Homeless person sleeps on Southport's War Memorial

A homeless person has been sleeping on a flattened cardboard box and a flimsy blanket at Southport's War Memorial. Sefton Council has a strategy in place for rough sleepers.

The Homelessness Act 2002, requires every Local Authority to carry out a homelessness review in its Borough every 5 years, to develop and publish a Homelessness Strategy based on this review and to consult with other statutory and voluntary organisations. To undertake this review and develop a subsequent strategy the Council appointed Neil Morland Housing Consultants LTD. The scope of this commission included a comprehensive review of current and projected levels of homelessness in the Borough and a review of current homelessness services.

The Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy is comprised of three documents:

The formal Homelessness Review identified the evidence of needs, and engagement with stakeholders, service providers and service users, in order to collect evidence and opinion of what works well now, what doesn’t work well, and what gaps in services there may be.
 This evidential review was then analysed and interpreted to produce the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2018 - 2023.
Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Plan. This plan will guide future delivery of the strategy and allow progress to be monitored. This document has been developed largely in response to the many recommendations made in the Homelessness Strategy.