Mansfield District Council's new £100k temporary accommodation officer to improve homeless provision across all of Notts
A report says that temporary accommodation use across Nottinghamshire is rising.
Mansfield District Council hopes to ‘transform’ temporary homeless accommodation (TA) across the whole of Nottinghamshire after being given a £128,000 grant by a charity.
Not-for-profit organisation Justlife, based in Brighton, has provided the money, most of which will go towards hiring a £50,000-per-year ‘temporary accommodation officer’.
The officer will head up a scheme researching, testing and physically improving temporary accommodation, to improve the experience of people not just in Mansfield, but across the whole of Nottinghamshire, who find themselves homeless and need to be put up by councils while they find somewhere permanent to live.
The report touches on how the scheme will support local government reorganisation, saying: “This approach supports public sector reform and will feed directly into local government reorganisation plans.
“The pilot will inform future system architecture, ensuring temporary accommodation responses are embedded in the fabric of the new governance structures.”
The funding money was accepted at a council meeting on Wednesday, October 14, where a report was presented by the manager of the council’s housing and safeguarding team.
The report sets out how Mansfield, as a ‘testing hub’, will host the project, but will work with all seven districts in Nottinghamshire to work out how to improve the TA offering.
People who find themselves homeless for any number of reasons, such as rent arrears, domestic abuse or relationship breakdown, have a statutory right to be housed by their local council while they find somewhere new to live.
Mansfield District Council has a selection of its own properties that it uses for temporary accommodation, such as hostels, bedsits, flats or houses.
Other councils may not have their own stock and may rely solely on external providers, such as hotel companies like Travelodge, from which they can rent rooms for TA.
The funding report says that Mansfield will ‘map out and replicate’ the TA ‘journey’ for people in different parts of the county, to see where it could be improved, partly by ‘shadowing’.
The council will work with those in temporary accommodation, seeking their views as to what could be better, and will set up a steering group.
The project will also see pre-planned, tangible changes to TA across the county as part of a new “model”.
Planned elements of this include a notification system for GPs, schools and health visitors when a family enters temporary accommodation.
There are also plans for funding to improve physical aspects of temporary accommodations, such as baths, stair gates and play spaces for children.
An advice system will be offered to those who find themselves homeless on how to maximise their benefits, and deal with any debts they may have, to “support quicker move-on” and “reduce temporary accommodation-linked debt traps”.
And “missed prevention opportunities” will be documented, to work out how better to stop people from finding themselves homeless in the first place.
Temporary accommodation use across Nottinghamshire is rising, with families particularly affected, the report says.
It reflects a rise in the use of temporary accommodation nationally.
Figures released today, October 16, show that 132,410 households in the UK – 7.6% of households in the country – are currently living in temporary accommodation.
Since March 2023, a new record high figure has been reported for temporary accommodation usage every single quarter up to the present day.
Jill Finnesey, assistant director of Housing at Mansfield District Council, said: “This funding is all about tackling how long people stay in TA, making sure TA is safe as well as short where it can be, because it’s quite a disruption to families and children when they come into TA. We’re trying to smooth that transition as much as possible and pulling services that are in the community to support them during this change.
“In Mansfield, we have a very good TA offer but in other parts of the county that might not always be the case. Part of this project will be to try and make it a really good offer for everybody, no matter where you are.”