Unitary Authority Will Bigger be Better?
Hastings Borough Council (HBC) will lose its responsibility for helping the homeless under the current plans to replace it with a Unitary Authority in around two years’ time. So far it is not known what area the new local government body will cover, nor which existing councils will be subsumed into it. However it is all but certain that East Sussex County Council will also disappear to be replaced with a single-tier Sussex-wide council probably combined with a newly formed mayoralty.
The Hastings Independent asked both HBC’s Head of Housing Chris Hancock, and Housing Portfolio holder and Deputy Leader Glenn Haffenden, how they thought the local government reforms would be likely to affect homelessness services in the borough.
Councillor Haffenden: “There’s a part of me that thinks things could potentially be better because you may be able to streamline services and I guess get more expertise under one council. But that’s pretty much the only nice thing I can say. Realistically, putting four or five broke councils together, I’m not sure how you are going to get any savings. Rother, Hastings and Eastbourne have huge temporary accommodation issues and problems with their budgets. So putting councils that have all the same issues with not much available land, not much money and temporary accommodation problems together with County Councils who have been slashing their budgets, and then adding adult social care and child social care to temporary accommodation, it seems to me you are going to end up with one bankrupt council instead of four.”
Chris Hancock: “We already do quite a lot with the County Council: we are the lead county-wide authority on rough sleeping so we already have good experience of working together. Previously I have worked with combined authorities in other parts of the country and actually they do have more control over housing and homelessness. Things like Homes England – the capital grants money that comes in for affordable housing gets allocated on a local level – I think that would be beneficial.
I think the current proposals will be Sussex-wide and a mayoral authority across Sussex would be able to allocate the Affordable Homes Grant on a wider local level, which be positive. Not having a two-tier authority would be beneficial and get over things like we have just seen with the [ESCC] cuts where one organisation is making savings at the expense of another. You would hope that with one organisation there would be more well-rounded thinking … if you make a cut here it’s just going to cost us more over there. And we need to work better with health and social care, and being part of the same organisation will inevitably help with that.”
Glenn Haffenden: ‘Unfortunately there’s not going to be any fewer people in temporary accommodation or fewer people in need of housing in these areas so can you really find efficiencies and merge that across five authorities?’
HIP: Thank you both very much.
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I can smell the ambition from the screen.