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Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy

The Homelessness Act 2002, requires every Local Authority to carry out a homelessness review in its Borough every 5 years, to develop and publish a Homelessness Strategy based on this review and to consult with other statutory and voluntary organisations.

 

2024-2029

Sefton commissioned consultants Imogen Blood & Associates to carry out they Homelessness Review in early 2023.

Since then, 32 organisations, including partners, homeless providers, and Sefton CVS, have been interviewed. 

Two focus group discussions at Homelessness Forum meetings have been carried out, wider services survey has been done with 27 responses received and 40 people with lived experience have been interviewed in visits to a dozen services.

A snapshot survey of supported housing residents was done in July with 161 responses received, plus analysis of quantitative data, both published and directly supplied. In addition, the consultant team attended Sefton’s Consultation & Engagement Panel in July. 

 IBA Review of Homelessness Services for Sefton Council: Evidence base (draft)

 

Following completion of the research phase of the project a draft Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy has been produced, which is now subject to a 12-week consultation in order that a shared strategy is produced by all partners who influence homelessness. An easy-read version has also been produced.

The consultation starts on Monday 30th October 2023 and lasts until Sunday 21st January 2024.

You can email Graham Parry with any comments you have on the draft Strategy at graham.parry@sefton.gov.uk. These comments will be incorporated into the Strategy, where appropriate.

The suggested strategic priorities for homelessness in Sefton by the consultants are:

  1. Continue to improve accommodation and coordinating support for people with high health and/or care needs.
  2. Implement housing-led oversight within the supported housing pathway and improve data reporting so this can be used to monitor whole system performance.
  3. Continue to improve the quality of emergency bed and temporary accommodation provision and associated support.
  4. Develop alternative housing models and pathways for those who are in or close to work, including younger people.
  5. Improve access to affordable housing, with housing strategy and development decisions to be informed by intelligence and priorities from the review.
  6. Further improvements to the coordination of homelessness prevention activities across sectors, to include a focus on ‘hidden’ homelessness, tenancy sustainment and pre-eviction protocols.
  7. Sustain, further promote and seek to expand floating support, tenancy sustainment and dispersed schemes, especially where there is potential to convert to general needs.
  8. Continue to implement, evaluate and develop new approaches to delivering Housing Options services across the whole system.

 

Following the 12-week consultation, a report will be taken to Cabinet in early 2024 to approve the new strategy and action plan.

The following Equality Impact Assessment has been produced to inform the draft Strategy.

 

2018-2023

To undertake this review and develop a subsequent strategy the Council appointed Neil Morland Housing Consultants LTD. The scope of this commission included a comprehensive review of current and projected levels of homelessness in the Borough and a review of current homelessness services.

The Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy is comprised of three documents:

  • The formal Homelessness Review identified the evidence of needs, and engagement with stakeholders, service providers and service users, in order to collect evidence and opinion of what works well now, what doesn’t work well, and what gaps in services there may be.
  • Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Plan. This plan will guide future delivery of the strategy and allow progress to be monitored. This document has been developed largely in response to the many recommendations made in the Homelessness Strategy.

An Equality Impact Assessment was carried out on the strategy. This can be viewed here.

 

Annual Report on Levels of Homelessness in Sefton 2018/19

Sefton’s Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategy 2018-23 contains an action to, ‘Publish an annual report explaining the current levels of homelessness, to aid elected councillor and chief officer decision making, and carry out an in-depth analysis of data collected by the Homelessness Case Level Information Classification monitoring system (H-CLIC).’

Producing an annual report gives Sefton a snapshot of all types of homelessness across the borough. Over time this will allow Sefton to benchmark where we are compared to previous years and will also enable us to help plan services for future years. 

Annual Report Levels Of Homelessness Sefton 2018 19 (pdf 1.06MB)
Annual Report Levels Of Homelessness Sefton 2019 20 (pdf 683KB)
Annual Report Levels Of Homelessness Sefton 2020 22 (pdf 1.63MB)
Annual Report Levels Of Homelessness Sefton 2022 23 (pdf 3.11MB)

Last Updated on Monday, March 4, 2024

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