Housing and Homelessness Portfolio

Creating balanced communities and housing options that are affordable and sustainable' 

Portfolio holder, Councillor Jill Cleary (Deputy Leader) 

Portfolio holder introduction

Providing more homes for local people continues to be a key issue and much of the focus is on delivering the housing strategy to ensure we meet the wider housing needs of the district, creating balanced communities and housing options that are affordable and sustainable.

The council is committed to providing more council houses, eradicating the use of bed and breakfast accommodation, and reducing homelessness.

Building effective relationships with private rented sector landlords and agents through a landlord's forum will help improve standards, maintain confidence in the sector and improve access to our clients.

This position is reflected in the priorities.

Priorities 

Our priorities are:

• meeting local housing needs and promoting sustainable growth
• increasing the supply of high-quality affordable homes
• improving the housing circumstances of those most in need
• enabling the best use of housing to meet the needs of people, including support for a high quality, strong private rented sector

Key activities 

Our key activities are:

• deliver the key priorities identified within the Housing Strategy 2018
• provide 600 new council homes by 2026 across social rent, affordable rent, and shared ownership tenures, including within New Forest villages
• reduce homelessness through the provision of multi-agency support to sustain homes and tenancies and through the increase in access to private sector rented homes
• protect the health and safety of tenants in private rented properties
• minimise the use of emergency bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless households
• design, deliver and enhance a multi-agency approach and housing pathway to achieve long-term accommodation solutions to end rough sleeping in the district
• implement a new strategy to tackle empty properties and bring them back in to use
• ensure that our existing housing stock is maintained to a high and safe standard
• promote and implement greener housing initiatives when maintaining council stock and in the development of new council dwellings

Action plan and achievement measures

This plan of specific actions that will directly contribute towards the delivery of the priorities within each portfolio.

These actions will be refreshed annually to keep them up to date.

Achievement indicators for each portfolio have been identified to help monitor progress against the delivery of the priorities and provide tangible measures of success.

Progress updates on specific actions and achievement indicators will be reported to the relevant Overview and Scrutiny Panel during the year.

Specific actions 

Specific actions are:

• provide 600 new council homes by 2026 
• prevent the homelessness of at least 60% of clients deemed to be threatened with homelessness
• monitor and review the delivery of the Allocation Policy 2019
• continue to work through actions from the Private Sector Housing Strategy including publishing the Empty Homes Strategy by 2021/22
• deliver at least 40 units of council owned emergency accommodation by 2021/22
• design, deliver and enhance a multi-agency approach and Housing pathway through twice-yearly multi-agency forums and meetings with operational partners
• improve standards by setting up a landlord's forum to meet twice-yearly by 2021/22
• implement a new strategy to tackle empty properties by end of 2021/22

Achievement indicators

Achievement indicators are:

• number of additional council homes delivered (Number)
• increase in prevention duty cases successfully prevented (%)
• maintain the number of private sector lease properties (Number)
• reduction in private sector property inspections resulting in Category 1 hazards (%)
• increase in rough sleepers entering accommodation pathway (%)
• reduction in the number of households in external emergency B and B accommodation at year end (Number)