Issue - meetings

RESOLVED: That the Committee note the report.

5.1      Madeleine Jeffery (Private Sector Housing Agency Manager), introduced the report to the meeting. The key points to note were:

§  Lewisham’s priorities best distributes to those in most need, reducing under occupation and severe overcrowding, moving single vulnerable households on from supported accommodation to independence, supporting the regeneration of designated housing estates, reducing the number of homeless households in unsuitable and costly temporary accommodation. 

§  Lewisham has increased the number of lettings to homeless households to keep pace with the increase in accepted homeless applications and reduced supply. The Allocation Policy must give preference to these groups above others.  There is no requirement to give an equal weighting to all of the reasonable preference categories.  However, from December 2013 to December 2014 Lewisham has seen a significant increase in households in temporary accommodation - 26% - reflecting a five year trend. Since 2010/11 numbers in nightly paid temporary accommodation has increased by 73%.  Therefore Lewisham has increased the percentage of lettings to this group: a target of 80% of all available two bedrooms and 70% of available three bedroom accommodation was introduced on 1^st September 2014.

§  It is anticipated that there will be a reduction in lets and new supply; lets for 14/15 were expected to be 1384, however projections indicate that this figure will be closer to 1162 - a reduction of 18%. Again, this reflects a five year trend; overall lets have reduced by 38.5% since 2010 /11.

5.2       In response to questions from the Committee, the following was noted:

§  Stipulation for members of the Armed Forces is part of the allocations policy, and they usually have approximately two lets per year provided to the Veterans Association.

5.3      RESOLVED: That the Committee note the report.