A recent report showed council in England have spent £1bn on on temporary accommodation for homeless families in the past year
Homelessness related support has reached record levels in one part of Merseyside as local authorities across the country report huge cost increases associated with managing the demand. A recent report by the BBC calculated that councils in England had spent £1bn on homelessness provision in the last year – a 50% rise on the year before.
At an Overview and Scrutiny meeting at Southport Town Hall on Tuesday September 17, Sefton Council heard a number of cabinet member reports including analysis of housing and homelessness in the borough. Reports by Cllr Daren Veidman and Cllr Liz Dowd detailed some of the drivers of the homelessness problem include a shortage of temporary accommodation and increases in Section 21 evictions.
Although the council acknowledged a lot of the reasons for homelessness are out of the control of the local authority, the borough are committed to making every effort to alleviate the harm it causes and have invested in preventive measure. These include the availability of advice and guidance support to residents served with ‘no fault’ section 21 eviction notices as well as exploring the possibility of creating new temporary accommodation facilities.
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Sefton’s Housing Options team have reallocated a member of staff to work through all prevention cases that have received statutory notice to support and advise them accordingly. Two hundred and three priority need households are currently in temporary accommodation in Sefton, the highest number ever managed by Housing Options.
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An update on Housing Options provided by the council said demand remains ‘consistently high’. In terms of leveraging partnerships to provide increased stock allocation the local authority said Housing Options received 140 properties from various Registered Providers (RPs) to match to homeless households in temporary accommodation.
During the council meeting, the cabinet member for Highways, Housing, Planning and Building Control, Cllr Veidman also confirmed the awarding of a contract to Riverside Housing to provide intensive support for families in the first 12 months of their tenancy. The provision will also extend to existing tenants in social housing who are at risk of homelessness.
Homelessness can manifest in a number of ways but one of the most damaging forms is rough sleeping. Each year each local authority is obliged to advise the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) as to the extent of rough sleeping in the borough.
The estimate is based on a single, typical night between 1 October and 30 November and councils within the Liverpool City Region (LCR) usually co-ordinate counts on the same night. As these are undertaken on one night it can only demonstrate a snapshot of the extent of rough sleeping which can vary on a daily basis. This year, local authorities within the LCR have agreed the count will take place from midnight on Tuesday November 12 into the early hours of Wednesday November 13 and will be conducted by the Rough Sleeper Outreach team.
Over the last decade, the numbers of rough sleepers counted in Sefton via these checks are: 2014 (11), 2015 (4), 2016 (4), 2017 (9), 2018 (11), 2019 (2), 2020 (3), 2021 (0), 2022 (0), 2023 (3).
