After three years without face-to-face meetings, staff reportedly ‘expressed some anxieties’ about meeting residents they were employed to help, reports Josh Mellor, Local Democracy Reporter

Waltham Forest Council has reintroduced face-to-face meetings with people at risk of homelessness for the first time since the pandemic.

In early 2020, the council stopped holding in-person meetings with residents in need of housing support and converted the office space it used at Cedar Wood House, in Walthamstow, into “meeting rooms”.

However, concerns about the team’s performance led to a council “transformation” programme launched earlier this year and a recent return to face-to-face appointments, which are now held at Leyton Library.

Updating the housing scrutiny committee on the programme, deputy leader Ahsan Khan, who oversees the council’s housing prevention and assessment service, said at first the council hoped it could “stay digital” but later saw this had a “knock-on effect”.

After three years without face-to-face meetings, staff reportedly “expressed some anxieties” about meeting residents they were employed to help.

Councils such as Waltham Forest have a duty to support eligible residents if they are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, for example, due to eviction or domestic violence.

Residents who are eligible for help could be offered temporary accommodation or in some cases, a council home.

It is unclear why the council decided to scrap all face-to-face meetings as the Homelessness Code of Guidance requires “at least one” homelessness assessment to be in person.

Cllr Khan and senior staff members appeared unable to respond when committee member Emma Best asked how the services fell “so below standard” that it needed to be “transformed”.

Waltham Forest has now drafted in interim director of housing options and support Lindsay Megson to replace former director Modester Anucha and eight vacant staff posts have been filled by agency workers.

Megson said the council offered 21 face-to-face appointments in the first two weeks of opening the Leyton Library space.

From last year at least, the council’s homelessness assessment and prevention team also saw “acute staffing shortages” which led to unmanageable caseloads – with only residents in the “worst crisis” receiving help.

Each staff member’s caseload reportedly doubled the recommended number and the number of residents receiving “prevention” help halved to 465 between 2020 and 2022.

The number of households in temporary accommodation fell from more than 2,000 in mid-2019 to 876 in early 2023 – which appears to be linked to “overdue cases awaiting assessment and decision”.

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