Issue details

The council’s statutory homelessness service, along with the management of the council’s housing register, returned in-house from an external provider on 1st July. Renamed as the Housing Options Team, the service has since been embedding and developing itself whilst overcoming a number of operational challenges.
One of these challenges was a number of vacancies which had been held by the external provider for several months prior to the service returning in-house. These vacancies were all within the homelessness section of the service.
The majority of these staffing vacancies have now been filled, or are in the process of being. However since the TUPE transfer took place members of those staff have also taken secondments elsewhere within the Council, or requested flexible working arrangements. This has left the service with further gaps to fill, but also an opportunity to remodel how the service currently operates ahead of a full review planned for later in 2019/20. This report therefore makes recommendations about how the remaining vacancies can be utilised to deliver an improved frontline service.