Housing, Homelessness and Regulatory Services Cabinet Portfolio

The Housing, Homelessness and Regulatory Services have identified the following challenges and risks:

A challenge for this portfolio will be the implementation of the recently adopted policies around Taxi Licensing, Licensing and Gambling. The council was required to produce new policies for each of these areas following unitarisation which harmonise the approach across the council area.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the delivery of housing and homelessness services. In the short term, the protections given to private sector tenancies during the pandemic have ended.

There have also been continuing pressures to facilitate move on accommodation following the ending of the emergency accommodation provisions, and to engage with the challenging rough sleeping cohort.

There is clearly now a significantly increased demand for homelessness advice and Bucks Home Choice applications and activity, and a growing demand for temporary accommodation which drives cost and general pressures on the service.

In the medium term, recently announced legislative changes in the housing sector may significantly increase demand on Housing services and also Environmental Health enforcement activity. This will add to the existing pressure from the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

It is also possible that the announcement regarding the ending of no fault evictions may result in an increase in the number of evictions prior to the commencement of any new legislation.

Following the creation of the single housing service for Buckinghamshire, a significant challenge remains to transform and standardise approach and processes.

This will involve several short term and longer-term projects, which will be identified and progressed over the course of this council term.

Another challenge includes securing funding for delivering and mobilising significant capital schemes which provide and maintain accommodation across Buckinghamshire.