Agenda item

Local Authority Housing Fund (Refugee Resettlement)

Decision:

RESOLVED

KEY DECISION

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.

Minutes:

The Chair invited Cllr Dorothy Maxwell to address the meeting. Cllr Maxwell spoke to welcome the report and the support being offered to refugees and queried whether the Council would receive back the 40% match-funding it needed to contribute towards the cost of purchasing housing and whether these houses would later form part of the Council’s housing stock once they were no longer required. Cllr Maxwell stated the importance of housing being near to employment and amenities, queried funding for furniture and household items and how additional staffing would be resourced.

The Chair thanked Cllr Maxwell for her comments before inviting Cllr Lyn Buckingham to address the meeting. Cllr Buckingham also welcomed the report and queried the impact of repurposing funding from the Homeless Prevention Service given the need of the homeless community.

The Chair thanked Cllr Buckingham for her input before invitingthe Executive Member for Housing, Communities and Levelling Up, Cllr Matt Binley to introduce a report that sought approval for the Council to enter into an agreement with the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities to acquire 30 homes during 2023-2024 to deliver additional housing for refugees. The report also sought approval to repurpose capital funding already committed to the Homelessness Prevention programme to enable the Council to provide the required match funding against the Government grant for this programme.

The meeting heard that the Council had committed to supporting ten Afghan families in bridging hotels and sponsorship placements for Ukrainians fleeing their war-torn country. Families had struggled to move out of bridging hotels due to the size of the families and some sponsorships had ended resulting in the use of more expensive temporary nightly paid accommodation.

Cllr Binley reported that of the 374 Ukrainian guests that went into 229 sponsorship homes, only 181 guests remained due to the remainder either returning home, moving out of the area, having made their own arrangements or been supported into the private rented sector. Cllr Binley thanked all those sponsors who had invited those fleeing war into their homes.

Details of the funding involved in the proposal, including the Council’s contribution, was outlined to the meeting that noted the total budget for the purchase of 30 properties would be £6.965m. These properties would be added to the Council’s temporary accommodation stock and comprise two 1-bed, twenty 2-bed, four 3-bed and four 4-bed properties.

It was heard that properties would be sourced on the open market and the Council would also look to buy back any suitable ex-Right to Buy properties which were subject to first refusal. The property purchases would be focused in the towns of Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough and Rushden to ensure families were located near to local amenities. Any properties purchased from developers would not be counted towards their Section 106 affordable homes allocations.

In response to queries raised by speakers, Cllr Binley noted that the purchased housing may form part of the Council’s own housing stock in future, but this possibility would be explored at a future date. Staffing resources would be funded with a mix of Council and Government funding and match funding for the purchases was being utilised from the Homeless Prevention programme as this fund was not under pressure due to the sterling work of the Council’s Housing Options team and, although being repurposed, was still being used for temporary accommodation purposes.

Cllr Helen Harrison welcomed the report, noting that the purchase of the properties would reduce the stress on the Council’s homeless service. Details of Government funding to offer wraparound services for refugees would be submitted to the next meeting of the Executive.

Cllr Graham Lawman spoke to welcome the report and stated that it would be positive to utilise new build homes through developers to allow for suitable support networks to be localised.