£7m could be spent on buying homes in North Northamptonshire for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees

A council is proposing to buy 30 homes to help Afghan and Ukrainian refugees settle in North Northamptonshire.

NNC says it could spend a £3.2m Government grant as well as at least £3.7m – repurposed from its own Homelessness Prevention fund – to buy the homes.

The council will discuss the proposal at its executive meeting next Thursday (February 16).

Why is the council having to buy the homes?

Papers that will go before councillors next week say that it needs to alleviate increasing demand on homelessness services. It also wants to assist refugees who have arrived in the area to move on from bridging hotels or sponsor placements, many of which have already gone far beyond the time frame originally committed to by the volunteers who housed them.

Since the Afghan Resettlement Programme was launched when the Taliban seized control of the country in the autumn of 2021 and the Homes for Ukraine Programme was launched after the Russian invasion in March 2022, most local authorities have struggled to move refugees into settled accommodation in the private rented sector. Many of the Afghan refugees have large families families and there is a shortage of supply of four bed-plus, family homes in the private rented sector.

Where sponsor placements have ended and Ukrainian refugees have presented as homeless, the council’s statutory homelessness duties must be discharged which has meant placing refugees in costly nightly paid temporary accommodation. Although these costs are met by government grants from the Homes for Ukraine programme, placing refugee families who have fled war into short term temporary accommodation is far from ideal.

The council says it has, alongside colleagues from other Local Authorities across the country, consistently highlighted these issues to the DLUHC.

How many refugees have already arrived here?

There’s thought to be 374 Ukrainian guests in North Northants in 229 sponsor households under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme.

The council says there are 181 guests remaining in sponsor placements. Others have either moved out of area, returned to Ukraine, or have made their own arrangements. About 67 guests have been supported to move into the private rented sector.

The council committed to resettling 10 Afghan families from the bridging hotels and to date have settled three, with two further identified properties awaiting large (up to 12 people) families to be nominated to them.

How much is it going to cost?

The Government’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will provide a grant of £3.2m to NNC. NNC will have to match-fund this with £3.7m taken from its already-pressed Homelessness Prevention programme.

What is the council saying?

Cllr Matt Binley, North Northamptonshire Council’s Executive Member for Housing, Communities and Levelling Up, said: “Since the Afghan Resettlement Programme was launched in 2021 and the Homes for Ukraine Programme in March 2022, North Northamptonshire Council, like many local authorities, have experienced challenges in supporting people to move out of bridging hotels or on from sponsorship placements into settled accommodation in the private rented sector. If the proposal is approved, work can start on sourcing suitable properties to purchase in the main towns of Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough and Rushden making sure they are close to local amenities - something families have said is important to them.”

What will happen if the proposal doesn’t go ahead?

NNC says that if it does not go ahead with the programme, it will not receive the £3.2m grant from the Government and ‘the challenge of finding onward settled accommodation for refugees will remain.’

It says this challenge is already putting pressure on stretched homelessness services. Those refugees who present as homeless are still owed a statutory homelessness duty by the Council and need to be placed in costly nightly paid temporary accommodation and then progressed through Keyways on to the housing register.