£3m Loan For Eastbourne As Council Leader Calls Housing Emergency

The leader of Eastbourne Borough Council has announced that the government has accepted their request for exceptional financial support.

The council asked for urgent support because of a social and financial crisis, which they say is created by rising levels of homelessness and spiralling costs associated with temporary accommodation placements. 

The council says they are spending 49p in every pound of council tax collected, on temporary accommodation.

The total cost to the council this year is £5 million.

In a statement, council leader Stephen Holt, said:

"This is a national crisis and Eastbourne Borough Council led the campaign to highlight the threat it poses to the future viability of local councils."

In response, the government has agreed to the borrowing of £3 million in 2023/24 and £3 million in 2024/25.

"While the funding support is welcome I’m afraid it changes very little in the scale of savings now required and the very tough decisions we will have to take.

"We have to pay back the borrowing from the government at an added cost and meet the savings targets already identified. 

"This means that in order to achieve nearly £5 million in savings over the next financial year, every penny in discretionary council spending is under review. 

"Considering we have already saved £6 million over recent years, the scale of the challenge is significant.

"What is abundantly clear to all council leaders, is the system of funding local government is no longer fit for purpose. This has been reaffirmed even today in the recent report by the LGIU which stated that just 4% of councils have confidence in the sustainability of local government finance.

"And whichever political party wins the next general election, they must undertake a full review and find a sustainable solution.   If this isn’t done, it is inevitable that frontline public services will fail and our most vulnerable residents will suffer most."

The announcement of extra funding comes off the back of a housing emergency declared at the full council meeting on Wednesday night (February 28).

The motion, submitted by Councillor Peter Diplock, Cabinet Member for Housing, reaffirms the council’s work to press the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Chancellor of the Exchequer - along with their shadow counterparts - for additional resources to help those local housing authorities and councils worst affected, such as Eastbourne, including raising the current 2011 cap on housing benefit subsidy for local authority housing placements.

The most recently available figures show that rough sleeping in England has increased by 26% and a record 280,000 households are in temporary accommodation.

Councillor Diplock said:

“This situation is unsustainable and continues to represent an existential threat to local government.

“While councils continue to do everything in their powers to meet both the needs of residents and statutory obligations, the system was not created to deal with these ever-rising numbers of people presenting as homeless.  The driving forces underpinning this are systemic and structural and are not in the council's control.

“Under current funding arrangements the council does not have the resources to solve the problem alone.”

At an Eastbourne Borough Council-led conference in January, Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Independent local authorities repeated a collective call to raise the cap on housing benefit subsidy for local authority housing placements from the current 2011 levels, in order to properly reflect the real costs of providing temporary accommodation. 

The meeting was joined and supported by Crisis, the Trussell Trust, MPs and Peers.

Councillor Diplock added:

“We will continue to work with the sector and try and engage the government to develop long-term solutions to fix the national housing crisis.

“I am proud of what we have achieved so far and the influence I believe we have exerted, but the crisis we face has not gone away and I fear the most vulnerable in our communities will be worst affected.”