At the Enfield Council Meeting on Wednesday 25th March (7pm at the Civic Centre) councillors will be briefed on the strategy for the provision of secondary school places and will debate an opposition paper which proposes ways of reducing the cost of temporary accommodation for homeless families.
Provision of secondary school places
The executive summary of the briefing paper states that demand for secondary school places will continue to rise until 2020 followed by five years of slightly lower demand then a steady increase from 2025. It says that there is sufficient spare capacity in secondary schools and agreed plans to provide additional capacity that will enable demand to be met up to and including September 2018.
Initial plans for the delivery of additional secondary capacity for September 2019 and 2020 will be developed and included in the annual report to Cabinet in June or July on pupil places and how demand will be met. Funding allocations from the Education Funding Agency (EFA) to provide additional places for 2018/19 and beyond are not yet known and the amounts available to the Council will depend on how many free schools or academies are approved for either establishment or expansion.
Reducing expenditure on temporary accommodation
The paper to be presented by the opposition Conservative group discusses the factors behind the very high expenditure on temporary accommodation for homeless families and proposes three solutions:
- shift the burden of proof for eligibility onto the claimant;
- pay higher rents to landlords to de-incentivise them from evicting tenants in order to then receive higher rents for providing emergency accommodation at much higher rents;
- move as many people as possible out of the borough and outside the M25, reversing the current administration's policy of not moving people out unless they wish to go..
The paper also reiterates the Consertive Group's opposition to the Council buying up properties to use to rehouse homeless families on the grounds that this will increase prices for first-time buyers. Instead, the Council should buy properties outside the borough.
Document links
- Agenda for the Council meeting
- Paperwork for the meeting (includes the above papers and other material)
This article was amended on 25th March - "Thursday 25th March" was corrected to "Wednesday 25th March"
