Plymouth City Council Home Page

Background

Plymouth - Regional Champion for the South West

Plymouth City Council has transformed the way in which homelessness is tackled in the City and has made huge progress, with its partners, in preventing homelessness, assisting tenancy sustainment, reducing the council's use of temporary accommodation, minimising the incidence of rough sleeping, and removing barriers to the private rented sector.

With its emphasis on early intervention and partnership working, Plymouth's fresh approach to homelessness is providing service users with positive outcomes and settled housing solutions, and it has encouraged innovation, continuous improvement and an appetite for success.

By introducing new job roles and staffing structures, facilitating the co-location of services and effecting rapid and widespread cultural change, the Council has encouraged its staff and partners to work more effectively and embrace new and more innovative ways of preventing homelessness and tackling the causes of homelessness.

Our Housing Management service has become a tenancy sustainment service and has entered into a match-funding arrangement with Money Advice Plymouth, a voluntary sector partner that is now co-located with Housing Officers in the local Area Housing Offices.

As well as adopting the good practice of others (such as the Families Intervention Project, the Sanctuary Scheme and the Street Outreach Team), Plymouth has developed its own good practice, including the Sustainable Independence Project for homeless 16 & 17 year olds, the Gateway accommodation pilot for prison leavers, the EMIF-funded Devon Inclusive Housing Project for BME households, Homeless Link's pilot Move-on Project, and the way in which we are involving service users in reviewing, monitoring and re-modelling services.

Plymouth's Shekinah Mission is a national centre of excellence, providing homeless people with the skills, training, confidence and opportunities to get back into work, and is at the heart of the City's plans to increase the number of homeless people entering training and employment.

Our Supporting People programme has been assessed as one of the best in the country and has played a pivotal role in helping the Council and its partners to adopt new ways of working that are focused on effective needs assessment, support planning and resettlement.

How to contact us

For further information about Plymouth's homelessness work (or to explore the benefits of us carrying out a peer review of your service or helping you to facilitate organisational change), please contact:

Matt Garrett
Housing Options Manager
Plymouth City Council
First Floor,
Midland House
Notte Street
PLYMOUTH
PL1 2EG
Tel: (01752) 306733
E-mail: matt.garrett@plymouth.gov.uk

Regional Homelessness Champions Home Page