Almost 7,000 Nottingham households sought homeless support last year
Authorities have been given extra help to reduce demand for temporary accommodation
Almost 7,000 households in Nottingham sought homelessness support last year, a new report says.
Eight years ago in 2018, 4,800 households had sought help from Nottingham City Council’s housing service, marking a clear rise in the number of people needing urgent help.
In response the Labour-led authority has been given a further £335,000 by the Government to help prevent homelessness and reduce the demand for temporary accommodation.
The report, published on March 31, says there were 630 families living in temporary accommodation at the end of the year, which cost the city £4.4 million alone last year.
Some of the money will be used to expand the Nottingham Private Rented Assistance Scheme (NPRAS), first established in 2018, which helps find people facing homelessness a tenancy and stop them ending up in costly temporary accommodation.
The council says: “Over time, the scheme has proven effective in preventing homelessness and helping to avoid or minimise time spent in temporary accommodation.
“Further funding opportunities have enabled the scheme to extend in capacity in order to deliver a higher volume of tenancies as well as expand to target those with additional support needs or barriers to accommodation.”
The council said in 2025, NPRAS supported nearly 830 households to remain in their privately rented home while they were at risk of eviction, or helped them secure a new tenancy in a different property.
Almost £50,000 of the extra cash will go towards a new supervisor role, while the rest will go towards other preventative work.
In January, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reported Government data revealed that, when compared to the size of the local population, Nottingham has the highest number of people sleeping rough out of 12 core cities – including Birmingham, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield.
A council report showed the number of longer-term rough sleepers “is high and rising”, with many individuals retracting from engaging with services and declining offers of accommodation.
Over recent years, the number of rough sleepers found on a single night in Nottingham each month has varied between 40 to 60 people.
However, November last year was the worst month of the year, when 149 individuals were recorded as sleeping rough at some point during this period.
The council has received a combined £5 million in targeted funding via the Rough Sleeping Grant, which is being used to provide accommodation and support for rough sleepers and single homeless people.
This complements its own £4.2m budget used to commission support services, including outreach and independent living support for single people and families.
Mark Lowe, the assistant director of the council’s housing services, said at the time: “Our numbers are high. Most core cities have got a really high level of rough sleeping at the moment, it is a national problem.
“Our raw numbers are lower than most of the core cities, but as a proportion of population they are higher.”