Calderdale Council

Working with neighbouring authorities to respond to emergency housing need

Calderdale was named by the government as one of twelve national Housing Options Trailblazers in 2008. Recognising the borough’s high-quality, cost-effective work, the award will also encourage the development of more personalized housing advice and requires Calderdale to provide more services and advice in areas such training and employment. Additional funding of up to £320,000 is provided to augment existing services. The award also honours the council’s prevention strategy, emphasis on partnership working, and success in helping very vulnerable clients access and sustain settled accommodation. 
 
Calderdale has a very small number of emergency access bed spaces – just two in total – and so relies heavily on out-of-area referrals. The majority of clients needing immediate emergency accommodation go to hostels in Rochdale, Bradford and Huddersfield. In light of this, referrals and prevention are both crucial to dealing with the problem of non-statutory homelessness. While there are two schemes to assist non priority homeless clients into privately rented accommodation, the assessment process and time taken to find a suitable property mean these schemes seldom secure accommodation on an emergency basis. The client may then need to use out-of-area accommodation or stay with friends in the short-term. Pennine Housing 2000 also has a Fast Track scheme for some of their properties, but even if a client views and is offered a property on the day they become homeless, it is inevitable that there will be some delay before their tenancy starts to arrange confirm power supply, take delivery of furniture and the like. 
 
Calderdale has semi-formalised its referral process with neighbouring areas, and is able to refer clients to these areas on an emergency basis, space permitting. While Leeds has quite strict requirements regarding clients’ local connection status, other regional towns regularly receive clients from Calderdale. While the level of demand within Calderdale is quite low – around one or two clients per week, or 50 -75 annually – an officer in Calderdale’s Housing Options Team telephones the most used hostels on a daily basis to find out what units may be available. However not all hostels are prepared to give this information, making complete information difficult to obtain.
 
Plans for a sub-regional ‘Referrals Hub’ are in the early stages, and would provide a useful forum for co-ordination and feedback. This would further formalise and strengthen the regionality of Calderdale’s EA provision, with Bradford and Kirklees as partners in the scheme. The group is currently identifying suitable software providers. Another idea is an online resource, updated daily for relevant authorities to see local and regional bed spaces, and make bookings accordingly. While funding and administrative issues would have to be dealt with, this could be another way to use regional EA capacity effectively.    
 
While Calderdale assesses needs case-by-case, the problem of accommodating clients with prior convictions for offences such as arson or sexual assault was raised as a definite problem. Even historical convictions can bar an individual from gaining a hostel space. Calderdale has developed a project to help offenders secure settled accommodation which can cater for prison leavers – however lack of prior notification of a discharge makes it extremely difficult for suitable accommodation to be obtained and furnished on an emergency basis when a former prisoner approaches the Housing Options team on the day they are released. This results in some prison-leavers with little option but to access out-of-area hostels, sofa surf with friends or as a last resort to sleep rough until a suitable tenancy can be established.
 
The lack of available direct access accommodation for non priority homeless people has been identified as an area for further action in Calderdale’s homelessness prevention strategy. A snapshot survey involving all support agencies is being planned to identify the level of sofa surfing and hidden homelessness amongst the non priority groups. This survey and subsequent report is being undertaken by the Calderdale Homelessness Forum. 
Calderdale has identified a number of priorities to address the lack of emergency accommodation in the borough in the future. These include: 
  • Further work into the numbers of hidden homeless in the borough which could be under-estimating demand for EA
  • Work to set up a joint referral hub
  • The development of a voluntary sector project to provide accommodation for men leaving prison who have been accessing drug treatment services during their sentence and who wish to remain ‘clean’ on discharge.
  • The development of alcohol treatment and support services including housing support.

Key steps to establishing a response to emergency accommodation in Calderdale 

  • Calderdale Council intended to establish a foyer service, and on learning of another regional Crashpad scheme decided to integrate this element into their existing plans.
  • No project per se exists in Calderdale so staff must work with what is available.
  • The system of referrals has evolved over time, and has now become established through use.
  • The task of calling region-wide hostels to establish availability was originally performed an ad hoc basis. It has now become regularised and hostels are systematically telephoned on a daily basis, and is now an important part of the referrals system.  
  • Because the respective towns are responsible for funding their facilities, time spent on funding administration is effectively zero. 
  • Strong awareness of regional capacity and availability is vital to the referrals system working. 
  • A need still exists for more projects to accommodate non-priority client groups requesting EA, including people misusing drugs and alcohol, young people and people with a history of offending.     

Lessons learnt

  • Areas with low capacity can benefit from partnerships with neighboring areas.
  • If possible, standardised referral forms can save a lot of administrative overlap.
  • Prevention is a key tool; develop specific projects to help the difficult to accommodate to access and sustain settled accommodation
  • Prevention can also be facilitated by close relationships between housing department, local authorities, prison service and hospitals. The release of ex-offenders and people from outpatients wards represent a significant source of EA demand, and communications between workers in these areas could be a powerful tool for reducing this need.  
  • Regional sharing can be hampered by towns or areas with strict local connection policies.   

Key message  

Sharing resources can be a cost-effective and responsive way to side-step lack of capacity. Arrangements need not be formalized or rigid, but should be consensual and not simply a means of ‘dumping’ one area’s rough sleepers on a neighbor. Capacity in Rochdale, Bradford and Huddersfield is used to accommodate rough sleepers from Calderdale, filling ‘void’ beds in the former while saving the latter from having to establish a dedicated hostel. In an area of such low demand this would be an expensive second-best, and would exacerbate regional oversupply.