Decision details

WBC Cabinet Member for Citizen Services: Subject to approval of planning permission, we approve a 10 year (5yr+5yr) service contract with a private sector emergency accommodation provider, with a total value of £7,780,776, to acquire nomination rights to 44 units of 24 hour staffed emergency accommodation for single people and delegate authority to the Director for Housing and Communities to enter into a service contract for the purpose of acquiring temporary accommodation.

ADC Leader: As this is essentially a Worthing issue, I am happy to follow the WBC Cabinet Member for Citizen Services’ lead in making this decision.

WBC Cabinet Member for Citizen Services: To enable the council to fulfil its statutory housing duties under S188 and S193 of the Housing Act 1996.

Both WBC and ADC have commenced capital works programmes to purchase and develop their own temporary accommodation stock. So far three buildings have been developed to create 38 self-contained flats in Worthing and one building in Adur consisting of 6 self-contained flats. Whilst this is an effective long term strategy to lower the cost of temporary accommodation, it can take many months or years to develop each site and therefore this in isolation is not sufficient to keep up with current demand.

Other options include spot purchase of rooms and flats, however this is very costly and unsustainable in the medium to long term as well as not being suitable for the majority of single person households due to level of need and risk that requires staffing.

Doing nothing and continuing to use nightly booked accommodation will see costs spiral and increased out of area placements and is therefore not recommended.