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Welsh Government pumps extra £2.1m into battling homelessness
The Welsh Government has freed up an extra £2.1m to help tackle homelessness as a report found its policies are having mixed success in keeping people off the streets.
Councils, in partnership with charitable organisations, will be able to bid for the funding to help pay for projects to reduce the number of people without a stable home.
The money is on top of the £7.8m homelessness prevention grant programme for 2017/18 and another £6m handed out to local authorities to support reduction measures.
It comes as an interim evaluation of the Welsh Government’s homelessness legislation introduced in 2015 found that the changes have had “positive effects”, but that “there is inconsistent application of preventative activities across Wales”.
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Carl Sargeant, communities and children secretary for the Welsh Government, said: “The report published today shows that local authorities have made a positive start in implementing the legislation we introduced in 2015 to help everyone who is homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
“There is more we can do, however, particularly for those groups who are still struggling to get the help they need.
“Along with the £14m I announced earlier this year, the funding I have announced today will be available to projects that aim to target these groups and tackle the issues they face.”
The report, carried out by researchers at the University of Salford, assessed how new homelessness duties for councils in the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 are performing.
Similar legislation is due to come into effect in England in early 2018 after the Homelessness Reduction Act gained Royal Assent in April.
More than half of Welsh local authorities said that they had increased their homelessness prevention activity and that their advice services had improved, according to the report.
However, it found the measures have had less impact for particularly vulnerable groups such as people with mental health issues and multiple barriers to housing, and that some councils appeared “to have made less progress in implementing the ethos” of the act.
Councils and charities also raised “significant concerns” that the new measures still depend on transitional funding and called for “longer-term, sustainable funding” to keep homelessness prevention services afloat.
Official statistics released last month showed homelessness in Wales rose 57% in 2016/17, despite more people getting help to stay in stable accommodation.
“We always knew that we were trying to change the legislation at a time when it’s really difficult to make changes like this with more welfare reform in the pipeline,” said Jennie Bibbings, campaigns manager at Shelter Cymru.
“And there are still some real issues about resources. The £2.1m is good but it’s a one-off windfall. The trouble with that is local authorities can’t really use it for staff because it’s only there until the end of March. What they really need is people on the ground and for that you need to have longer-term funding.”
