Cheshire East Council has unveiled its vision of providing affordable housing to enable some of its most vulnerable residents to lead to a better quality of life.
The three-year homelessness strategy is out for consultation from today (Monday, October 16th) and the council is urging people to engage with the strategy via a survey on the authority's website.
The strategy has four key priorities:
· To help people who are homeless to secure appropriate, affordable accommodation;
· To enable more people to remain in their home and prevent them from becoming homeless;
· To provide interventions so that nobody has to sleep rough; and
· To ensure that appropriate support is in place to help people to maintain and sustain their accommodation.
The council has improved on its number of successful interventions to prevent homelessness year-on-year since 2014. This figure, which was 577 in 2014, had risen to 878 by 2016. For the first quarter of 2017, that figure was 268, suggesting that there will be a higher level of interventions for the current year.
Councillor Ainsley Arnold, Cheshire East Council cabinet member for housing and planning, said: "Homelessness is a frequently misunderstood concept. It is a lot more than simply people who are sleeping rough.
"Many people are vulnerable to losing their home and it is vital that this council continues to do everything within its power to support those at risk of doing so.
"We have been extremely successful in finding accommodation for homeless people through the schemes that we commission and will continue to find appropriate solutions for our residents who find themselves in this situation."
Cheshire East Council's homelessness team is currently working towards the National Practitioner Support Service gold standard.
