By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
Policy choices over the last decade have led to record levels of homelessness in Nottingham, a leading charity has said.
The numbers of people sleeping rough on the city’s streets in June this year were the highest in a decade.
A monthly headcount found 51 people sleeping rough, including 42 men and nine women.
However, Nottingham City Council says it is the less visible side of homelessness that is the most significant issue – and one that costs it the most money.
Over the last 12 months the use of emergency accommodation for homeless families and households more than doubled.
As of June, the council had been accommodating 235 households in emergency housing, such as hotels and bed and breakfasts, compared to 115 a year ago.
The total number of people in any form of temporary accommodation in March this year was 776, up from 599 people.
During a Nottingham City Council Housing Scrutiny Committee meeting on Monday, July 15, the issue was described as an “acute crisis”.
“Rough sleeping is the very visual side of homelessness, people sleeping on the streets, and we have people dealing with that,” Mark Lowe, the council’s head of housing, said.
“For us the other aspect, and the aspect that costs most of our budget, relates to families and vulnerable people who are being evicted or are, for other reasons, losing their home.”
Features of the national and Nottingham housing market have worsened the crisis, Mr Lowe said.
These features include high rents in the private sector that are well above Local Housing Allowance (LHA) levels.
“It’s very hard for people on benefits to get enough money to pay for a private rented place to live,” Mr Lowe added.
The number of new homes built has also not been able to match the significant numbers lost through the Right-to-Buy scheme.
Between 2019 and 2023, 988 homes were purchased through Right-to-Buy.
Over the same period, the council only managed to build or buy 374 affordable homes, and its registered providers only completed a further 126 homes.
The council says it has been restructuring its Housing Solutions department, and has created 14 full time or equivalent jobs to take pressure off current caseworkers.
While case loads have decreased from 165 per officer to around 72, there are still more than 750 decided cases awaiting rehousing. The housing waiting list itself continues to increase, reaching 10,500 households.
Cllr Jay Hayes, executive member for housing, says the costs of housing people in temporary accommodation is, positively, beginning to come down through better working with providers.
“So far this year we’ve been able to help 150 people into some form of accommodation,” he said. “We are making headway there but there are still challenges.”
Other significant challenges include asylum seekers being made homeless due to policy changes from the Home Office, and people leaving prison without ample time to find accommodation.
Andrew Redfern, the chief executive of homelessness support charity Framework, said the record numbers can be attributed to policy decisions taken over the last decade, including reduced social housing, restrictions on Local Housing Allowance, and cuts to specialist mental health, alcohol and drug treatment services.
“Homelessness is a policy choice, and the choices made over recent years have made it much worse,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
“It follows that different ones are needed now.”
Mr Redfern also said the abandonment of the Supporting People programme in England is a significant factor.
The programme launched in 2003 as a £1.8 billion ring-fenced grant to local authorities, intended to fund services to help vulnerable people live independently.
In 2009 restrictions were removed, allowing local authorities to spend the money as they deemed appropriate.
Concerns were voiced that local authorities had been using their Supporting People grant to fund other expenditure and, across 152 local authorities, funding had been withdrawn entirely from 305 services, and reduced for a further 685 services, according to a Government research paper.
“Framework has sought to highlight all of these causes in the course of the recent General Election campaign,” Mr Redfern added.
“We will continue to do so now that a new Government has been elected. In particular, we advocate a new solution for supported housing that would involve resourcing it properly instead of trying to regulate it out of existence.
“More and better supported housing would alleviate the crisis in prisons, reduce the pressure on hospital wards, cut the level of homelessness and mitigate the demands on local authority finances.
“A priority for the new government is to re-establish a secure, ring-fenced programme to resource the provision of support to vulnerable people living in the community.”
Under the former Conservative Government, Nottingham was awarded £20m to cover the period between 2021 and 2025, the highest amount of financial support outside London.
The new Labour Government says it is looking to abolish no fault evictions to bring down the number of people losing their homes.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (formerly the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) said: “Rough sleepers are an all-too-common sight in our towns and cities, including Nottingham.
“As set out in the manifesto, we will take the action needed to tackle this issue and will develop a cross-government strategy so we can work with Mayors and councils to end homelessness for good.”
