How is the council ensuring value for taxpayers in the effective delivery of policies to tackle homelessness?
Minutes:
How is the council ensuring value for taxpayers in the effective delivery of policies to tackle homelessness?
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The Cabinet Member for Rural Affairs, Housing and Tourism responded that the delivery of the Council's homeless service has been extremely challenging over recent years, as it has for other local authorities in Wales. We've experienced higher numbers of people presenting as homeless, many of whom have had high levels of support needs, for which there are many reasons such as the unaffordability of private rents, the mismatch between local incomes and house prices, the lack of affordable housing and the failure to upgrade benefits in line with rents, amongst other factors.
In 2022, the Council inherited over 100 homeless households being accommodated in hotels, bed and breakfast or other temporary accommodation including expensive holiday lets that are particularly unsuitable for families with children.
The Rapid Rehousing Transition Plan, which was approved by Cabinet in April 2023, set out the road map to improving the service and reducing the cost of temporary accommodation. Progress against the plan is reported to People Scrutiny Committee. The priorities of the plan are to prevent homelessness at the earliest opportunity to increase the supply of affordable housing, to provide timely support to sustain accommodation and maximise resources through partnership working.
The Cabinet Member is confident that the Council is delivering on the priorities and currently can prevent homelessness in most cases through a variety of means and the hard work of the Housing Options team.
From the end of April, Severn View will replace the use of bed and breakfasts with better quality, lower cost options where the majority of costs can be recouped from rents and housing benefit.
Increasing the availability of good quality temporary accommodation and permanent accommodation through housing association partners has enabled the reduction of the use of less suitable accommodation and to deliver better homes and better value.
A mix of leasing managed lettings and purchases, a range of housing support is provided which helps tenants to retain their tenancy and move forward in their lives.
Numbers of homelessness inquiries are reducing and consequently the numbers needing temporary accommodation, including B&B have reduced. In April 2023, when the plan was approved, there were 94 people in B&B accommodation and this currently stands at 20 which is a marked improvement and is having financial benefits for the authority.
The cost of B&B in 2024/25 was under £1.5 million reduced from over £2.1 million in 2023/24. These are gross figures as we recover part of the expenditure from housing benefit. This demonstrates the progress that is being made and it is hoped by the end of 2025/26 to have virtually eliminated the use of B&B providing a significant saving.
In a supplementary question, Councillor McKenna had been informed that in recent years the Council has been hiring 10 rooms per week at a venue in Monmouthshire, at a cost of £3500 per week yet occupancy within the past month has been as low as 10% so effectively that's £3500 a week to house one person, which raises serious questions about value for money. Given the low occupancy and several of these establishments, B&B's and Airbnb’s across the county, The Cabinet Member was asked to ensure that that this is being looked at as a matter of urgency to review the temporary accommodation across the county for the future.
The Cabinet Member agreed to look into the detail of that stating that the Council is gradually withdrawing from some of those arrangements that have been in place previously.