West Lothian Council’s spending on the homeless blew its budget by almost three-quarters of a million pounds in the last year.
The council, faced with a surge in demand and the knock-on effects of the Covid lockdown, had to fork out an extra £707,000 to meet the costs of a demand for B&B accommodation.
The figures were revealed to the council’s Services for the Community Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel.
Delivering a 12-month monitoring report on the performance of the general revenue fund Pamela Bell, senior service accountant, said that some savings had been made by Housing, Building and Customer Services.
Staffing savings in the Community Safety Unit amounted to an underspend of £160,000.
Spending on homeless accommodation had been budgeted at £3.899m but topped out at £4.606m.
But the demand for accommodation rose on the back of the percentage of repeat homeless presentations. Households assessed as homeless with 12 months of previously being assessed rose to two per cent compared to to 0.6 per cent of the total numbers of people presenting as homeless. While this is a significant increase it is still below the expected three per cent of the total.
Ms Bell’s report added: “This increased demand also contributed to an overspend of £104,000 in Homelessness Transport, which is not part of the Services for the Community portfolio but will be noted in the financial performance update report to the next Education PDSP.”
The report added that more needs to be done to reduce expenditure.
This will include a higher percentage of Registered Social Landlords making property available for homeless allocations, and increasing the number of private sector lets. The council has also increased the number of buybacks for former council homes.
These measures will be considered in conjunction with the Rapid Rehousing Transition Plan (RRTP), the council’s longer term programme to reduce homelessness.
