Council to house Yeovil homeless after hostel closure

A council will ensure homeless people can be safely housed when a hostel closes at the end of the month.

The Pathways facility in Yeovil currently provides accommodation for up to 30 people.

South Somerset District Council confirmed that the council-run hostel would close permanently on 31 March, as its facilities were described as "extremely poor".

The authority has now approved a 10-bedroom hostel to be funded.

The council's chief executive Jane Portman has approved nearly £220,000 to fund a 10-bedroom hostel in Yeovil to provide support for single homeless people and rough sleepers for a further 12 months.

The council has a legal duty under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 to provide support to homeless people, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Ms Portman used her executive power to move £219,829 from one of the council's reserves to fund a 10-bed hostel, created out of a house of multiple occupancy (HMO).

While the council has confirmed the new facility will be in Yeovil, it has not divulged its specific location.

The annual cost of operating the HMO will be £379,829 - nearly £20,000 higher than the cost of housing the same 10 people within bed-and-breakfast accommodation for the same period of time.

Kirsty Larkins, the council's director of strategy and commissioning, explained: "The cost of bed-and-breakfast is slightly less, but you're getting less support with that - no support, no 24/7 staff on site, no work with the client group to help them rehabilitate and to find more suitable alternative accommodation in the long run."

While the Pathways site could support up to 30 people at any one time, the new hostel can only accommodate 10.

Ms Larkins said that 16 clients currently at Pathways had already found suitable longer-term accommodation, and that this hostel was "the first step" in helping the remaining individuals.

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