Peterborough to pay Cambridgeshire £173k to support adults at risk of homelessness

A “floating support service” for people at risk of homelessness has been granted funding by Peterborough City Council (PCC) for at least three more years.

The service offers people who are aged 16 or over who are abusing drugs, suffering from poor mental health or at risk of offending, housing advice, financial support and access to education and employment.

It also offers mental health support and, in some cases, may take over managing a person’s tenancy.

According to a PCC report, the service has successfully stopped 37 individuals and families from either being evicted from their home or having it repossessed over the last year.

In the same period, the service supported 25 lots of people in setting up a new tenancy and 29 in moving to more suitable accommodation.

But while Peterborough has its own service – termed a “floating” service because it doesn’t have a specific headquarters – in that referrals can be made through PCC, it is Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) that commissions and oversees it.

PCC pays CCC a sum of money each year to do this: for the next three years this will be £172,995 which is already accounted for in the council's budget.

The contract the council has now signed off on also includes two optional year-long extensions at an estimated £57,665 each.

In recent years, and particularly since an independent review of PCC’s finance and governance arrangements was announced by the Government in summer 2021, PCC has decoupled many of its services from CCC and has split most senior management positions from the authority.

This initiative was raised at PCC’s most recent full council meeting, with Cllr Gavin Elsey (Peterborough First, Wittering) describing the initial joining of council services a “failed experiment” and suggesting that he had opposed it when he was part of the council’s Conservative administration.

Cllr Andy Coles (Conservatives, Fletton and Woodston) denied that it was a failed experiment and said that it still makes sense for some particular services to be joined.

A council report on the floating support services says that having CCC oversee it has “worked well for both authorities” since its establishment in 2018.

This means that PCC doesn’t duplicate the work CCC does in monitoring the performance of the organisation it contracts, the report says, which has previously been the P3 charity.

The contract is among the first to be signed off by PCC leader Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald (Conservatives, West) in his role as Cabinet Member for Adult Services and Public Health.

He took over this role after incumbent Cllr John Howard (Peterborough First, Hargate and Hempsted) resigned from the Conservative Party alongside six other councillors, including Cllr Elsey, in May and June this year.