The Head of Housing Services has submitted a report to review the Oxford Rent Guarantee pilot and recommend adopting this approach as the default model for placing households who are at risk of homelessness, into private rented accommodation.

Recommendation:That the City Executive Board resolves to:

1.Agree in principle for the Oxford Rent Guarantee to be adopted as “business as usual” by the Private Sector team from April 2019, as outlined in the report. This is subject to adequate budget provision being made on an ongoing basis from uncommitted Housing Needs reserves in future years; and

2.Delegate authority to the Head of Housing Services to make any administrative changes to the scheme in order to improve the customer offer and to operate the scheme effectively.

The Head of Housing Services had submitted a report to review the Oxford Rent Guarantee pilot and recommend adopting this approach as the default model for placing households who are at risk of homelessness, into private rented accommodation.

The Board Member for Leisure and Housing said other valuable Council schemes to help those who were homeless sometimes overshadowed the importance of preventing homelessness in the first place. This  pilot scheme  had been a significant success, helping 73 families.   The report sought to embed the practices of the scheme as “business as usual.”  She placed on record her thanks to the officers for their work in developing the scheme over the previous two years.

The City Executive Board resolved to:

1.Agree in principle for the Oxford Rent Guarantee to be adopted as “business as usual” by the Private Sector team from April 2019, as outlined in the report. This is subject to adequate budget provision being made on an ongoing basis from uncommitted Housing Needs reserves in future years; and

2.Delegate authority to the Head of Housing Services to make any administrative changes to the scheme in order to improve the customer offer and to operate the scheme effectively