New strategy to stop rising homelessness in Tameside

An increasing number of people are on the brink of becoming homeless in Tameside – sparking action from the council.

Last year 1,571 people contacted the authority to help them avoid homelessness – a 24 per cent rise on the previous year. 

Tameside Council has now launched a strategy to help prevent homelessness, after a recent review found it currently deals with rough sleeping through the use of emergency accommodation.

Temporary accommodation provision cost the council around £5.6m in 2023/24, according to town hall papers. However, this cash is topped up by millions in government funding to provide the service every year.

The council’s homelessness strategy is based around prevention. This is because temporary accommodation stock has not been able to meet demand.

Some of the temporary accommodation is not suitable either, with around 38 per cent of Tameside’s  temporary accommodation located outside the borough. This creates difficulties for users getting to school or work and for social care and health services. 

By 2030, the council hopes to stop use of bed and breakfast and hostels for temporary accommodation; resolve homelessness cases within six weeks; reduce the number of people sleeping on the streets to almost zero; and reduce temporary accommodation use by half.

According to the homelessness strategy, this will be done by improving access to the council’s homelessness service, intervening earlier with at-risk families and creating more ‘good quality, well managed, local’ temporary accommodation.

Speaking on the ambitious strategy, Coun Andrew McLaren, deputy leader and portfolio holder for growth, housing and homelessness, said: “Homelessness is a scourge on any decent society. We cannot claim to be a truly civilised community if we still permit a situation where some people do not have a roof over their head and others are living in cramped, squalid or unsafe conditions. 

“Everyone should have the right to somewhere warm, safe and welcoming that they can call home. And yet we all know that homelessness has been getting worse. 

“Across the country, compared to just a few years ago, there are more people sleeping rough on the streets, more people approaching local authorities for help because they cannot find somewhere decent and secure to live without help.

“This not only causes unnecessary suffering and disruption to people’s lives today, but stores up problems for the future as well because of the missed opportunities to work, study and contribute to society that homelessness causes, as well as the poor impact on both physical and mental health which it creates.

“This is true across the whole of England, but Tameside has not been immune and this council has been affected by increasing homelessness demand, less affordable accommodation and less resources for local government. 

“Emergency accommodation alone is costing us much more than we can afford, for accommodation that is often of a lower quality than we would like to see.”