Homelessness

Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy

The West Northants Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2024-2027 was approved by Cabinet in March 2024. 

Overview

This strategy is built around four themes and their associated objectives:

• Theme 1: Improve collaboration between partnerships to make homelessness everyone’s business
• Theme 2: Early joined-up intervention and prevention of homelessness
• Theme 3: Increase provision and access to suitable and sustainable settled housing solutions
• Theme 4: Ensure that when rough sleeping occurs, it is rare, brief and non-recurring

The strategy development was informed by:

• our homelessness and rough sleeping review 2023
• an independently commissioned service health check
• significant joint work with key partner agencies through workshops, networks and forums
• independent research, commissioned jointly with Public Health to better understand the health needs of people who sleep rough. This is published as a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) under The Health and Wellbeing’s Board’s Ambition 8: A fresh start when things go wrong.

The values underpinning the strategy were informed by work conducted by Homeless Link, who worked with staff from local
accommodation providers, support services and people with lived experience of homelessness to find out what values mattered to them and how they are treated.

This is a three-year strategy (2024-2027), with a dynamic 12-month Delivery Plan, to be monitored and reviewed annually, ensuring its actions are flexible and resilient. 

Partnership working

Underpinning the strategy is the importance of partnership working and without this we will not be able to tackle the big challenges that lie ahead. We will create the leadership and conditions needed for this to happen.

Homelessness review

The Council is required to carry out a periodic review of homelessness in the area. 

The purpose of the review is to: 

• determine the extent to which the population in the district is homeless or at risk of becoming homeless
• assess the likely extent in the future
• identify what is currently being done and by whom
• identify what resources are available to prevent and tackle homelessness

Local housing authorities should use this understanding of homelessness in their area to inform their Homelessness Strategy and they are obliged by legislation to involve partners in this process.
 

You can view the review, strategy and delivery plan in full in the below documents:

Last updated 08 July 2024