Minutes:
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The Housing Services Manager introduced the item and explained they currently had a Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy which was coming to an end at the end of 2024. She explained they had recently commenced their review with a view to having a new strategy in place in 2024.
The Senior Housing Manager presented the Group with a presentation which set out the timeline and provided a brief outline with where they were at and how they were planning to take things forward. A copy of the presentation is attached.
The Chair thanked the Senior Housing Manager for the presentation.
The Chair asked if there were many homelessness presentations coming from rural villages and the Senior Housing Manager advised this would be difficult to analyse but explained they did go out to rural locations to verify rough sleepers.
In response to a question raised by Councillor Kemp, the Senior Housing Manager confirmed the King’s Lynn Night Shelter would be included within the review and they had been invited to one of the partner sessions. He went on to explain they were focusing their efforts around single people which was being hosted by the Purfleet Trust. In terms of families they were focussing their efforts on existing housing association tenants and people in temporary accommodation to get the true experience of homelessness to enable them to feed it into their review.
The Chair indicated she liked the idea of working with outside partnerships, especially businesses and explained this could provide options which had not been utilised before.
The Housing Services Manager highlighted to the Group that it was an important point and explained there was an action plan attached to the Strategy which showed the challenges, trends and critically also showed the things which could be done to respond to it and felt this would give businesses the opportunity to see which part of it they could play a part in to help deliver.
Councillor Kemp asked whether derelict homes would be considered for accommodating people and the Housing Services Manager explained they would look at all options and that this could be explored.
In response to a further question raised by Councillor Kemp, the Housing Services Manager explained their area of focus was to try and prevent homelessness in the first instance but where it does occur, to have appropriate solutions to end that homelessness and added that was the focus of their strategy.
Councillor Rust commented that the Council were taking other steps to try to alleviate and address the need for more private rented houses at an affordable rate through the two Housing Companies.
Councillor Bubb commented that the Borough Charity were in a position to help families and explained they had a system in place but they did not get enough of a variety of applications come forward. The Housing Services Manager confirmed they were always signposting people where necessary and where needed to try and help support them and confirmed they would continue to remind the Housing teams that that was available.