We discovered one piece of good news at last Thursday’s District Council meeting. The council is having to spend much less than expected this financial year on ‘bed and breakfast’ accomodation for the homeless. So far they’ve only spent about ?29,000 instead of the ?75000 they were expecting.
This is due to there being better homelessness prevention by the council. Chris asked whether this was down to a number of smaller factors , or whether the council had found a single ‘magic bullet’ to reduce homelessness. The senior officer who responded, Graham Woolhouse, said there wasn’t a magic bullet, but by working with the Citizens Advice Bureau they had reduced mortgage repossessions.
Obviously, with interest rates rising , we are going to see more people having trouble paying their mortages. It’s good to see that on this issue the council seems to be doing a good job.