Issue - meetings

The following recommendations to Cabinet were agreed by the Overview & Scrutiny Committee at the meeting held on 20^th September:

1.     Homelessness Task & Finish Group (chaired by Cllr Dr V Holliday)

Overview & Scrutiny Committee RESOLVED to support the following recommendations to Cabinet:

that the Council

(A)  To prevent homelessness

expands its homelessness service prevention work to undertake such work at an earlier stage along with multi agency support, on an invest to save basis, to seek to reduce the number of people going into temporary accommodation and the costs of that to the council that should include

1.     increasing the awareness and risks of homelessness in the local communities, on the value of prevention for homelessness and that early intervention requires people to ask for help before it becomes too late

2.     increasing its communication work which should include Parish and Town Councils and should also provide support to Councillors to enable them to help signpost those people who need housing help

3.     increasing the range of interventions to help people especially on benefit support and with financial viability assessments 

(B) Managing homelessness

Explores how it uses partner, charity, and voluntary organisations to create a series of outreach hubs and front-line services in North Norfolk for homelessness to create a network of advice and support including appropriate partner organisation(s)

(C) Housing allocation

Considers the viability of a support match scheme to match younger residents who need accommodation into a home with an older resident(s) that needs assistance in a similar way to the scheme in Cornwall SupportmatchHomeshare - Cornwall Council

(D) Increase housing supply

1. Continues to encourage its Councillors to work within their local communities to seek to find additional plots of land that can be used for new affordable housing schemes

2. As a medium-term solution looks at setting up an investment partnership to provide affordable local housing for local people at social, discount and market rent. We would recommend the model used by Cambridge City Council and Gravesham Borough Council who set an investment partnership with the Hill Group on a 50:50 basis

3. Explores the use of Solo Haus one bed housing where additional   temporary accommodation for single people is required

(E) Increase affordable house building/supply

1. Undertakes an audit of shop fronts away from primary retail areas and empty units above and behind shops to assess their potential for conversion to residential usage or renting out rooms

2.     An affordable housing conference be set up to encourage Parish and Town councils to create neighbourhood plans that include allocations for community led development for local people and encourages community land trusts to come forward with affordable schemes in rural exception sites

3.     Continues to seek from Norfolk County Council a minimum 50% return of the extra Council tax that will be received from the new extra second homes premium and that the money the Council receives is ringfenced for affordable housing

4.     Responds to the Government consultation on changes to the National Planning  ...  view the full agenda text for item 39

Decsion

RESOLVED to approve

RESOLVED to approve the following:

1. Homelessness Task & Finish Group (chaired by Cllr Dr V Holliday)

(A)  To prevent homelessness expands its homelessness service prevention work to undertake such work at an earlier stage along with multi agency support, on an invest to save basis, to seek to reduce the number of people going into temporary accommodation and the costs of that to the council that should include

1.    increasing the awareness and risks of homelessness in the local communities, on the value of prevention for homelessness and that early intervention requires people to ask for help before it becomes too late

2.    increasing its communication work which should include Parish and Town Councils and should also provide support to Councillors to enable them to help signpost those people who need housing help

3.    increasing the range of interventions to help people especially on benefit support and with financial viability assessments 

(B) Managing homelessness

Explores how it uses partner, charity, and voluntary organisations to create a series of outreach hubs and front-line services in North Norfolk for homelessness to create a network of advice and support including appropriate partner organisation(s)

(C) Housing allocation

Considers the viability of a support match scheme to match younger residents who need accommodation into a home with an older resident(s) that needs assistance in a similar way to the scheme in Cornwall Supportmatch Homeshare - Cornwall Council

(D) Increase housing supply

1. Continues to encourage its Councillors to work within their local communities to seek to find additional plots of land that can be used for new affordable housing schemes

2. As a medium-term solution looks at setting up an investment partnership to provide affordable local housing for local people at social, discount and market rent. We would recommend the model used by Cambridge City Council and Gravesham Borough Council who set an investment partnership with the Hill Group on a 50:50 basis

3. Explores the use of Solo Haus one bed housing where additional   temporary accommodation for single people is required

(E) Increase affordable house building/supply

1.  Undertakes an audit of shop fronts away from primary retail areas and empty units above and behind shops to assess their potential for conversion to residential usage or renting out rooms

2.    An affordable housing conference be set up to encourage Parish and Town councils to create neighbourhood plans that include allocations for community led development for local people and encourages community land trusts to come forward with affordable schemes in rural exception sites

3.    Continues to seek from Norfolk County Council a minimum 50% return of the extra Council tax that will be received from the new extra second homes premium and that the money the Council receives is ringfenced for affordable housing

4.    Responds to the Government consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework on the definition of affordability

5.    Explores the potential to use Better Society Capital/National Homelessness Property fund 2 funding for 3-to-4-bedroom properties

 National Homelessness Property fund  ...  view the full decision text for item 39

The Chairman of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee, Cllr N Dixon, said that he would hand over to Cllr DR V Holliday, Chairman of the Homelessness Task & Finish Group to introduce the first item.

Cllr Holliday began by reminding members of the scale of homelessness in North Norfolk and the misery it caused. It placed a financial strain on everyone’s budgets including the Council. The emotional, mental and physical toll that it took on households was beyond comprehension and the Council’s teams worked tirelessly and under great pressure. The Task & Finish Group (set up by the Overview & Scrutiny Committee) set out with the widest possible range of interventions to reduce homelessness and to produce practical solutions to relieve homelessness. She said that there was some overlap with the excellent work currently being carried out by Housing Team at the Council which above and beyond for residents, however, it was felt important to start with a ‘clean slate’.

Cllr Holliday said that the Task & Finish Group had met with 8 external witnesses and 5 officers and the recommendations came from them. It was hoped that, if the recommendations were supported by Cabinet, they would help the Council to continue to provide the best outcomes for households across the district that were at risk of homelessness or who had become homeless. It was recognised that the recommendations were just the first step and that they needed to be explored in more depth once across. The Group did not see its remit as fleshing out proposals in detail. She added that Recommendation E(4) was now out of date and could be removed.

The Chairman thanked Cllr Holliday and the Task & Finish Group for their extensive work. He assured her that the recommendations would be considered fully. He then invited Cllr W Fredericks, Portfolio Holder for Housing & Benefits to speak.

Cllr Fredericks began by thanking the Task & Finish Group and everyone involved in the process. She said that homelessness was a big issue and it was pleasing to see cross-party support for tackling such a challenging problem. She said that there was a lot of information in the report and resulting recommendations that would need to be looked at in detail to understand the potential benefit and the cost implications. She went onto say that many of the themes in the report reflected those in the Housing Strategy, the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy and the Housing refresh, all of these were ‘live’ documents and there was an action plan in place too. These documents were all regularly reviewed and where there was an opportunity to incorporate any changes, then they would be updated.

Picking up on some of the themes identified by the Task & Finish Group, Cllr Fredericks said that she would like to highlight some of the work that was currently ongoing or planned. Last year information was sent out to all town and parish councils in the district highlighting the housing need in their area. This exercise would be repeated soon  ...  view the full minutes text for item 39