The Homes and Communities Scrutiny Committee of Islington Council is scheduled to consider a comprehensive review of homelessness in the borough, alongside a performance report on homelessness. The meeting's agenda is dominated by discussions surrounding the final report and recommendations from the Scrutiny Review of Homelessness 2025/26, and a review of the Quarterly Homelessness Performance Report.

Scrutiny Review of Homelessness 2025/26: Final Report and Recommendations

The committee is set to review the final report and recommendations stemming from its year-long scrutiny of homelessness in Islington. This extensive review, detailed in the Final Report - Homelessness in Islington, concludes that homelessness is a system-made crisis rather than an individual failing. The report highlights the critical lack of social housing as the root cause of the housing emergency and proposes a series of recommendations for both local and national action.

Key recommendations include:

• Whole-system statutory duty to prevent homelessness: A call for all public services, including health, criminal justice, children's services, and adult social care, to have a legal responsibility to actively prevent homelessness.
• Reforming the homelessness framework: Advocating for the abolition of the priority need framework and the ending of local connection requirements for people sleeping rough.
• Delivering services that end homelessness for people and places: Proposing a place-based model that integrates housing, health, mental health, substance misuse, children's services, adult social care, and criminal justice partners.
• Demand and secure a new generation of social homes: Recommending that the government provide funding for Islington Council to purchase 200 ex-Right to Buy homes annually to address homelessness and reduce reliance on temporary accommodation.
• Local Housing Allowance: Urging the government to urgently uprate Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates to reflect real market rents, as current rates prevent the council from securing local temporary accommodation.
• Rent stabilisation: Proposing a system of rent stabilisation in high-cost areas like London to prevent excessive rent increases that contribute to homelessness.
• Preventing homelessness before crisis point: Emphasising the need for continued face-to-face, online, and outreach services for housing advice and support.
• Rapid rehousing and reduced reliance on temporary accommodation: Supporting a shift towards moving people quickly from emergency accommodation into homes of their own.
• Housing First: Recommending the continued development and expansion of the Housing First approach, which has shown high tenancy sustainment rates.
• Ending exploitation and preventing tenancy breakdown, including cuckooing: Proposing a multi-agency approach to prevent and respond to cuckooing, recognising it as a safeguarding issue.
• Women's homelessness and gender-specific provision: Recommending the development of gender-specific, trauma-informed accommodation and support, including exploring a dedicated women's supported accommodation building.
• Supporting migrants and refugees at risk of homelessness: Calling for greater flexibility within immigration and welfare rules to prevent destitution and street homelessness for these groups.
• Access to support beyond housing: Highlighting the need for sustained investment in adult social care, mental health services, and housing support, integrated into multi-disciplinary, place-based models.
• Social connections, recovery and belonging: Recommending further investment in social connection and recovery-focused support to help people rebuild relationships and develop a sense of belonging.
• Redefining success and sustaining tenancies: Suggesting a greater emphasis on tenancy sustainment, safety, wellbeing, and development of robust networks over time, informed by lived experience.
• Lived experience and resident voice: Recommending a framework to ensure the voice of people with lived experience is embedded throughout service redesign and policy change.
• Workforce resilience, sustainability, and representation: Advocating for long-term investment to make specialist homelessness roles permanent and for continued investment in staff training and wellbeing.
• Regulation, safety, and accountability: Calling for homelessness and supported accommodation services to fall under the responsibility of the Regulator of Social Housing.
• Domestic abuse: Recommending that domestic abuse prevention and survivor-centred practice are embedded across housing allocations, tenancy management, and safeguarding partnerships.
• Empowerment and partnership accountability: Suggesting the strengthening of the Homelessness Forum's empowerment agenda.
• A National Plan to End Homelessness: While welcoming the government's plan, the committee believes it needs to go further, particularly regarding statutory responsibilities and long-term funding.

Quarterly Homelessness Performance Report

The committee will also receive the HomelessnessSep25Publication.pdf report, which provides an update on homelessness indicators. The report is expected to highlight ongoing challenges, particularly with the rising number of households in temporary accommodation. It will likely detail performance against key metrics, including initial homelessness assessments, households owed a prevention or relief duty, and the number of households in temporary accommodation. The report will also provide benchmarking data against London and neighbouring boroughs, offering insights into Islington's performance in tackling homelessness.

The agenda also includes items such as the Executive Member for Homes and Neighbourhoods: Annual Report, Executive Member Report on New Build Homes, and Quarter 3 Housing Performance Report, which are marked as To follow .