Homelessness and rough sleeping strategy

Foreword

Welcome to our fifth homelessness strategy, which sets out how we, along with our partners intend to meet its priorities and future actions for preventing and tackling homelessness over the next five years. It aligns with our corporate plan and all of its corporate objectives.

Our new strategy aims to continue the work of preventing people from becoming homelessness and supporting those who are faced with homelessness issues; we have recognised the increasing issue of rough sleeping and have identified actions to reduce it.

I am very pleased to endorse this strategy, knowing that the delivery of its aims will enable us to deliver good services which will impact positively on many people's lives.

I would like to extend my thanks to all our partners who have contributed to this strategy.

Cllr Waring

Portfolio Holder Community Safety and Wellbeing

Introduction

We published our last homelessness strategy in 2016 and this strategy will build upon the achievements we made in our last one. Under the Homelessness Act 2002, we have a statutory duty to review and refresh our homelessness strategy every five years. This strategy sets out our priorities for the development of our homelessness strategy for the period of 2020 to 2025.

This strategy is informed by an updated homelessness review which sets out the picture of homelessness in the borough. Consultation on the development of the strategy ran through 2019 and involved partner agencies, in particular our homelessness forum.

Our overall vision for our strategy is:

"to ensure that homeless levels in the borough remain as low as possible through prevention and to provide in partnership effective and quality services to those affected by homelessness."

The strategy has four priorities and for each priority our main considerations are set out along with key actions for ourselves and partners. The actions are set out in more detail in a separate action plan.

This strategy covers the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Some of our services are delivered across local authority boundaries and even on a sub-regional basis. This is due to the various partnership projects we are involved in where we recognise the benefits and efficiencies of working together and the funding opportunities that have been made available to us.