Hotel and student accommodation to be used to ease pressure on homelessness

Ted Peskett – Local Democracy Reporter

Cardiff Council is set to buy another hotel and student accommodation to make more room for homeless people.

The announcement comes as the demand for housing in the city continues to outstrip supply, with emergency accommodation already filled up.

Speaking at a Cardiff Council community and adult services scrutiny committee meeting recently, one councillor called the situation “extremely worrying”.

At the same meeting, council officers said the early release of prisoners is adding to the strain on the council’s homelessness service.

The council is close to acquiring a student accommodation building of 103 apartments, a hotel providing more than 150 units and a 20- bed house of multiple occupation.

Cabinet members will be asked to approve the plans to go ahead with completing the acquisition at a meeting on Thursday, September 26.

Cardiff Council currently has exclusive use of five hotels.

Pressure

Proposals approved last year for the purchase of land and property to alleviate pressure on the council fell through after the opportunity was withdrawn by the seller.

When this was raised by scrutiny committee member Cllr Bablin Molik, the council’s assistant director of development and regeneration, David Jaques, said the local authority is more advanced in negotiations for the properties this time around and that draft heads of terms are already in place with all three.

There are currently about 8,000 people on the council’s housing waiting list.

Mr Jaques said: “We have been challenged in the last year or two to speed up the delivery of new homes.”

If all of the properties that the council expects to complete and acquire on sites across the city this year are completed, the local authority will deliver more than 450 council homes, according to Mr Jaques.

He added that about two thirds of the homes in this target are new-builds and a third are property purchase homes.

Planning

Mr Jaques added: “It is not just us. We have to maximise the delivery across housing association partners and also with private developers as well.

“Generally across all of the planning commitments we negotiate for, we are meeting planning policy… ultimately the percentage that we require on new build development is being met, but it is taking a long time for those new units to come forward.

“Unfortunately at the moment, that is just how development is. It is a hard industry at the moment.”

The council’s director of adults, housing and communities, Jane Thomas, said the council believes the purchase of the hotel, if given cabinet approval, could be “very quick”.

However, she added that the local authority would have to wait for the students to move out of the student accommodation before completing its purchase.

“That will take a bit longer,” she said.

“But we are hoping that the other two purchases could be quite quick and we have got properties coming back from the Gasworks site… which is going to help alleviate family issues and we have got properties being delivered by the [registered social landlords scheme].

“There are a lot of other things being delivered. These are the ones where we are trying to fill the gap.”

A consultation on homelessness was carried out by the council recently which asked people whether or not they agreed with the proposal to offer people accommodation outside of Cardiff and the proposal to offer accommodation whenever it comes available, rather than allowing people an area of choice.

There were 2,892 respondents to the survey in total. The majority of respondents agreed with both proposals, however there was some disagreement.

Concerned

Cllr Molik said: “I am just concerned a little about those reasons. Have you looked at it and what those reasons were?”

Cardiff Council’s cabinet member for housing, Cllr Lynda Thorne, said: “We are trying to be as fair as possible with people.

“We do have to start thinking outside the box because we have got families who have been in hotel accommodation for far too long before we can even move them into temporary accommodation.

“We are trying to do it as sensitively as possible.”

Ms Thomas added that all cases are assessed individually and that people have a right to review of their offer.