Draft Richmond Housing and Homelessness Strategy 2021-2026

Overview

The Council would like to hear your views on its draft Housing and Homelessness Strategy.

The draft strategy sets out the Council’s plans for housing and homelessness services for the period 2021-2026. This is a refresh of the strategy published in 2018. 

While much of the previous strategy remains relevant, now is an opportune time to review it to ensure that it continues to reflect the Council’s housing priorities, particularly following significant developments in national policy and legislation. These include:

• The Social Housing Green Paper (SHGP), which emphasised the importance of empowering and listening to social housing residents
• A heightened focus both regionally and nationally on significantly increasing housing delivery and councils’ roles in this
• The first full year of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA), the most significant change to homelessness legislation for decades

The refreshed draft Homelessness Strategy now includes a Rough Sleeping Strategy, which sets out the Council’s aims to work with partners to build on the work being done in the Borough to tackle and reduce rough sleeping. 

Of course, the Coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on Council services across the board, with priorities shifting and additional work on ensuring our most vulnerable residents have access to safe housing.   

The Draft Strategy focuses on four key themes:

• Addressing housing market pressures, preventing homelessness and increasing housing options: Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2021-2026
• Delivering affordable homes; new supply and redevelopment of existing social housing stock
• Ensuring good quality homes; providing choice, standards and quality for renters
• Supporting the needs of vulnerable residents, working with care and support services to provide quality housing options

Have your say

Please read the Draft Strategy here or the executive summary here and give your views using the online survey below. Your feedback will help shape the development of the final strategy. You can read the appendices, including the draft Equality Impact and Needs Analysis here.

If you need a paper copy of the strategy or the questionnaire please contact Laura Hood on laura.hood@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk or 020 8871 6432.

What happens next

After the closing date all feedback will be carefully considered before recommendations are reported to the Adult Social Services, Health and Housing Committee on 16th February 2021, where a final decision will be made.