Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2022 to 2025

Key to the delivery of this strategy is the collaborative work across the council and its partners. We are committed to maintaining and building on existing partnership working to support people to stay in their properties, or to find lasting and affordable housing options.

The strategy will be underpinned with an action plan which will be flexible and respond to emerging needs, trends and policy changes. The three-year strategy below is therefore more detailed for year one and indicative thereafter. Although significant progress has been made in bringing the former District Council homelessness services together within the Housing Service re-structure, the action plan recognises a need for a Year 1 of ‘consolidation,’ where we ensure that services are consistent across the Buckinghamshire Council area, while still being sensitive to individual needs in different locations. We will continue to ensure that the Council and its partners are achieving a ‘one door’ service, where a household will be given the same service regardless of the first point of contact.

We will build on this with a Year 2 of ‘foundation’ where we ensure effective working practices, including awareness, information-sharing and shared risk assessments. This will ensure that by Year 3 of the action plan we can begin to ‘innovate’ from a consolidated position of strong foundations.

This can be summarised as below:

• year 1 (2022 to 23) – Consolidation
• year 2 (2023 to 24) – Foundation
• year 3 (2024 to 25) – Innovate

The following high level action plan is split into priority areas with each specific action linked to Year 1, 2 or 3 for delivery.