Report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods)

This report sets out the position of Manchester City Council’s Homelessness Service in terms of how it supports local residents and how the emerging transformation programme is seeking to increase the prevention of homelessness, continue the successful reduction in rough sleeping, reduce the use of temporary accommodation and support residents, with a wide ranging variety of needs, including that of securing a place to call home.

In addition, set out in the report, is a deep dive into the activity to increase prevention, the support provided to people when placed in temporary accommodation and the arrangements to ensure the quality of the temporary accommodation provided.

The Committee received a report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods) which set out the position of Manchester City Council’s Homelessness Service in terms of how it supported local residentsand how the emerging transformation programme was seeking to increase the prevention of homelessness, continue the successful

reduction in rough sleeping, reduce the use of temporary accommodation and support residents, with a wide-ranging variety of needs, including that of securing a place to call home. In addition, set out in the report, was a deep dive into the activity to increase prevention, the support provided to people when placed in temporary accommodation and the arrangements to ensure the quality of the temporary accommodation provided.

The main points and themes within the report included:

• National, regional and local context;
• Rough sleeping;
• Prevention;
• Accommodation, including its quality;
• Support for people in temporary accommodation; and
• Homelessness Strategy and Partnership.

Some of the key points that arose from the Committee’s discussions were:

• Concern that the average amount of time people were spending in bed-and-breakfast or temporary accommodation was too high and the impact of this on the individuals in this position;
• The importance of focusing on the services that the Council provided and the areas that were within its control, such as the Housing Solutions Team working with the Private Rented Sector (PRS) Team to prevent people having to go into temporary accommodation or to reduce the time people spent in temporary accommodation;
• Questioning whether the rough sleepers headcount was accurate;
• To request a breakdown of table 2.3 in the report by protected characteristics;
• The factors leading to homelessness, including changes in legislation;
• That vacated social housing properties should have a quicker turnaround time for them to be ready for and matched with a new tenant;
• Noting thatthe PRS team had helped to secure 813 new private rented tenancies, to ask about the people they had not been able to help because Council systems were not quick enough to respond to the pace of the private rented sector;  
• Concern about people living in overcrowded accommodation who were not classed as homeless;
• To welcome the focus on preventing homelessness and to ask for more information on the progress of this work to be included in the next report;
• To note that temporary accommodation was concentrated in some areas of the city and to ask for more information on this and what was being done to address it in the next report; and
• To ask that the next report include what support was provided to help people to settle into their new accommodation.

The Director of Housing Operations highlighted the significant increase in people presenting as homeless and recognised Members’ comments about some of the factors affecting this.  He outlined how the Transformation Programme was looking at how the service could be more creative to find alternatives to placing people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.  He agreed that the average length of time individuals were spending in bed-and-breakfast accommodation was too long and reported that, in particular, there was an issue with identifying suitable supported accommodation for individuals who required this.  In response to a Member’s question about eliminating the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for families with children, he advised that this work was challenging but that there was a commitment to expediting the work to address this.  The Strategic Lead for Homelessness offered to share the plan for addressing the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation with the Committee and outlined how this was being progressed and monitored.  In response to a Member’s question about what current address was used for people living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation who were applying for a private rented tenancy, she advised that she would check on this.   

The Director of Housing Operations recognised the comments about the importance of turning around void social housing properties more quickly and advised that it was now taking an average of 60 days to turn around void properties in Housing Operations.  In response to a Member’s comments about homelessness and the shortage of affordable housing, he highlighted the report on the Manchester Housing Strategy, which was due to be considered at the next meeting of the Economy Scrutiny Committee, and advised that the Council recognised the inter-relationship between homelessness, inequalities and inclusive growth.  In response to Members’ comments, he advised that the next report on homelessness would include more information across equalities strands.  A Member requested that this include information on LGBT young people and what work was being done with organisations such as the Albert Kennedy Trust, the LGBT Foundation and the Proud Trust.

In response to a Member’s question, the Director of Housing Operations advised that the success of Apex House related to its provision of intensive support to people on one site.

The Strategic Lead for Homelessness confirmed that officers could provide a breakdown of the figures in table 2.3 by protected characteristics.  She reported that the headcount of rough sleepers was a snapshot of one night using best practice and she invited the Member who had raised this to join her staff when they were doing the headcount to see how this was carried out.  In response to a further question about the purpose of the headcount,she advised that this was to provide a figure which could be compared across the country but that her team also had other data on rough sleeping in Manchester which she could provide.  She advised that information on how the systems used by the Housing Solutions and PRS Teams were working to keep pace with the private rented sector would be provided in a future report.  In response to a Member’s question about property checks, she advised that, following the service redesign, there was now a team dedicated to property checks and repairs who were going out and undertaking inspections of properties and that more information on the work that was taking place to ensure that properties were of the required standard would be included in the next report on Homelessness provided to the Committee.  In response to a question about how people could access support, she advised that a lot of people preferred to contact her service by telephone but that face-to-face appointments could be arranged and that telephone callers had the option to leave their details and be called back, rather than wait in a queue.  The Director of Housing Operations advised that information on the accessibility of their services would be included in the next report.

The Chair advised that the Economy Scrutiny Committee had received a report on the Housing Allocations Policy Review at its meeting in March 2022, which provided some of the information that Members had asked for and she asked the Committee Support Officer to circulate this to the Committee.  In response to a Member’s suggestion that the Committee receive a separate report on the Transformation Programme, the Chair suggested that information on this could be included in the next report, including what milestones and targets had been met.

Decisions

1.            To ask that the items requested by Members during the discussion be included in the next report, including the Transformation Programme, work to reduce the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation, void properties, how the Housing Solutions and PRS teams are working together and how their systems are keeping pace with the private rented sector, the imbalance in the geographic spread of temporary accommodation provision, support to help people settle into their new accommodation and information on equalities and how different communities are being served by this work.

2.            To request a breakdown of the information in table 2.3 by protected characteristics.

3.            To request information on what address people with no fixed abode can use when seeking accommodation through the PRS team.

4.            To ask the Committee Support Officer to circulate the report on the Housing Allocations Policy Review which was submitted to the Economy Scrutiny Committee’s March 2022 meeting to Committee Members.

[Councillor Whiston declared a personal and non-prejudicial interest as a service user of the Private Rented Sector Team.]