Housing, homelessness and rough sleeping strategy

Although Welwyn Hatfield is an affluent borough with relatively high employment and wages, rates of homelessness have increased amidst a cost-of-living crisis and recovery from the covid-19 pandemic.

Our previous strategy highlighted the diminishing ability of residents to buy their own homes, a trend that continues both nationally and locally alongside increasing rental costs.

Welwyn Hatfield’s location in rural Hertfordshire, eleven miles from central London with excellent transport links, make it an attractive commuter area.

However, this also increases housing demand, particularly for affordable housing, creating challenges when ensuring suitable accommodation for residents.

The Council recognises our increased responsibility and is committed to working closely with partners, applicants and housing agencies to offer advice and support to those in need.

Where residents are risk of homelessness we will strive prevent it. If this is not possible, we will work to ensure that homelessness is brief, that it does not reoccur, and its impact on the individual, families and our communities is minimised.

To achieve this, we will build on the successes of our previous strategy, which included:

• Promoting Housing Options and advice services through partners, leading to earlier referrals.
• Partnering with Druglink and Resolve to expand the Housing First project, which helps rough sleepers with complex needs off the streets.
• Collaborating with the YMCA on the development of a new, more modern offer.
• Working with Citizen Advice in Welwyn Hatfield to provide more services for the homelessness prevention hub.
• Improved joint-working with Hertfordshire County Council.
• Increased partnerships with the private sector.
• Restructuring the housing options team to improve their effectiveness.
• Made improvements to our IT systems, increasing our capacity to manage caseloads.

Homelessness Approaches

Although progress has been made since the last strategy, broader social and economic changes have led to an increase in the number of homelessness approaches by around 10-15% a year.

Projecting forward we expected this trend to continue and in the short-term, an increase in approaches before wider social and economic improvements help reduce the level of increase.

The early intervention approach will take time to significantly affect the amount of people coming into the system. Given these factors we are profiling a 15% year on year increase for the first two years.

Temporary Accommodation and Housing Register 

As a result of the increase of homelessness approaches and cases, the number households in temporary accommodation and on the housing register has also increased.

A crucial reason for this is the lack of affordable and social housing within the borough to meet demand.

Addressing the increased use of temporary accommodation in the borough is an urgent concern, particularly as some are housed in hotels and B&Bs.

The Council holds 118 units of temporary accommodation, some of which have needed improvement. To this end, the Council is redeveloping two of our key temporary accommodation sites (Howland House and Burfield Close) with the support of grant funding from the Government.

This means that these sites will continue to provide security and respite for individuals and families at their time of need.

The lack of sufficient move-on options has necessitated the use of costly night shelters and the placement of residents outside the borough, such as in Peterborough.

Although these emergency measures are not ideal, they are necessary to meet our obligations and prevent people sleeping rough.

Rough Sleeping

Compared to an average of 8.1 people per 100,000 in England sleeping rough in 2024, the rate of 4.9 per 100,000 in Welwyn Hatfield continues to be low.

These evidence-based figures are based on a snapshot count to provide an estimate of the number of people sleeping rough, following a methodology also used by 237 other local authorities.

The council and our partners conduct outreach work to contact people sleeping rough, or preparing to do so, so that they can be provided with accommodation.

However, despite these efforts, not all individuals wish to engage with staff or support.

Resourcing

Our core homelessness services depend on Homelessness Prevention and Rough Sleeping Initiative grants from Government.

These have been supplemented by accommodation grants from YMCA and Druglink, which have been instrumental to supporting our services.

However, there is uncertainty in the future provision and scale of these grants, which makes long-term planning more challenging.

The Council will continue to seek additional funding as it becomes available and will continue to work in partnership with the third sector to provide support for residents in need.

The Council is committed to new temporary accommodation provision of 40+ units at Howlands House

In April 2026 the new bedspaces from the YMCA at Peartree will also come on stream.

Working with partners, housing associations and our own voids team we are increase the supply or temporary accommodation available to those in need.