To review the council’s approaches to avoidance of homelessness, and the local impact of the homelessness reduction duty, mental health, and universal credit.

The head of prevention and support gave presentations on the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (appendix 1) and on Universal Credit, mental health and vulnerable people (appendix 2).  The key points of the presentations and questions arising are summarised below.

Homelessness Reduction Act 2017

a.       The key legislation was contained in the Housing Act 1996, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA) amended Part VII of this legislation and came into effect in April 2018.

b.       The HRA placed increased statutory duties on local housing authorities to prevent homelessness and, if that duty fails, to relieve homelessness, including: the provision of a personal housing plan for every client and undertaking reviews at each stage; the provision of temporary accommodation at the prevention stage for a minimum of 56 days; earlier intervention to prevent homelessness; a new relief duty to provide assistance when preventions fail prior to homelessness; a new ‘duty to refer’ on other public services working with people who were at risk of homelessness or were homeless, albeit this duty did not apply to the police; and increased rights for clients to seek reviews of the council’s decisions.

In response to a question, the team leader housing solutions clarified that anyone who presented to a local authority who was at risk of homelessness would need to be provided with temporary accommodation and the local authority would have to meet the financial burden; previously a local connection had to be demonstrated.

c.       The duty to provide continued temporary accommodation protection for families had been extend from 28 days to 56 days, increasing the financial burden and placing pressures on the available temporary accommodation; the council had recently increased its provision from 41 to 45 places.  This additional burden was also reflected in increased use of bed and breakfast accommodation in Herefordshire; there had been five successive months of double figure placements in the period before Christmas 2018.  The housing solutions team were working with local landlords and with the housing strategy lead to secure additional accommodation and a wider range of housing types.

In response to questions, the team leader housing solutions advised: temporary accommodation provision was mainly in Hereford but there were units in Leominster and Ross, with some bed and breakfast accommodation was used in the market towns; and, if the authority had a statutory duty, 56 days was a minimum and clients would continue in temporary accommodation until suitable permanent accommodation could be found.

d.       The HRA had increased workload for the housing solutions teams, metrics included: the average allocation of cases had increased to over 20 per day; footfall into the service had increased by 59%; there had been 9884 presentations in the last twelve months; and the current caseload was 562 people.

e.       The rough sleeping outreach service currently identified 12 rough sleepers, mostly in Hereford but also in Ross and in other rural areas.  The service continued to provide support to 50 people, who had been rough sleeping previously, to help them sustain the accommodation secured  ...  view the full minutes text for item 59