Councils warn over 'inadequate and unsustainable' funding to tackle homelessness
Nina Jacobs
Friday, June 21, 2019
Council leaders have warned that the "piecemeal" nature of government funding is hampering their efforts to tackle youth homelessness.
The concerns have been raised by the Local Government Homelessness Commission (LGHC), which has published its first assessment of how councils are fulfilling their obligation to prevent homelessness since it was set up a year ago to investigate the issue.
The LGHC says that funding provided to councils from central government is "piecemeal, inadequate and does not provide a sustainable or certain source of funding" for strategic planning in local government.
"Instead councils have to bid for small pots of money, tap in to limited and depleted pools of resource in other departments and generally work on a shoestring."
The LGHC said the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 had made a "positive impact" forcing councils to think differently about the homelessness support they provide.
However, it had also introduced new duties "on the back of nearly a decade of funding reductions" that had made it harder to prevent homelessness.
"The new duties are applied at a late stage, and as such they are reactive, rather than preventative.
"If the government is serious about tackling homelessness then we need a long-term plan and long-term funding," the report said.
The report calls for a strategic approach to homelessness prevention which would require both central and local government to work together.
"Central government departments are notoriously bad at working together to tackle issues that cut across policy areas and places," it states.
"In a recent report, Crisis outlined how a strategic approach to homelessness prevention requires all of government to work together. It cannot just be a job for homelessness services.
"The same goes for local government. Poor connections between councils and criminal justice organisations, especially community rehabilitation companies can be devastating.
"Young people are often released on a Friday afternoon, with just £46 in their pocket and no housing lined up," the report said.
Family breakdown is cited as the biggest cause of homelessness with more than half of the young people who presented in 2017/18 being asked to leave home by a parent or guardian.
"But this needs to be examined carefully as it is a complex area. Many families will have experienced low-level or higher-level problems for a long time, which means that early, careful intervention is essential," the report adds.
The Centrepoint figures show more than 100,000 young people approached their council in 2017/18 to say they were at risk of homelessness.
Of these, around 13 per cent were accepted as statutorily homeless but more than half did not receive any documented help from their local authority.
