Issue - meetings

Housing Strategy 2024-2029 and Homelessness & Rough Sleeper Strategy 2024-2029

Meeting: 14/01/2025 - Executive (Item 72)

72 E/24/33 Housing Strategy and Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategies pdf icon PDF 349 KB

Portfolio Holder – Councillor Alasdair Ross

 

The Ipswich Borough Council Housing Strategy and Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategies have been updated to reflect:

 

·       Outcomes and achievements from the existing strategies (2019-2024).

·       Changes in legislation or new requirements.

·       Data, insight and intelligence on trends and the evidence base for change.

 

This report outlines the proposal for updated Housing and Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategies 2025 - 2030.

 

The report recommends that Executive approves the updated Housing Strategy and Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategies for adoption.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

72.1.     Councillor Ross introduced the report highlighting that the Council’s housing strategies and policies had been updated over the last 18 months to make them easier to understand for tenants and provide the best service. Councillor Ross thanked the Council’s Tenancy Services for all the work on these strategies, and for the input from tenants and its partner agencies, especially in relation to the Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategy. Councillor Ross recommended the two strategies for approval ahead of the inspection by the Housing Regulator next month.

72.2.     Councillor Fisher was proud of the housing offered in Ipswich and of the work done to tackle homelessness, and congratulated officers on their continued success in securing government funding for homelessness initiatives. Councillor Fisher noted from the Housing Strategy that the Ipswich population was projected to decrease by 2% by 2043 whilst the number of households was projected to increase by 3% and commented that there had already been greater demand for smaller houses and flats. Councillor Fisher questioned why the housing targets for Ipswich were so high given that the number of households were only due to rise by 3%, which he calculated as a further 97 houses per annum.

72.3.     Councillor Ross reported that half of the data had been provided by the Suffolk Office of Data and Analytics (SODA), as commissioned by Suffolk County Council, and added that there was a trend towards more people living separately in the future; however, it was often difficult to encourage people to downsize. There was also a drive to support people to stay in their own homes for longer to limit the impact on NHS services.

It was RESOLVED:

 

that Executive approves the final draft Housing Strategy and Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Strategy for adoption.

 

Reason: To facilitate a clear and transparent direction for housing services and meet the legal requirement to publish a homelessness and rough sleeping strategy.