Decision details

This report seeks approval to extend the Transitional Landlord Service support contract, provided by South Yorkshire Housing Association for a period from 1 December 2017 to 30 November 2019, under the current terms of the contract units to meet resources available and to provide an alternative offer for care leavers who need supported accommodation. The extension in the contract should have been completed in November 2017, however this was paused because the Council wanted to re-look at cost and utilisation of the service. This pause has enabled the Council to negotiate further savings to ensure that it could afford to fund the contract within available resources and to extend the provisions of the contract to meet strategic needs.

That the Transitional Landlord Service (TLS) contract, held by South Yorkshire Housing Association, be extended until 30 November 2019, utilising the ‘plus one’ extension clauses within the contract and varied, as detailed within the report.  

The contract has within it the capacity to extend for two 1 year periods. The initial three year period ended on 30 November 2017, but was not extended at that time due to a number of negotiated changes that were required too late in the period to enable a straight forward extension to be granted.

Negotiations have now taken place with the provider to reduce funding and maximise units of service delivery within the reduced resources. These have been successful, but further paused to provide an opportunity for further discussions to ensure that supported accommodation options for care leavers could be provided despite the wider funding reduction. Children and Families Service had agreed to provide funding to reduce the unit loss by 5 units that will be ring fenced for care leavers.

To consolidate this range of negotiations and changes approval was now required to utilise the remaining extensions within the contract and to secure the service and formalise the variations.   

The alternative options are to:-

Option 1: Terminate the contract and decommission the service

This is not desirable as at any time it would leave homeless and vulnerable households without access to accommodation and support, and the guarantee of a long term tenancy. This may lead to a downward spiral in the health and wellbeing of these households and a rise in rent arrears, antisocial behaviour and medical admissions. Residents in the schemes would all need to be housed without the continuation of the support or they would need to be evicted and made homeless.

Further Options

This contract has around 18 months to continue. Any further options would need more capacity than the team has to consider and implement so would not be viable.