Meeting documents

The Housing Manager to provide a presentation on the implications of the Homelessness Reduction Act.

The PAG received a presentation from the Housing Manager on the implications of the Homelessness Reduction Act. Members were taken through what the Council’s current duties were; how these would change; the impact on the Council and how the Council were preparing for the changes.

During discussion, the below points were raised:

·        All clients would get the same level of advice and assistance and all would have an action plan. At the assessment stage, questions of intentionality and priority need would not prevent there being an action plan, although the plan would reflect this. Becoming homeless within 28 days was previously the trigger for the Council’s duty to undertake an assessment, under the new act this was now 56 days.

·        The Housing team would be required to complete an initial check to ensure that the client would indeed be homeless within 56 days. DCLG estimated that the initial meeting with clients would take approximately two hours, varying dependant on client circumstances.

·        Based on homelessness applications for the current year (2017/18) application numbers and cases where full duty was accepted had increased on last year.

·        Homelessness Prevention Duty and Homelessness Relief Duty were clarified to the Committee as outlined in the presentation. A key part of these was cross partnership working with agencies such as social care. The target of these additional duties was to prevent as many people as possible from reaching the Main Housing Duty stage (by preventing or relieving their homelessness)

·        If at the end of the 56 day period of the Homelessness Relief Duty suitable accommodation had not been secured for at least six months the Main Housing Duty would be decided and at this point priority need would be assessed. This included assessing whether the applicant had local connections.

·        DCLG had estimated a 26% upturn in homelessness applications and assessment work and casework to prevent or resolve homelessness would likely be more extensive. All duties would be subject to review so these too may increase.

·        Staffing implications would be assessed on an ongoing basis. Standardised forms and templates were also being prepared for officers. The Housing Manager was closely assessing best practices from other Local Authorities.

·        Members were advised of good partnership working already in place which would be key to working with clients. Much had happened already such as the successful countywide bid for DCLG Homelessness Trailblazer funding which was being delivered by Connection Support to offer one to one floating support with a focus on preventing homelessness and sharing direct referral links with partner agencies. Further preparations were outlined in the presentation.

·        External risk factors such as universal credit were recognised which could result in delays to benefit payments.

·        DCLF funding support figures could be seen within the presentation. Members were advised that there were specific calculations completed when New Burdens funding was being allocated which took into account South Buck’s limited indices and deprivation. The reason only three years had been accounted for was because the idea was for any costs incurred by the Council under the duties in the new Act to be offset from savings made through early intervention.

·        It was not presently monitored what happened to those clients where housing duty was not accepted, although in cases where clients were placed in temporary accommodation reasonable time was given for them to move on.

The PAG thanked the Housing Manager and the team for their continued commitment in an ever changing environment.