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Housing services in Northern Ireland facing staff layoffs after budget cut
Cuts to Northern Ireland’s Supporting People budget could lead to staff being let go if the funding is not restored, housing associations and charities have warned.
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) has reduced the Supporting People budget for 2017/18 by £3m, with providers of homelessness and supported housing services claiming there could be “dire consequences” for the sector.
More than 100 organisations are affected by the reduction in funding, which helps pay for more than 880 housing-related services in the region, providing assistance to some 20,000 vulnerable people.
The cut was first announced in April, but the NIHE delayed its impact for three months to allow providers to adjust.
One service funded by the Supporting People budget has already closed because of the loss in funding, Inside Housing understands.
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Cameron Watt, chief executive of Alpha Housing, said: “As a result of this cut we are facing a deficit of £60,000 on our housing support budget for this year. That is equivalent to the salary costs of nearly three full-time scheme co-ordinators in our sheltered schemes for older people.
“That is a big deal for us. We don’t have to immediately cut staff but if this change is not reversed, then we may well have to look at cutting posts in some of our schemes and that will inevitably have an impact on the services we provide to our tenants.”
Gerry Kelly, chief executive of Apex, said the cut would mean a loss of £250,000 for its anti-homelessness and supported housing programmes.
“Short term we are struggling on, but we have already had to be lean in respect of supported housing services because the budget has been frozen for 10 years,” he said.
“This is just creating an impossible situation. The difficulty is that the services we provide are much-needed services working at full capacity and to close those just doesn’t make sense.”
Michael McDonnell, chief executive of Choice Housing, said that subsidising the loss in funding through other parts of the business could have a knock-on effect on its development plans.
And asked if the cuts could also lead to reductions in staff, he said: “I suppose the short answer is if this cut is something that is likely to be retained, then we will have to look again at the relationship between cost and benefit, and all possibilities and all options will be on the table.”
Jim Dennison, chief executive of homelessness charity Simon Community Northern Ireland, said: “The current cuts equate to the salaries of 22 of our frontline support staff. If the cuts continue we might have to make difficult decisions about that shortfall. There is a concern for staff but there is also a very real concern for the people that we serve.”
And Eileen Best, director of operations at charity First Housing Aid & Support Services, said the cut would have “dire consequences” for homelessness services in the region.
“In the longer term, we believe it will underpin reductions in staff within our organisation and across the whole sector,” she said.
