Homelessness Prevention Programme
The Prime Minister and Communities Secretary Sajid Javid have announced a £40m Homelessness Prevention Programme.
Exeter City Council and Teignbridge District Councll have been invited to bid for funds for the Trailblazers Fund [see below] and will be looking at all options to further develop our integrated approach across the local area, in line with the joint Homelessness Strategy.
They plan to contact key partners and commissioners to develop robust proposals, as they recognise the benefits of a strong multi-agency partnership and the importance of local services to help prevent homelessness and to achieve better long term outcomes for those who find themselves homeless.
Homelessness Prevention Programme
The new £40 million Homelessness Prevention Programme announced on Monday 17 October 2016 is designed to build on the Government’s strategy for preventing homelessness, which includes the following targets:
o Increasing central funding to tackle homelessness over the next four years to £139 million;
o Protecting homelessness prevention funding for local authorities at £315 million by 2019 to 2020; and
o Providing £100 million for at least 2,000 low cost accommodation places, for rough sleepers leaving hostel accommodation and domestic abuse victims and their families moving on from refuges.
The programme consists of three funding streams:
- Trailblazers Funding
This will provide £20 million of grant funding across 2016 to 2017, 2017 to 2018 and 2018 to 2019. Local authorities will be invited to bid either singularly, or in collaboration. This will give local authorities the resources to ramp up prevention and take new approaches to reduce homelessness, including:
o Collaborating with other services to identify at-risk households, and target interventions well before they are threatened with eviction;
o Helping people earlier than the statutory 28 days when they are threatened with the loss of their home;
o Offering that help to a wider group of people than just those owed the main homelessness duty;
o Testing new, innovative approaches to preventing homelessness to help build an evidence base on what works and test the effects of these approaches in different areas.
- Rough Sleeping Grant Funding
This will provide up to £10 million to local authorities over three years: 2016 to 2017, 2017 to 2018 and 2018 to 2019. This funding will help those new to the streets, or at imminent risk of sleeping rough, by:
o Reducing the flow of new rough sleepers to the street, through more targeted prevention activity aimed at those at imminent risk of sleeping rough – this will build on the No First Night Out pilot being delivered in the tri-borough of Hackney, Tower Hamlets and City of London;
o Helping new rough sleepers off the street and into independence, through more rapid crisis interventions and support to access and sustain move-on accommodation – this will build on the rollout of the No Second Night Out approach through the Homelessness Transition Fund, which ran from 2011 to 2014.
- Rough Sleeping Social Impact Bond Funding
This will provide up to £10 million of outcomes funding for locally commissioned Social Impact Bonds. Local authorities will be able to bid for an allocation of the funding to use to commission a Social Impact Bond within a geographic area. This funding will then be paid out on outcomes achieved by named cohorts of individuals, including outcomes around:
o Accommodation;
o Employment and education;
o Mental health; and
o Substance misuse.
Support will be provided for an anticipated 1,500 to 2,000 individuals through 5 to 10 locally commissioned Social Impact Bonds. These individuals will be long-term rough sleepers, or those entrenched within hostels and temporary accommodation.
The prospectus and application forms for all three funding streams can be found at Homelessness Prevention Programme
Completed bids should be submitted by email by Monday 28 November 2016.
There are two different email addresses:
o Applications for Trailblazing funding should go to: h&senquiries@communities.gsi.gov.uk; while
o Applications for the rough sleeping grant and social impact bond funding should be sent to: roughsleeping@communities.gsi.gov.uk.
Contact details for the Fund are:
Homelessness Prevention
Rough Sleeping Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)
Eland House
Bressenden Place
London SW1E 5DU
Tel: 020 7944 4400
Email: roughsleeping@communities.gsi.gov.uk
FURTHER READING:
A Homelessness Strategy for Exeter and Teignbridge
Homelessness Strategy: Business Impact Assessment
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