Decision details

That the Executive:

a)    Approved that the Council enters into an agreement with the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUHC) to acquire 30 homes during 2023-2024 to deliver additional housing for refugees.

b)    Approved the proposal to repurpose £3.711m capital funding already committed to the Homelessness Prevention programme to enable North Northamptonshire Council to provide the required match funding against the central government grant for this programme.

c)    Delegated authority to the Executive Member for Housing, Communities and Levelling Up in consultation with the Executive Director for Adults, Health Partnerships and Housing to take any decisions and actions necessary to complete the programme. 

Reasons for Recommendations:

·         To ensure the recent humanitarian refugee schemes (Afghan and Ukraine), provide sufficient longer-term accommodation to those they support.

·         To mitigate the increased pressures on the Local Authority’s homelessness and social housing resources which arise as sponsorship / family placements / bridging accommodation arrangements end, by increasing the provision of affordable housing to those in the cohort who are homeless, at risk of homelessness, or in bridging accommodation.

·         To increase the overall supply of affordable rented housing available in North Northamptonshire, which meets the corporate objective of enabling safe and thriving places.

Alternative Options Considered-

·         Do nothing – if the Council does not participate in this programme, it will not receive the funding allocation and the challenge of finding onward settled accommodation for refugees will remain. This challenge is already putting pressure on stretched homelessness services. Those refugees who present as homeless are still owed a statutory homelessness duty by the Council and need to be placed in costly nightly paid Temporary Accommodation and then progressed through Keyways on to the housing register.

·         Commit to delivering a smaller number of homes – whilst this may be easier to achieve, the government grant allocation will reduce proportionately and less homes will be acquired into our temporary accommodation stock. Ultimately fewer additional homes will be available to the Council to use as affordable housing for our residents in the longer term.