Agenda item

The Director of Housing submits a report providing a further update to Members of the Executive and the Housing Scrutiny Commission on progress in implementing Leicester’s Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategy 2018-2023, since the last update to Scrutiny in February 2020.

The Director of Housing submitted a report providing further update to Members of the Executive and the Housing Scrutiny Commission on progress in implementing Leicester’s Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategy 2018-2023, since the last update to Scrutiny in February 2020.

·         From March the service had needed to react and respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.  They had needed to protect life and have an offer in place for people to have a safe place to live to protect them from the pandemic.  This had been a challenge for the service and the sector.

·         The Everyone In directive had allowed the service to help anyone in need, including those without recourse to public funds such as people from abroad without status in this country.

·         45 bed spaces had been lost due to Covid-19 as they were classed as shared sleeping arrangements.  Temporary accommodation had needed to be extended to fill gaps such as this.

·         The Early Prison Release scheme had put added pressure on the service.

·         More than 500 new single individuals had approached the service for help during the pandemic.

·         The service had entered into swift procurement of units that were safe and self-contained.  This had included block-booking hotels.

·         Volunteers had provided those in Bed and Breakfast accommodation to those who did not have access to food and delivered food parcels to those who could not shop.

·         24/7 support had been provided and the Police had been worked with, so they had an access route to bring people in.

·         Entrenched rough-sleepers had been brought in, and the service had been able to continue working with them in their accommodation.

·         Whilst cases of Covid-19 in this accommodation had been very low and not as bad as feared, a strategy still needed to be in place to manage cases.

·         Flu vaccinations had been rolled out for vulnerable homeless people.

·         Whilst Covid-19 cases had recovered over the summer, the service felt the need to continue with the initiative supporting homeless people as they were very aware that there would be a second wave.

·         There were currently 40 single people in Bed and Breakfast accommodation down from 180.  There was a priority to move people on in the Single Homeless Pathway.

·         In the Annual Spotlight count would take place in the next week and numbers on the street had reduced.

·         The first aim of the strategy was prevention, the MyHOME app had added an additional optional gateway for people to get help.  Prevention and recovery solutions remained high and the service were looking to sustain people’s current accommodation or failing that look for new accommodation before homelessness occurred.  If homelessness occurred, then the service would work to find accommodation as soon as possible.

·         LCC Homelessness Prevention & Support services have made it a priority to ensure that; through effective comms, partners, information on the website, and referral processes; people at risk of homelessness are aware that services are available and are available to access when they need to.  We believe this is the chief reason behind why 61% of presentations to the service are made before the person becomes homeless, compared to the national average of just 52%. 

·         LCC compare very well against the National average, achieving solutions for 76% of applicants since the new Act was introduced.  The National average is 67%.

·         57% of outcomes resulted in sustained accommodation compared to 37% nationally.

·         Regarding relief work (providing temporary accommodation), 55% of cases were provided with a solution compared with 44% nationally.  There were also fewer negative outcomes and fewer cases that needed a Main Duty Assessment than the national average.  This was positive.

·         In addition to advice and support, 1500 affordable homes were planned over the next four years.  Additionally LLCC had bid for £2.5million of additional funding for development of settled homes for the single homeless community.  There had also been an interim award of £320,000.

·         The team had been invited as one of 10 areas across England to put together a delivery plan as part of the Protect programme to protect the most vulnerable homeless people with complex needs.  A bid of £0.5m had been put in to support this group.

·         There had been significant improvement in how the team had accessed the private rented sector to provide affordable solutions.

·         Through the Private sector and HomeCome 131 tenancies had been created through schemes in 2018/19 increasing to 201 in 2019/20.

·         An advice line had been created for landlords and customers struggling to maintain tenants and mortgages.

·         Accommodation for families facing homelessness was being developed under the ‘Homes not Hostels’ scheme.  All families that were in temporary accommodation were now in their own self-contained homes.  80% of families at risk of homelessness were prevented from becoming homeless.  The eviction ban during lockdown had helped with this, but did not take away anxieties. Bed and Breakfast accommodation had been kept to under 6 weeks for families.

·         Accommodation for singles had been provided at the Dawn Centre and some reconfiguration had taken place to make it more residential due to Covid-19.  45 residents had self-contained rooms.

·         Due to the pressures on the service cause by the early release of prisoners they had been working closely with probations and prisons so that they could come into the Single Homeless Pathway.  A new contract was in place for 30 units of accommodation for offenders.  This included 14 units of high-support accommodation for prison leavers who need intensive support before moving into ‘step-down’ which is more self-contained and enables them to pick up independent skills ready for them to move on.

·         The Joint working group established with children's services to develop a joint commissioning exercise continues to make progress and moves closer to completion.  This will consider the supported accommodation needs of 16-25-year olds in the city.  The driver behind the joint commissioning exercise is to allow LCC to provide a better range of options for young people.

·         The Homeless Charter continued to encourage partner engagement to provide a better overall offer to the homeless community.  PayPoints had been installed to raise money for partners within the Faith and Community Sector and provided a way for people to donate money to help homeless people who wanted to detract from them using money for alcohol or substance abuse.

·         The team were keen to include PIE as part of the offer.

·         The team wished to explore wet accommodation for people to be helped with substance or alcohol issues.

Councillor Westley was disconnected from the meeting.  Vice-Chair Councillor Nangreave took over as Chair.

With regard to homelessness prevention, Councillor Pickering asked as to whether people were losing homes mainly from private landlords who had ended short-term tenancies?

Head of Service, Housing, Caroline Carpendale responded that that prior to Covid-19 it had been the biggest reason, but in the last 9 months it was more due to people who had been living with families and overcrowding and people escaping domestic violence (refuge places had been kept fully available).

Councillor Westley re-joined the meeting

Justin Haywood added that ordinarily there was a 60/40 split between singles and families, however in the last two quarters 80% of cases were singles which showed the number of singles in the city who had no fixed abode.

Councillor Westley suggested that it would be useful if all members received a copy of the Private Landlord Incentive Scheme.

Councillor Willmott welcomed the report and praised the service for being flexible and adapting to the circumstances.  He requested consistency in the presentation of numbers, noting that some figures were displayed as percentages whilst others were not.

Caroline Carpendale clarified that the purpose of percentages was so local figures could be compared with national figures, but local figures in real terms of Leicester could be produced.

Councillor Nangreave praised the team for quickly developing a new service.

Councillor O’Donnell asked how many people had received direct lets into permanent residence.  He also asked how the team worked with housing teams in these areas as people had additional challenges going into communities.  He further observed that street-lifestyles appeared to have grown during the Covid-19 pandemic and asked whether ASB had increased as a result.

Caroline Carpendale responded that there was a street-lifestyles operational group made up from the Police and homelessness services who provided support and enforcement.  During lockdown there had been some difficult cases but not a big increase in new cases.  Some locality matters had been observed as well as pockets that could be defined as ‘hotspots’ for street lifestyles and rough sleeping such as Narborough Road and a taskforce had been created to tackle them.  Some street-lifestyle groups had been moving out of the city centre and some services had needed to be taken out of the city.

Regarding direct lets she replied that she did not have a figure to hand but would contact Councillor O’Donnell with one.  Following the guidance received in terms of how social housing continued to be offered during the Covid period, one of the groups was to homeless households.  Along with Gurjit Kaur Minhas, a scheme of ‘sensitive lets’ had been carried out whereby intelligence check were done on accommodation to ensure it was suitable as they wanted tenancies to be sustainable.  Tenancy management services were being worked with.

Councillor Nangreave emphasised that more needed to be done to stop overcrowding.

AGREED:

                        That the report be noted.