Issue details

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.