Nottingham City Council rejects call to detail where £5 million homelessness funding is being spent

Nottingham City Council recently accepted grants to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping worth around £5.5 million

Nottingham City Council has rejected a call to detail how it is spending money for tackling homelessness and rough sleeping worth over £5 million. Concerns were raised in a recent report about Nottingham City Council’s use of grant money given to it by the Government after it was said to be “unclear” where another £5 million ended up.

One party has therefore called for the council to publish a full budget on how Government grants to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness are being used. Without providing such a budget, the Nottingham Liberal Democrats say vulnerable people in the city could be let down by the council’s “inability to get a grip on finance.”

The concerns raised came in the full version of a report by accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY). EY’s report said a £5 million grant was given to the city council by the Government to cover car parking revenue lost during the coronavirus pandemic.

The report said of this money: “The [parking] enforcement team did not receive any of this money and it is not clear how it was used.” Nottingham City Council later claimed that a further review found the money did end up in the right department.

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But Lloydie James Lloyd, campaigns co-ordinator for the Nottingham Liberal Democrats, said: “Nottingham faces a serious homelessness crisis. It is vital that every penny of this £5 million is properly used. The city council’s ability to properly account for money or produce audit trails has been proven inadequate by the EY report.

“We need to be sure the most vulnerable in our city aren’t let down by the Labour council’s inability to get a grip on finance.” The campaigner said that the budget should be a “transparent publication of how the money is due to be allocated and updates on where it has been spent, so that every penny of that £5 million can be accounted for and used to help the maximum number of people possible.”

At a meeting in December, Nottingham City Council accepted grants worth a combined £5,693,458 to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness, with the money to be spent up until 2025. The council says it will use the money to provide emergency accommodation for rough sleepers, deliver settled accommodation to homeless households, ensure the “swift identification” of rough sleepers and address the root causes of of homelessness and rough sleeping.

But on the call for a full budget breakdown, a Nottingham City Council spokesperson said: “The money we give to providers to deliver the above services are allocated following a competitive tender process and as these contracts are commercially sensitive, we cannot breakdown contract costs. It could also potentially affect future tendering processes, but the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) oversees and monitors our grant spends.

“The services being delivered includes outreach workers, direct access supported accommodation, support navigators (including specialist roles in hospital and prison) and private sector resettlement support. We believe that delivery of all of the elements of the system we have designed will lead to a reduction in homelessness in Nottingham.

“We continue to work with DLUHC and local partners to maximise other opportunities for government grants to invest in tackling homelessness and its complexities in Nottingham.” The December meeting heard that on average, Nottingham City Council was receiving 126 new applications a week from homeless households, with 470 families in temporary accommodation at that time.