Purpose

The council is experiencing increasing approaches from homeless people and thus an increasing need to provide temporary in many cases. While the council owns two high quality hostels, when these are full, the Housing Service has no option but to place people in bed and breakfast hotels. Hotel accommodation is far from ideal and, furthermore, it costs the council money as an occupant's housing benefit does not cover the full room costs and it is not feasible to charge someone for the balance.

The council nominates people to social housing provided by housing associations according to the councli's Allocation Scheme. This currently affords increasing priority for rehousing, the longer the council works with a homeless household. Analysis, however, indicates that the points awarded do not increase quickly enough to help households facing loss of their accommodation quickly enough to avoid homelessless and/or avoid long stays in temporary accommodation. Therefore, officers have assessed that making relatively minor changes to the points given the homeless households should remedy this.

Decision

Minor amendment to Housing Allocation Scheme to bring forward homeless households' increased prority for nomination to social housing.

Alternative options considered

Option 1 - RECOMMENDED
(a) Increase points for homeless households from:
• 25 points to an applicant when a two-month Section 21 Notice is served and
• a further 20 points 28 days before the Notice expires, that is when the landlord can commence eviction proceedings.

to


• 25 points to an applicant when a two-month Section 21 Notice is served and
• a further 35 points 28 days before the Notice expires, that is when the landlord can commence eviction proceedings.

(b) Bbring forward the stage at which a Housing officer will bid on a homeless household’s behalf for suitable properties to the first bidding cycle following the homeless household moving into the Relief stage of the process, rather than being accepted rather than at Main duty as at present. This would mean that a Housing officer will be able to place a bid some 56 days earlier than currently.


Option 2 - NOT RECOMMENDED
No change. This will not enable homeless households the potential to move more quickly than now and so do nothing to reduce or avoid stays in temporary accommodation.