This update is aimed at those with a role in preventing or tackling homelessness, giving you news about the role of the team, examples from a range of organisations and other useful information. We want you to contribute so please send information to hatenquiries@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk

Local authority homelessness strategies

You may well be aware that local authorities will be reviewing their homelessness strategies around this time. The first round of homelessness strategies had to be adopted by July 2003 and local authorities have a duty to review their strategies every five years. This means that some may already have completed their reviews but many will be currently undertaking their reviews.

This round of reviews will not involve such an extensive piece of work as was seen in writing the original strategies. Councils will be reviewing their data, looking for trends and new pressures that need a response. The resultant document is likely to be thinner with less description and discussion of the issues but with greater emphasis on the action plan. The aim for many will be to have action points that will be much SMARTer so they can be monitored effectively.

It is essential for housing associations to get involved to find out what is happening and to influence the priorities in these homelessness strategies. Consultation mechanisms may vary so associations should be knocking on the door of local authorities to find out where they are on the review of their strategies.

As housing associations also develop their own homelessness action plans this is a good time for liaison with local authorities so there can be some shared priorities, identifying where partnership working may be effective and opportunities for joint bids for funding.

We have seen some good practice by associations where they have been very proactive in this approach through contacting councils to arrange a meeting to see how they can work together. This has been supported by sending information to the councils about performance in their area and plans for the future. If you would like to discuss how you may effectively get involved with local authority homelessness strategies please contact us.

Local authority temporary accommodation reduction strategies

Some local authorities that face the greatest pressures as a result of the number of families in temporary accommodation are also being asked to develop temporary accommodation reduction strategies in response to the government target to halve the number of housing in such accommodation.

These strategies will analyse the future need for temporary accommodation reflecting the range of preventative measures being developed and the options to move families from temporary accommodation. This need will then be compared with the existing supply to plan how changes will be managed over the next few years. The strategies will also consider how the quality of the accommodation may be improved.

Housing associations that are providers of temporary accommodation will need to be aware of these strategies to allow them to plan the future use of the accommodation they currently have. Failure to do so could have a significant impact on associations’ business plans.

Associations need to consider, therefore, whether they are currently involved in the development of these strategies. If not, a proactive approach may prove valuable. Obviously, this may be linked to an approach to discuss local authority homelessness strategies and housing association homelessness action plans.

We all appear to be doing lots of planning but if we don’t talk to each other we could be doing lots of unnecessary work and not achieving as much as we could!

Homelessness activity benchmarking

HouseMark has launched a new benchmarking system that will make it easier for local authorities to understand, track and compare the costs of homelessness services and temporary accommodation. It covers staffing levels, workload, supply and demand and customer satisfaction.

The system, which has been developed with CLG and CIPFA, should prove a valuable tool for local authorities. Sharing this data with housing association partners within an area should help all organisations understand local pressures and how services should develop to respond.

Find out more about the benchmarking service at www.housemark.co.uk.

Efficiencies in lettings functions

The Housing Corporation commissioned four pieces of research to develop on key themes of its Homelessness Strategy. We summarised the Access to Housing Information Sharing Protocol in the last update.

The University of Cambridge has also completed research to examine efficiencies in lettings functions. The report, that was launched at the Lettings and Homelessness conference in November, focuses on the use made by local authorities of nominations to rehouse households that are homeless and in priority need, for whom local authorities have a statutory duty to secure housing. The report analysed data on lettings from 2005/06 to identify trends.

Some of the results
Local authorities with retained housing stocks let 29.5% of vacancies to the priority homeless, whilst in the RSL sector only 11% of vacancies is let to a priority homeless household nominated by a local authority.

When lettings referred from sources other than local authority nominations are taken into account, the proportion of RSL lettings to the priority homeless almost doubled to 20.6%.

There was a marked difference in the proportion of lettings to statutory homeless households between LSVT and ‘traditional’ RSLs.
 
RSL supported housing is only 5% of the total RSL housing stock but it supplies 25% of all lettings to new tenants in social housing and 44% of all lettings to new tenants in the RSL sector, due to the high turnover rate. Nine out of ten vacancies in supported housing have one bedroom, and 55% of lettings in the sector are to the homeless (60% of these are non-priority homeless).

There was limited direct use of nomination agreements to supported housing by local authorities.

Choice based lettings (CBL) schemes that include all vacancies avoid the need for formal nomination agreements. It was also found that such CBL schemes remove the difference in the proportion of lettings to homeless households by LSVT and traditional associations.

There was little or no correlation between the housing stress in an area and the use of nominations by local authorities.

The full report is available.

Your examples

When we visit associations we receive queries on a number of common issues that many associations are looking to address. To help, we want to produce some more targeted guidance, including lots of good examples. We are asking, therefore, for you to send us information about how you are tackling the following issues. Practical examples such as policies, procedures or information for customers is the sort of thing we are looking for. We’ll make sure your positive practice is suitably recognised in our guidance!

• Mortgage rescue schemes;
• Incentives to tackle under-occupation;
• Approaches to reduce overcrowding;
• Using starter tenancies without increasing evictions;
• Illegal occupation;
• Domestic violence;
• Rent deposit schemes;
• Providing a housing options service to tenants;
• Identifying the need for advice & support; and
• Housing 16/17 year olds.

We’ll be very grateful for any examples that you send to hatenquiries@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk. Also let us know if there are any further areas in which you would like more in depth guidance.

Events

These are some of the events being organised that may be of interest to those working around homelessness. If you know of future events please let us know so we can include them.

CIH Seminars – Everything you need to know about temporary accommodation and homelessness
London, 17th January 2008
Manchester, 31st January 2008

Shelter Homelessness Prevention Conferences
Liverpool, 24th January 2008
Birmingham, 21st February 2008
Guildford, 11th March 2008
(The HAT is helping to run some workshops)

Capita National Homelessness Conference
London, 31st January 2008

CLG Homelessness Summit aimed at local authorities
Cambridge, 6th February 2008

CIH Seminars – Choice based lettings
Leeds, 21st February 2008
London’ 28th February 2008

CIH Housing Advice Conference
London, 18th March 2008
(Mark Meehan will be chairing the conference)

Contact us

We ask for your input in a number of ways. If you can help us or if you would like us to meet with you please contact us.

Mark Meehan
mark.meehan@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk
07721 375104

Gerald Wild 
gerald.wild@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07971 667119

Madeleine Jeffery 
madeleine.jeffery@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07798 588752

Nick Sedgwick 
nick.sedgwick@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07919 394910

Martin Waddington 
martin.waddington@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07980 988687

Dave Anteh 
dave.anteh@housingcorp.gsx.gov.uk 
07920 781254