£971,000 And Rising

It’s like watching a car crash happen in slow motion. The Bed & Breakfast Figures are creeping ever so slowly towards breaking the £1 million pound barrier for the first time ever. Now that the December Payment to Supplier data is out, we can tell you that the amount spent between Apr 17 – Dec 17 on B&B costs is £971,375. That’s £28,625 short of a million pound.

This is so sad in our eyes. To allow the figures to have got to this unprecedented scale, should not have happened and the decision to build accommodation and/or purchase accommodation should have been taken a lot sooner than it was.

It means since records began Shepway District Council have spent over £3 million on Bed & Breakfast Costs. This to is a new record, one Shepway District Council and its Councillors should be utterly ashamed of.

Up to and including the 19th December 2017 the council had 16 verified rough sleeping homeless people. In addition SDC had 23 households residing in bed and breakfast style short term accommodation, a further 6 residing in East Kent Housing Temporary Accommodation, and 30 in other forms of what is termed nightly let accommodation giving a total of 59 + 16.

Of those 59 cases in temporary accommodation, 33 have been accepted as statutorily homeless, leaving 26 who SDC have yet to decide if they are homeless or not and if so what if any statutory duty they may be owed to provide rehousing assistance.

It doesn’t matter if Shite District Council (SDC) changes it’s name to Flipping Horrible District Council, it will not make this issue go away. The man responsible, Cllr Alan Ewart James Cabinet Member for Housing (pictured) should resign, but no doubt the peter principle will kick in and he’ll be promoted. This car crash was so unnecessary and Cllr Ewart James could have acted so much earlier than he did.

The Shepwayvox Team