People in emergency accommodation in Cornwall soars

822 families - and rising

Over 800 families are living in emergency accommodation in Cornwall, including hotel rooms, caravan parks and B&Bs – a rise of almost 100 families in 12 months – and it’s costing Cornish taxpayers around £10m a year.

The stark figure was announced at a meeting of the full Cornwall Council at New County Hall / Lys Kernow in Truro on Tuesday, January 16, when Cllr Loic Rich (Truro Tregolls, Independent) asked the council’s portfolio holder for housing Cllr Olly Monk (Newquay Trenance, Conservative) how many families are currently in emergency hotel accommodation in Cornwall and if that figure is expected to fall this year.

Cllr Monk responded that currently there are 822 families in emergency and temporary accommodation. “That figure is slowly rising,” he said. “However, we feel, however cautiously, that it’s plateauing. We feel that some of the interventions we’ve put in around the Homechoice register and the way that will change will help that figure.”

The Homechoice scheme is a housing register where households can register and apply for affordable homes owned and managed by the council and its partners. Improvements to the system include increasing the proportion of direct lets, creating an annual lettings plan and a yearly review to monitor performance.

Cllr Monk added: “We get more and more people finding themselves in dire situations due to the fact that they’re losing their rented accommodation. We aim to build and buy as many council homes as we possibly can to start absorbing some of those numbers.”

Cllr Rich responded that the number of homeless families had increased from 750. “I’m sure you’ll agree that just one family in a hotel room is too many really. It costs a huge amount of money to house people in hotels – millions a year,” he said.

“Yes, it costs £10m a year. What can we do about that? Well, the council needs to own as much of that temporary and emergency accommodation as it can – that will reduce the amount of money we have to give to third parties. Obviously we have to build and allow the permissions for as much affordable housing as we possibly can. That remains a constant pressure trying to get those affordable applications through the various planning committees and for very good reasons sometimes they’re rejected.

“We’ve also got our brownfield funding in place which will give direct funding especially in areas like Camborne and Redruth where there are a lot of planning permissions that are already extant that need to be built forward. That funding will allow some of those brownfield sites to become viable, but it’s not a quick fix.

“It takes three years from when a planning application comes in until someone has a key and that’s if it’s passed first time around. It’s an immense issue and we’re spending a lot of resourcing on it.”

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