West Sussex council’s proposal to cut help for rough sleepers by £4 million will have big consequences.
The scale of the cuts planned by Conservative-run West Sussex county council has shocked everyone. By 2020, the £6.3 million the councils currently spends on housing support services for rough sleepers, victims of domestic abuse, care leavers, and frail older people in the county, will decrease to £2.3 million. An entire social infrastructure of hostels, drop-in centres, and floating support teams built up over years is at risk of being pulled to pieces according to charities. These are a vital pathway to recovery and independence for thousands of society’s most vulnerable people and is soon to be broken. The cost is set to be high for human lives, and the knock-on effects on the NHS, child protection, homelessness provision and the criminal justice system.
Stonepillow chief executive Hilary Bartle predicts “There will be more rough sleepers on the street and more people will die.” the details of how and where the cuts will be made has not been revealed. The impact is is expected to fall on a spectrum of bad to very bad.
Hilary Bartle added: “At the very least we won’t be able to support the service at the level we do now,” she says. “In some cases the charity providing the service may just disappear entirely.”
13 organisations are affected by the cuts. Between them all they provide a range of services that help vulnerable people and the homeless to get and maintain tenancies and live independently. The services are designed to help them stay physically and mentally well, also to help navigate the complexity of daily life from work to the benefits system. Without systems like this it can cause breakdowns in vulnerable people. For every £1 spent on housing support contracts, £7.50 is saved on wider services. It is estimated that West Sussex services helped 845 people maintain their tenancies in 2017-18.
The timing of the cuts come as latest official figures show an increase in rough sleeping across West Sussex in a decade. In 2011, 50 people were sleeping rough but it has increased to 94 in 2018.
West Sussex county council leader Louise Goldsmith said: last month: “In an ideal world we wouldn’t do this [the cuts to housing-related support] but unfortunately we’re not in an ideal world.”
The West Sussex council has made £145 million cuts since 2010 and faces a budget gap of £51 million in 2019-20.
A county council spokesman said that carrying out the cuts over two years would give time for partners “to find solutions to prioritise people in greatest need but also deliver the savings that we have to make”.
He added: “We are working collaboratively with all partners in line with the government’s homelessness strategy and we are committed to having a joined-up approach to help reduce homelessness.”
Hilary Bartle said: “Ultimately, people who lose their services will die; they will get stuck in that revolving door of homelessness; there will be nowhere to go when they pitch up. No support services; no outreach services. You will end up with a system that is just chaotic. You will end up with churches opening their doors and people sleeping on pews.”
