Agenda item

This report provides an update on homelessness and rough sleeping across in the borough and the actions that are in place to manage homelessness demand and improve service delivery.

The Chair explained that this meeting shall focus on homelessness prevention and temporary accommodation which was distinct from rough sleeping. Homelessness was one that residents might find themselves in through no fault of their own and facing a future without the fundamental need of a shelter and it could be very frightening.  The purpose of the Committee’s scrutiny was to understand the achievable ambitions behind the statutory mechanism. The Chair said she was keen to bring in strategic and delivery partners when the Committee scheduled a discussion on rough sleeping. 

Clare Dorning (Head of Homelessness) gave a presentation on the report,  including ways to access the homelessness service, the Council’s homelessness duties, homelessness demand, the help and support offered by the Council, accessing Council and housing association properties.

Councillor Omid Miri appreciated the report and presentation. Noting it was the ambition of the Homelessness service to reverse the current proportion of households approaching the service at the Prevention stage (30%) and Relief stage (70%), he asked about the alarming indicators, if any, that could be used to achieve this.

Clare Dorning advised that the Homelessness Prevention team would improve communication for example via the website so that residents being served an eviction notice could approach them earlier for help allowing work to be done as soon as the 56-day prevention period started. The team could also communicate with parents evicting their 18+ year old due to a clash of lifestyle for example and talk them into helping the 18+ year old to find private rented sector (PRS) accommodation in a few months’ time while the young person was being put onto the housing register. Following proactive lines of negotiation for planned departure of the 18+, homelessness was thus prevented. Richard Shwe (Director of Housing) also referred to the case study 1 (page 13) on the successful prevention of the risk of homelessness.

On eviction by friends and families, the Chair considered a healthy stock of social housing and more affordable PRS properties would help relieve the pressure on homelessness prevention.

Councillor Miri sought elaboration on PRS prevention offer. Clare Dorning explained that for a household at risk of homelessness and willing to move into PRS properties, to incentivise that willingness leading to homelessness prevention, the household would be placed on the housing register.

Councillor Adroine Alford expressed the concern about officers’ decisions leading to unintended undesirable consequences. For example, placing a homeless carer out of the borough would increase their expenses rendering the service to the vulnerable residents in the borough.

In response, Richard Shwe referred to the multi-agency approach adopted some six months ago.  The Homelessness Assessment team would work with colleagues in Adult Social Care, Children’s services and health professionals to pool all available resources together to help and support vulnerable residents in need. Clare Dorning noted that to enhance service delivery and improve residents’ experience, the Homelessness service had increased face-to-face presence in the reception of 145 King Street to provide initial general advice directly to affected residents. She added that the allocation of temporary accommodation was sometimes subject to the supply available on that day.

The Chair noted from hearsay that there was a list of properties that were available to all London councils for the homeless approaches to swap temporary accommodation among the boroughs. Clare Dorning clarified that each local authority had its own temporary accommodation profile with some having greater supply of hostel accommodation and hence less need for PRS properties. She highlighted that there was a statutory duty for the councils to notify another borough to which a homeless household they had placed.  The notice helped the receiving borough to pick up responsibilities of adult social care or children services etc for the households. She added that this was an extension of multi-agency collaboration outside the borough.   

On closer cooperation with some other councils, Richard Shwe said that the Housing Service did liaise with councils in West London about having more cooperation.  However, families to the south of H&F were reluctant to move across the A4 and go up north.

In reply to Councillor Alford’s questions, Richard Shwe noted that being a housing service officer was a stressful and tough job, and bringing staff back to office might help generate more support among them. It also enabled the dedicated officers in the Homelessness Prevention team to operate a 5-day week providing immediate services to residents in need.

Clare Dorning referred to the Homeless Reduction Act which had brought a major change by giving the local authority the responsibility to assess every single approach instead of asking five screening questions as in the past before 2018. The volume of approaches and cases now became less manageable, and officers’ caseloads would increase further in case of staff turnover or sickness. In addition to the high caseloads, officers were required to meet the legal requirements in taking each case through every stage.  These factors combined necessitated a Homelessness Action Plan that helped to deliver a range of services to deal with homelessness at different stages.

Responding to Councillor Miri’s enquiry about the target of having all th Housing Service’s posts filled by the end of July, Clare Dorning was pleased to note that this was on track and it was good to see existing and new staff coming together to manage the caseloads.

Councillor Miri noted the oldest case at present was 18 months and expressed concern about households being homeless for such a long time. Clare Dorning clarified it referred to a mixture of things.  It could be a household already in temporary accommodation being issued with a backdated decision.  Or it could be a case of lost contact usually single person cases falling to the bottom of the to-do list. In any case, these households were not disadvantaged.

Councillor Asif Siddique commended the team’s hard work. Noting that the Homelessness service was managing 1,085 open cases at the moment, he asked how many of them were placed out of the borough and the timeline for them to return, and the number of cases who were aged over 70 and/or disabled.

Clare Dorning said that it normally took the households on the housing register two to three years before securing an allocation and they had to stay in the temporary accommodation until then. Those who were placed outside the borough might sometimes be moved back through temporary accommodation transfer subject to supply within the borough. She undertook to provide the number of out-of-borough households and the requested demographic information of the open cases after the meeting.

ACTION: Clare Dorning

Richard Shwe added that there were in-borough properties available in sheltered housing for 60+ but they might need to be upgraded. The Chair agreed with Richard that “sheltered housing” should be re-branded, for example, as “independent living”. 

Councillor Siddique was concerned about the procedures after a household was being served an eviction notice and approached the service. Clare Dorning said the Homelessness Prevention team would carry out upfront work such as providing useful information and advice for example the right to stay and court cost to enable the households to make informed decisions. Temporary accommodation would be planned but would not normally happen until about three days before the actual date of eviction. If they were taking universal credits or receiving housing benefits, they might be brought to temporary accommodation earlier to avoid incurring more debts due to unaffordable rent.

With reference to her casework with people facing homelessness, the Chair noted there was a lot of misunderstanding due to residents feeling anxious about the situation. She considered the Council should improve communication with the residents on top of meeting the statutory requirements.

Richard Shwe agreed that the legal discussion might frighten the vulnerable households. He considered using plain English and a layman approach in receiving the approaches. Councillor Francis Umeh (Cabinet Member for Housing and Homelessness) pointed out that this was equally true for the many partners working with the residents risking of homelessness in the borough.  She remarked that there were much more to be done to improve communication, including housing officers offering advice in person at the family hubs.

Councillor Sally Taylor echoed the need to enhance communication as according to her casework, residents facing eviction always told her that there was nothing the Council could do until they were actually homeless.  It was important for the Council to get the homelessness prevention message across, including to the ward councillors.

Richard Shwe appreciated this was indeed the practice in the past. The Council had changed the policy and strengthened the prevention arm with the help of the PRS and other teams.

RESOLVED

That the Committee noted the report.</AI4>