FOI request (FOI-97264680)

Q1.a - All customers who present to Hastings Borough Council are triaged to see if they are eligible for an appointment with a Housing Options Officer. 16/17 year olds are advised to go to East Sussex County Council Children's Services (see Q2 below). Homeless applications are reported to MHCLG via H-CLIC/DELTA. We have other stakeholders who 'relieve' and 'prevent' customers, but these cases are now not reported to MHCLG as these stakeholders do not have access to our IT system (they use their own IT system). As we do not hold their case information we are now unable to report these cases to MHCLG (previously these cases would have been reported via P1E).

Q1.b - No legacy cases (2018/19 quarters 1 and 2 returns) were reported through H-CLIC, they were all reported through P1E. Legacy cases are currently being manually transferred from one IT system to another and going forward (from quarter 3 onwards) we will be reporting them via H-CLIC/DELTA.

Q2: The council does not split its funding and instead allocates a budget for all prevention and relief activities for its housing options service. The council also contributes towards a 'Young Person's Housing & Accommodation Manager' alongside the 4 other district/borough council's, and the county council; this post carries out specialist interventions for 16/17 year olds as well as care leavers. The full spend for the council's homelessness activities can be found in our budget which is published online at https://hastings.moderngov.co.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=130&MId=2552&Ver=4

Q3: The council coordinates a multi-agency group of statutory and voluntary sector partners which meets regularly to review progress against the homelessness strategy action plan. The council is in the process of reviewing its homelessness strategy with partners.

Q4: Yes. The council's Service Improvement Officer has been working closely alongside public bodies to develop a new protocol for the new Duty To Refer. All 5 district and borough council's in East Sussex have agreed a joint protocol for the Duty To Refer.. A joint event with all partners was held in October to introduce the new protocol and provide and overview of the DTR and the council's homelessness service. Further follow-up sessions have been arranged as requested.

Q5: Existing joint protocols with health and mental health partners are being updated to reflect the Duty To Refer. As part of our GDPR arrangements we ask all clients for consent to share their information with partners when required to help resolve their homelessness situation, this includes referrals for the countywide floating support service