Nearly £220,000 of council funding secured to house homeless people in Yeovil
The Pathways facility on Newton Road currently provides accommodation for up to 30 people - but it's set to close at the end of the month
A Somerset council will be dipping into its reserves to ensure homeless people in Yeovil can be safely housed once an existing hostel has closed.
The Pathways facility on Newton Road currently provides accommodation for up to 30 people, and is run by the Bournemouth Churches Housing Association (BCHA) under a contract from South Somerset District Council.
The council confirmed in November 2022 that the Pathways site would close permanently on March 31, 2023, with the building’s facilities being described as “extremely poor”.
The council’s chief executive Jane Portman has now approved using nearly £220,000 to fund a ten-bedroom hostel in Yeovil to provide support for single homeless people and rough sleepers for a further 12 months.
This comes less than a year after plans to convert the Acacia Lodge Care Home on Hendford into a homeless facility were unanimously refused by local councillors.
The council has a legal duty under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 to provide support to homeless people, including suitable short-term accommodation.
Ms Portman used her executive power to move £219,829 from one of the council’s reserves to fund a ten-bed hostel, created out of a house of multiple occupancy (HMO).
While the council has confirmed the new facility will be in Yeovil, it has not divulged its specific location.
Ms Portman’s decision was discussed at the final meeting of the council’s district executive committee, which took place at the council’s Brympton Way headquarters on Thursday morning (March 2).
The annual cost of operating the HMO will be £379,829 – nearly £20,000 higher than the cost of housing the same ten people within bed-and-breakfast accommodation for the same period of time.
Kirsty Larkins, the council’s director of strategy and commissioning, explained: “The cost of bed-and-breakfast is slightly less, but you’re getting less support with that – no support, no 24/7 staff on site, no work with the client group to help them rehabilitate and to find more suitable alternative accommodation in the long run.”
While the Pathways site could support up to 30 people at any one time, the new hostel can only accommodate ten (not including staff living on-site).
Ms Larkins said that 16 clients currently at Pathways had already found suitable longer-term accommodation, and that this hostel was “the first step” in dealing with the remaining individuals.
Councillor Peter Gubbins, portfolio holder for area south (including the Yeovil Refresh programme), said he welcomed the progress which had been made since the Acacia Lodge plans were refused.
He said: “We are now actually doing what BCHA themselves said that they wanted – the ideal situation was to have small hostels which would help people integrate into society better.
“Yes, it’s going to cost more – but if we want these people to be integrated back into society, we’ve got to pay for it. It will be money worth spent.”