Statutory interventions
12.1. Breakdown of Homelessness Duties
Homelessness Duties, the following are the duties the council owes an eligible household, (Gov.uk)
- Prevention duty: where a local authority must take reasonable steps to help someone threatened with homelessness within 56 days to secure accommodation. To successfully discharge the duty, the applicant must have suitable accommodation available to them for 6 months or more.
- Relief duty: where a local authority must take reasonable steps to assist someone who is already homeless. The local authority has a duty at this point to provide interim accommodation to those who are in priority need. The duty ends successfully where the accommodation has suitable accommodation available to them for 6 months or more.
- Main duty: Is owed to applicants following the Relief Duty where it has been assessed that the applicant is not homeless intentionally and that they have a local connection to the area. To successfully discharge the main housing duty, the local authority must make one suitable offer of accommodation to the applicant, which will be available for at least 12 months.
In 2022/2023, 835 households were owed the prevention duty, with, 49.46% of these successfully prevented from becoming homeless. A total of 2,114 relief duties were conducted, with 31.08% being successful. Furthermore, 944 households were assessed as being owed a main duty after the relief duty had ended. 748 main duties were discharged in 2022/2023.
Summary of Duties owed 2022/2023
12.2. Outcome of Duties owed in 2022/2023.
Examining the successful prevention cases in 2022/2023, i 54% moved into alternative accommodation, while 46% remained in their existing accommodation. Also, 48.91% of the households who were successfully prevented from being homeless accessed the private rented sector, while 36.32% secured social rented housing, and 11.86% stayed with family or friends. The composition of households whose homelessness was prevented showed a predominance of single/couple households at 55.93%, compared to family households at 44.07%. A detailed analysis of the unsuccessful cases revealed that 83.18% became homeless, 11.14% resulted from contact loss, 2.84% were due to the elapse of 56 days, and 2.13% occurred because the household withdrew its application.
An analysis of the successful relief duties indicated that 50.99% secured socially rented housing, 30.14% secured privately rented accommodation, and 11.57% stayed with families or friends, the remaining successful relief duties ended with the applicants securing other types of accommodation. The unsuccessful relief duties revealed that the majority, constituting 85.59%, were unsuccessful within the 56-day timescale. Additionally, 8.6% resulted from contact loss, 4.19% involved withdrawn applications, 0.3% were intentionally homeless with no further duty being owed to either of these groups and 0.5% were ended due to a local connection referral to an alternative local authority.
Of the households where the main housing duty was discharged, 69.8% accepted an offer of social housing, 4.5% refused an offer of social housing, 5.7% accepted an offer of a Private Rented Sector (PRS) property, 0.4% refused an offer of PRS, and 19.5% did not go on to receive a final offer of accommodation as the main housing duty was discharged due to them refusing a suitable offer of temporary accommodation, ceased to occupy the temporary accommodation that had been made available to them, ceasing to be eligible for assistance or withdrawing their application for assistance.
Summary of the Successful Outcome of Duties Owed by the Council.
Prevention Duty:
Relief Duty:
Main Duty:
12.3. Temporary accommodation provision
In 2022/2023, over 2495 households were accommodated in temporary accommodation, which was a 24% growth rate from the last financial year. With a significant portion of the accommodation being for family households.
Trend of Households Accommodated in Temporary Accommodation
In addition to the general temporary accommodation, there is a specialist Supported Temporary accommodation (STA) service run by the council for single people with high and/or complex support needs.
The STA opened in November 2020 and became fully operational the following March with the opening of 96-98 Holyhead Road. STA provides emergency, temporary accommodation for 92 single homeless people, many of whom have complex needs and/or entrenched behaviours who have been determined as being owed a homeless duty in-line with Coventry City Council's statutory obligations under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996. The service sits alongside the Accommodation Team and within the wider Housing & Homelessness service. One benefit of STA is the reduced reliance on private temporary accommodation and reduced financial burden on the council by using our own, council-owned accommodation and recovering all costs via Housing Benefit, at the same time as providing increased support and helping residents to find long-term settled accommodation.
Service make-up
STA consists of 13 HMO properties and one larger 26 bed accommodation building. The HMOs are spread across the city and are made up of 3–6-bedroom properties. The HMOs are male only, whilst the female STA provision is based at 96-98 Holyhead Road where staff control access in and out of the building. This decision was made to ensure the safety of women accessing the service and who may be fleeing or trying to move away from an abusive relationship. The accommodation at 96-98 Holyhead Road typically provides accommodation for the most complex people accessing the service, helping them to live more independently before hopefully moving them to one of the HMO’s ahead of a move into long-term settled accommodation.
Communal space at one of the HMO properties
The STA team
The team is made up of two service managers and eight Supported Accommodation Housing Officers (SAHOs) and is supported by our own in-house repairs and maintenance team. Whilst the SAHOs provide the housing management for all the properties, the resident support comes from our commissioned support provider, P3. The P3 team provides ‘housing related’ support for all residents in living in STA. All three teams are based out of the STA office at 100 Holyhead Road which is located adjacent to 96-98 Holyhead Road and can therefore respond quickly to the support needs of the most vulnerable residents.
2022/23
- During the 2022 calendar year moved-on 200 people
- Of those moving out of STA in 2022/23, 139 moved-on in a planned way
- This included 128 moving to either PRS, RSL or further long-term Supported Accommodation
- 34 of those moving on from STA were women
- The average length of stay of those leaving STA in 2022/23 was just 122 days
- Throughout the whole of the 2022/23, only 10 people were evicted
Note
This review focuses on the last full financial year 2022/23, however, we noted that during 2023/24, 5710 households had already approached the services as of December (quarter 3), in which the council has carried out 819 prevention duties, of which 58% has been unsuccessful and 42% were successful. 2181 relief duties have been carried out with 24% being successful and 76% unsuccessful. Finally, 1424 households have been deemed eligible for main duty which 1071 were owed a duty and 631 main duties have been concluded so far, of which 71% accepted either a Part 6 social housing offer or a Private rented housing offer. Finally, the council accommodated 2492 in temporary accommodation during 2023/24.
Summary of 23/24 Temporary Accommodation households
