A reported drop in the number of Bedford borough households in temporary accommodation was the result of data errors, and not a real decline, a senior council officer has confirmed.
At Wednesday’s Housing Committee (11 June), Bedford resident Mike Hyden noted a 20 percent fall in the number of households in temporary accommodation between September and December 2024.
The apparent data issue comes amidst claims by a local charity that housing officers are “consistently behaving badly with bad attitudes” at housing interviews.
“This is the first significant drop in numbers that I can remember,” said Mr Hyden.
“Is the chair of the housing committee confident that this reduction has been achieved without gatekeeping anyone?
“And could the chair also give an overview of the way in which this reduction has been achieved?”
The chair, Cllr Phillippa Martin-Moran-Bryant (Conservative, Great Barford), replied that she was confident the drop had not involved gatekeeping – the illegal practice of denying support to people in housing need.
She said: “Yes, I am confident that it happened without gatekeeping because there’s a further data piece [of work] behind that.”
“We’re not gatekeeping”
But Anna Robbani, the council’s head of housing, homelessness and customer services, said while numbers in temporary accommodation do fluctuate throughout the year, the apparent drop was not genuine.
“We have identified an issue with the data that was published in September,” she said.
“We’ve done some work since then to enhance data collection. We’ve actually upgraded our case management system… and completed that in February.
“I can confirm over the last 12 months there has actually been a 10 per cent rise in placement numbers overall.
“So, it’s not a reduction,” she said.
Ms Robbani reiterated that gatekeeping was not part of the council’s approach and stressed the borough had focused on intensive homelessness prevention and relief work instead.
She reported an 18 percent increase in homelessness prevention cases and a 20 percent increase in relief cases, where homelessness is resolved after it has already occurred, due to changes in casework and officer training.
“We’re not gatekeeping,” she said.
“The reasons that numbers have steadied [are because] we have an intensive programme to prevent homelessness where we can and support homeless [people] to find new homes.”
Housing officers accused of bad behaviour
Meanwhile, a Bedford-based homelessness advocacy group has raised fresh concerns about the conduct of council housing officers — suggesting poor treatment of vulnerable residents is going unnoticed and unchallenged.
Speaking during the same meeting, John Allen from the charity ‘Just Us’, said his organisation had “consistently” witnessed officers “behaving badly with bad attitudes” during housing interviews.
He reminded the committee that he asked how these interviews were monitored and assessed during November’s meeting.
“The head of housing homelessness and customer service [said] supervisors were positioned behind the main interview desks in order to observe live interviews,” he said.
“[We were told] all housing officers received regular one-to-one case work management meetings, which were tailored to their personal ongoing development needs and performance.
“How do supervisors observe live interviews?” he asked.
“And if housing officers’ performances do not improve, despite the supervisory measures taken, what further measures are put in place to ensure homeless people will receive the best customer service possible?”
Ms Robbani said, “Whilst team leaders provide a supervisory presence in the main area of the contact centre, they are available on request by either the customer or the officer.
“But just to be clear, the supervisors are not sitting in on interviews directly in a kind of micro-managing way.
“We do trust that the training provided enables an officer to provide consistency and quality of an interview.
“If there are capability or disciplinary performance matters with a member of staff, there are very clear policies that we have to follow set out by HR,” she said.
Mr Allen added that ‘JustUs’ will always complain about poor service when it witnesses it.
“JustUs is consistently seeing officers behaving badly with bad attitudes,” he said.
“But we’re wondering how often it happens when we’re not present, and how often it goes unnoticed.
“I think with any other public-facing service it wouldn’t be tolerated in the way that we think it is within the housing team.”
Mr Allen’s remarks prompted Cllr Phillippa Martin-Moran-Bryant to thank him for raising the issue.
By John Guinn, Local Democracy Reporter
Edited by Tom Carr, Bedford Independent
