Issue - meetings

To receive a report from the Executive Director Place on Homelessness in Enfield.  Key Decision Number:  4682

Council is asked to approve the Housing Allocations Policy. 

This report was considered at Cabinet on 15 July 2020 and recommended onto Council for final approval. 

Councillor Needs proposed and Councillor Yusuf seconded the report of the Executive Director Place on homelessness in Enfield. 

NOTED

1.            That this report had been considered and recommended on to Council for approval at the Cabinet meeting held on 15 July 2020.

2.            Councillor Needs in proposing this report highlighted the following:

·         The country was in the middle of a national housing crisis, following a serious lack of investment in housing.  Many people were moving out of Inner London into Outer London and many had been affected by the Government’s housing benefit cap. 

·         The Council planned to step in to prevent people becoming homeless at the earliest stage and to help equip people with the skills to manage their tenancies better to avoid becoming homeless.

·         The Council had developed a bold housing strategy to help reshape the housing market and improve the quality of rented housing.  As part of this they would also be running a professional ethical lettings agency for private sector properties.

·         The final component of the Council’s recent work in this area was this Housing Allocations Policy which will, for the first time, reward residents who make a success of living in the private rented sector.  

·         The new scheme will increase transparency in the allocation of social rented homes, based on enduring housing needs: it increases priority for those living in overcrowded situations, increases access to a range of properties, introduces local lettings schemes for new build properties to enable local residents to directly benefit from regeneration activities, increases priority for homeless households who move into the private sector rather than remaining in temporary accommodation.

·         It is anticipated that the scheme will go live in December 2020. 

3.            In order to ensure that residents are treated fairly during the implementation of the policy the following paragraph (included in the council update sheet) has been added to the report:             

“We recognise that the gap between the approval of the scheme and its implementation will potentially have an adverse impact on some households where we are discharging our statutory homeless duties into the private rented sector.  For households in this position we will award points at the time of implementation of the scheme based on the points that they would have been entitled to, had the scheme been implemented immediately”.

4.            The comments of the Majority Opposition Group including:

·         While welcoming the report and supporting the need for early intervention, there was regret that the majority opposition group could not support the new allocation scheme because of several issues which are set out below.  They indicated that they would have to abstain on the report, if those concerns could not be resolved. 

·         They felt that the scheme discriminated against those in employment both full and part time. 

·         Concern about the change to the guidelines on local connection (the Government guidelines previously stated that local connections should be at least 5 years, the new policy was allowing 3 years).  The three-year rule would make it easier for those with less  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7