Watford Borough Council

The aim of the council’s strategy is to prevent homelessness and to provide appropriate accommodation and support for those who are already homeless.

Following consultation with partners, stakeholders and service users, a revised Homelessness Review and Homelessness Strategy has been published for 2008-13. This includes a five year action plan which sets out how the council will work with its partners to tackle homelessness in Watford.

These documents can be viewed online or downloaded by following the links in the related items panel.

Much of this work will be carried out through the Prevention of Homelessness Consortium (POsH) whose members include representatives from the council, health and social care, police, voluntary agencies and local registered social landlords.

Achievements of the Homelessness Strategy (2003-08)

Since the previous Homelessness Strategy was published in 2003, the council and its partners have achieved a number of improvements in services for people threatened with homelessness or who have already had to leave their previous accommodation. These include:

• more homelessness prevention activity, helping people to stay in their homes (reduction in homelessness decisions made by the council from 374 in 2003/04 to 136 in 2007/08)
  
• fewer families in the council’s temporary accommodation (down from 147 in 2004 to 68 in 2008)
  
• less time spent by families in temporary accommodation (from an average of 42 weeks in 2003/4 to 25 weeks in 2007/08)
  
• a reduction in the number of rough sleepers from a peak in 1999 (15 down to 5)
  
• ending the use of bed and breakfast for homeless families (not used since 2003/04).

Activities carried out by the council and its partners include:

• establishing Watford Borough Council Homelessness Prevention and Housing Advice Team
  
• establishing a primary care health service for homeless people
  
• setting up the original and revised private sector access project
  
• establishing multi agency Homeless at Risk Meetings (HARM) to carry out casework for the most vulnerable rough sleeping clients
  
• developing preventative education material for schools.