Churches could be used to help the council provide shelter this winter

Ted Peskett – Local democracy reporter

A council plans to use churches to help ease the demand on accommodation for homeless people this winter.

At a Cardiff Council community and adult services scrutiny committee meeting on Monday, November 18, councillors were told that the local authority would have to provide emergency shelter for dozens of homeless people again during the colder months.

Members were also told that the council was continuing to see large numbers of people leaving Home Office accommodation and the number of prison leavers who presented as homeless this year was nearly double the figure for the same period last year.

Last year, Cardiff Council made 100 emergency bed spaces available at a the former Toys R Us in Garngetown.

As part of its winter plan this year, the council has so far made 227 spaces available across three separate sites. Further sites, including churches, could be made available from December.

Severe weather

Cardiff Council operational manager for supported accommodation, Matthew Evans, said: “Everyone can access accommodation during the severe weather period… that is a process that’s done to save life.

“In terms of the churches, they are still working through exactly what their plan is going to be, but the intention is that they will run that seven days a week. They are just working out which church would pick up which day.

“They normally do come online in December time, so we are still working with people with no local connection and no recourse [to public funds] to come into our own provision at the moment, but with a plan to utilise the churches for that cohort.”

Acceleration of decision making on asylum applications is one factor that has put pressure on Cardiff Council’s homelessness service.

The number of rough sleepers in Cardiff currently stands at 44 and about half of these are people who either have no local connection to the city or have no recourse to public funds.

Asylum seekers who are told they have no leave to remain in the UK have no access to certain public services like housing.

‘Stark’

Another pressure on the council’s homelessness service has been the number of prison leavers. So far, 529 prison leavers have presented to the council as homeless this year compared to 266 for the same period last year.

Mr Evans called the figures “stark”.

In October, 2023, an early release scheme called the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme was brought in to address overcrowding in prisons across the country.

The new Labour-run UK Government introduced another measure in July, 2024, to further address this issue. The Standard Determinate Sentence 40 (SDS40) scheme temporarily reduced the proportion of certain custodial sentences served in prison from 50% to 40%.

On a single day on September 10, Cardiff Council had to support 11 prison leavers with housing.

The accommodation that was made available from November 1 by the council includes a hotel in North Cardiff which provides 95 spaces and two temporary night shelters providing 61 and 71 spaces respectively.

Cardiff Council was criticised after it re-purposed the old Toys R Us building last year when allegations emerged of poor living conditions there.

Media reports at the time included accounts recalling scenes of vomit, excrement and drug use.

In January this year, the council’s cabinet member for housing, Cllr Lynda Thorne, said that vast improvements were made at the site and that it was “very clean” when she visited.

Vacant

On how sites are chosen for the council’s winter sheltering plan, Mr Evans said: “The first thing we have to do is look at what is actually available to us and we use the vacant building list to… inform that decision.

“We then look at things around health and safety, are we able to staff it, the number of units we could actually achieve within a particular site before making that decision.

“There is lots of things that we have to consider. Realistically, this is going to be a night shelter. ‘Can we provide it?’ is the first question that we ask.

“We do then consider its proximity to other services and whether we can move that away to create less of a concentration area.

“Sometimes we are able to do that and we have… this year been able to do that. It all just depends on what is actually available to us.”