Council sets out its vision to tackle homelessness in West Northamptonshire

14 March 2024

A new West Northamptonshire Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy was adopted by Cabinet on 12 March. The document lays out the Council’s vision to provide an improved approach to homelessness prevention, relief, and joint working across the local area, as well as help in meeting the emergency and longer-term housing needs of the most vulnerable residents.

The strategy, which covers 2024 to 2027, also focuses on reducing demand for temporary accommodation by ensuring more effective homelessness prevention and greater opportunities and support to help those who become homeless to move on to settled housing solutions.

The strategy, which was co-produced with key partners and stakeholders, has four key themes, these being:

• Improve collaborative partnerships to make homelessness everyone’s business
• Early joined-up intervention and prevention of homelessness
• Increase provision and access to suitable and sustainable settled housing solutions
• Ensure that when rough sleeping occurs, it is rare, brief and non-recurring

A series of actions and objectives are set out in the strategy in order to deliver against the four themes, including the establishment of a collaborative multi-agency approach to dealing with homelessness and securing more investment and grant funding opportunities to maximise the support available.

The strategy also sets out plans to identify and provide appropriate targeted support for people with more complex needs to help sustain tenancies.

“Homelessness is an ever-changing landscape which brings new challenges all the time, however it is an issue which as a council we are committed to tackling.

“Our Housing Teams, alongside partners, already deliver exceptional work to support our most vulnerable residents across West Northamptonshire, however with growing demand and increased pressures on services we need to identify new ways of working to best utilise our resources and meet people’s needs.

“This strategy will be followed by a 12-month Delivery Plan setting out how we will continue to work with partners and stakeholders to deliver these priorities and objectives, with a primary focus on reducing demand for temporary accommodation and ensuring more effective homelessness prevention and support for those most in need.”  Cllr Adam Brown, Deputy Leader of West Northamptonshire Council and Cabinet Member for Housing, Culture and Leisure