THE number of homeless people in Colchester has dropped, according to official figures since 2017/18.

Colchester Council’s scrutiny committee will discuss housing and homelessness at a meeting tomorrow.

A report gives an update on homelessness and ways the council and Colchester Borough Homes must improve.

The report highlights official figures have reduced by 37 per cent in 2018/19 from the previous year, with 115 “households accepted as homeless” out of 744 applications.

This means out of the number of people “presenting” to the council as homeless, a smaller proportion were actually considered homeless.

It means they were either able to stay in their own accommodation or were offered alternative accommodation.

Those “presenting as homeless” are usually struggling to afford to stay in private sector housing.

Government funding worth £208,000 has also been spent on providing emergency accommodation and outreach workers.

Landlords with up to five houses have been encouraged to accept people on the housing needs register, reducing the number of people needing a home.

The report highlighted difficulties in recruiting volunteers to support rough sleeping initiatives in particular the severe weather protocol.

Adam Fox, councillor responsible for housing, said: “Colchester Borough Homes is looking into ways to work with all the partners as there are a lot of organisations that support homeless people like Beacon House and Community 360.

“The One Colchester Community Partnership does a lot of work on winter resilience as well.

“It needs to be a joined approach but it is a real challenge, there is a real call for volunteers across services.”

Another issue was an increase in the number of households in temporary or B&B accommodation.

Mr Fox said a way of tackling this is buying back former council houses.

He said: “As part of our overall programme we have been buying back former council properties. “When a former council house goes up for sale the council has first refusal and we have used receipts from Right to Buy sales to buy 16 homes back across 2018 and 2019.

“We had a budget of

£2.9 million to buy back properties.”

A bid has also been submitted for Government funding for advisors to support rough sleeper outreach teams.

There will be training offered for volunteers to work with rough sleepers.