
no longer able to live at home but had insufficient income to rent or buy a
place of their own etc.
It was emphasised that not all homeless
people were vulnerable individuals, but may be people who had fallen on hard
times due to no fault of their own i.e. being made redundant or unemployed;
·
confirmed
people from outside of the county could present themselves as homeless in
Denbighshire if they could prove a local connection with the area;
·
advised
the legal requirement for a local authority to have and to publish a
Homelessness Strategy was laid out in the Housing (Wales) Act 2014;
·
emphasised
having all Council services’ input into the Homelessness Strategy and
taking ownership of it could only benefit and strengthen the Council’s approach
to finding sustainable solutions and relieving pressures on other
services. Nevertheless there would always be
some need for emergency and temporary accommodation to meet people’s needs in
the short term. Having a nominated Lead Member and Corporate Director to
lead the Council’s work to in relation to homelessness issues ensured that
every effort was made to find sustainable solutions;
·
advised
the Council’s Empty Homes Strategy, which aimed to return 500 empty properties
back into occupancy, would help alleviate homelessness in the county.
However, not all 500 properties were intended for occupation by people/families
presenting as homeless. The Empty Homes Strategy was one piece of a large
jigsaw aimed at delivering the Council’s corporate priority relating to
housing;
·
advised
the Council was looking to devise solutions to problems faced by young people,
particularly young single people, in trying to access suitable housing.
Work was currently underway with the Working Denbighshire project and with RSLs
to explore potential packages that could help young single people to access
suitable housing and establish themselves as a householder;
·
provided
an overview of the Housing First initiative which was to find the individual or
family with complex needs a home first and then work with them via the
provision of intensive support to help them establish themselves and develop
the required skills to sustain a long-term tenancy and consequently improve
their well-being. In order to establish this initiative both councils had
worked closely with landlords in order to secure suitable properties to let to
Housing First tenants. Through the
Landlord Offer, the Council would take-on the tenancy on behalf of the
vulnerable individual/family and be liable to pay the rent to the landlord
prior to being reimbursed through the Housing Benefit system. To date 18
properties had been secured via this method which gave the landlords security
in relation to rental payments. If the supported resident(s) gained the
anticipated confidence and skills as a result of the intensive support provided
to them the objective would be for the Council to negotiate with the landlord
to secure the transfer of the tenancy to the resident in the
long-term;
·
confirmed
the Strategic Housing and Homelessness Group (SHHG) would approve its terms of
reference at its next meeting. The objective of its re-establishment was
to give a greater focus on delivering the Housing Strategy and to incorporate
the Homelessness Strategy and Action Plan into the Council’s overall Housing
Strategy and Action Plan with a view to ensuring a corporate approach to all
housing related matters;
·
confirmed
the Council did not have plans currently in place to deal with any major
reduction in Supporting People (SP) funding that may result from the WG’s
redistribution of the SP Housing Support Grant. If it transpired that
this redistribution would have an significant adverse
effect on the authority a strategy would require to be drawn up to deal with
the loss of funding. No indications had yet been provided on how the
redistribution would affect Denbighshire’s funding, there was potential for the
redistribution of funding to work in Denbighshire’s favour;
·
advised
the Revenues and Benefits Service operated a Discretionary Housing Grant (DHG)
which families could apply for to help them for example to secure a tenancy
agreement. Payment of this one-off payment would be cheaper than
supporting a family in temporary accommodation and would benefit their
well-being;
·
confirmed
the amount the Council paid for temporary bed and breakfast accommodation varied,
it was dependent upon the type of accommodation, the size of unit required for
the family, the time of year it was required etc. The Council negotiated
the rates with the business owner. In some cases, caravans were used as
temporary accommodation as they were better suited to keep a family together
rather than rooms in hotels or guest houses;
·
advised
during 2018/19 the Council paid £1.2 million for temporary accommodation for
people presenting as homeless. The Authority acknowledged that this was
unsustainable in the medium to long-term and was, therefore, exploring options
with the assistance of the Economic Regeneration Team for providing some
temporary housing solutions in-house i.e. the development of temporary
emergency accommodation centres or pods and supported housing units. The
aim was to develop a suite of small sized options, as a ‘one-size fits all’
solution would not work;
·
agreed
the average length of time people spent in temporary accommodation, currently
56 days, was unacceptable. However, the reason for this was the lack of
suitable properties available to re-house them;
·
confirmed
if people presenting themselves as homeless could not prove a local connection
to the area they would be advised and supported to return to their home area as
long as there were no concerns for their safety if they did so. The
Council would attempt to establish temporary accommodation provision for them
in the area from which they originated and advise the relevant local authority
of the situation;
·
advised
if a Council tenant was in arrears with their rent the Homelessness Prevention
Team would work closely with the Council’s Housing Service with a view to
ensuring that the tenant would not be evicted and to attempt to devise
solutions to secure the tenancy in the long-term;
·
confirmed
one RSL operating within Denbighshire had adopted a no eviction policy on
health and housing grounds. This particular RSL was exploring whether
‘tenancy holidays’ could be granted if tenants were in hospital or cared for
elsewhere on a temporary basis;
·
advised
the community also had a role to play in supporting vulnerable residents and
those at risk of losing their homes;
·
currently
there were no citizens being accommodated in Denbighshire from Conwy and
Flintshire, however, there were some Denbighshire residents being accommodated
in Conwy and Flintshire. Local authorities notified each other if they were
accommodating their citizens in temporary emergency accommodation in a
neighbouring authority;
·
advised
the aim of the Regional Collaborative Committee was to draw up the Regional
Homelessness Strategy with a view to reducing homelessness across North Wales
through sharing best practice and developing shared services where possible,
thus ensuring maximum benefits were realised from the SP funding
available;
·
advised
the Service made every effort to support people requiring assistance outside of
their base at Russell House, Rhyl. The Service funded an officer based at
the Job Centre in Rhyl with a view to delivering early intervention services
from that location. It was also currently exploring options for basing a
team within the community, possibly in conjunction with Citizens Advice
Denbighshire (CAD); and
·
confirmed
specialist temporary accommodation were only accessed when specific needs were
identified for those requiring accommodation. Individuals and families
may be housed in these types of accommodation for longer periods than in
ordinary temporary accommodation
Committee members
agreed with the Lead Member and officers that adopting a proactive, early
intervention corporate approach was a prudent way to address homelessness
issues in the county. Managing people’s expectations of the Service and the
Council was also key.
Prior to concluding
the discussion, the Committee requested that the Council’s Customers,
Communication and Marketing Service issue a press release/social media
information clarifying the definition of homeless and homelessness with a view
to educating the public in relation to the matter. Members also raised
concerns with respect of the potential impact on the Council and service
provision for residents if the redistribution of SP Housing Support Grant was
unfavourable for the Authority. The Corporate Director reassured members
that he, the Lead Member and other senior officers were always willing to
discuss any concerns they had with them.
Following and
in-depth discussion the Committee:
RESOLVED
that subject to the above observations and the issuing of press/media
statement:
(i)
to support the new
corporate approach to dealing with homelessness via the Strategic Housing and
Homeless Group;
(ii)
to support the new
draft Corporate Homelessness Action Plan;
(iii)
to support the aims of
the restructure of the Homelessness Prevention Team; and
(iv)
that a report on the
progress made in dealing with homelessness is reported back to the Committee in
12 months’ time.
Supporting documents:
- Homelessness Report 110719, item 6. PDF 141 KB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 1, item 6. PDF 206 KB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 2, item 6. PDF 2 MB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 2a, item 6. PDF 1 MB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 3, item 6. PDF 409 KB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 4, item 6. PDF 223 KB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 5, item 6. PDF 95 KB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 6, item 6. PDF 379 KB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 7, item 6. PDF 106 KB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 8, item 6. PDF 240 KB
- Homelessness Report 110719 - App 9, item 6. PDF 2 MB