A NEW strategy designed to address the problem of homelessness is to be scrutinised by councillors ahead of its implementation.

The review will look at how to improve the service once Darlington Borough Council’s current Preventing Homelessness Strategy runs its course later this year.

Before the five-year plan is adopted by the authority it will go before members of the Adults and Social Housing committee next week.

The first stage of development of the strategy is to review the whole of the homelessness prevention offer in Darlington from early intervention and prevention through to the offer of accommodation.

Included within the report is details of how homelessness figures continue to drop across the borough but it also highlights that there is an increasing number of people taking to the streets begging despite having stable accommodation.

The local authority’s statistics show that the number of people contacting them has dropped from 1,996 in 2014/15 to 1,641 the following year while the number of cases where it has accepted housing responsibility has been on the decline since 2013/14.

The report reads: “The numbers of people that a homeless decision is made about is small. This is mainly due to the scale of preventative work that ensures that for the vast majority of people another solution is found.

“In the past six years there has been an increase in the number of decisions but it has been constant at about 50 cases for the past four years. However, partial figures for 2016/17 suggest that in this year we may see a slight increase in numbers reversing this trend. By January 2017 53 applications had been made.”

The authority has identified a number of ways it plans to address the issue, including early intervention for those at risk.

The report adds: “In recent months begging in the Town Centre has increased and a misconception has arisen that this is associated with an increase in homelessness. Streetlink which manages No Second Night Out and 700 Club, who carry out outreach work have been approaching all those who are identified as begging.

“Of the 14 people approached 13 where found to have stable accommodation. The No Second Night Out programme is intended to ensure that no one will spend more than one night rough sleeping.”

The council plans to carry out a consultation process in the Autumn to look at the recommendations.