Many people are concerned about how the measures in place to tackle the outbreak of COVID 19 will affect them financially.
Brighton & Hove is a caring city and has already done much to respond to the current crisis.
We’ve been working with a number of partners across the city to lead a response to the various challenges resulting from the spread of COVID-19 and the responses from central government.
We will use all resources currently available to us to support people in hardship and will consider how to deploy the council’s share of the national £500m hardship fund.
As a council, we’re committed to preventing homelessness and supporting residents who may be struggling to pay their rent to keep their homes at this difficult time and beyond.
We very much welcome the government’s announcement that no-one in private rented accommodation should be evicted during this time.
This will give us more time to help residents resolve matters or find alternative accommodation.
We are also actively seeking the support of partners to work together to prevent eviction and homelessness of renters across Brighton & Hove.
As part of that, I’d like to take this opportunity to ask all private landlords in the city to do all they can to help tenants who cannot pay their rent due to the economic impact of the situation.
Our housing early intervention team can help resolve problems to support tenants and landlords, so please do get in touch if you’re facing any difficulties.
Any of our tenants unable to pay their pay their rent will be supported by the council. No council tenants will be evicted because they are unable to pay the rent.
Our income management team will help any council tenant struggling to pay their rent. You can find details of how to contact them on our help to pay rent page for council tenants.
We have also been working on plans to support those who are homeless and rough sleeping by identifying accommodation for anyone who needs to self-isolate.
We’ve shared this information is with our partners working with us to support this very vulnerable group.
We are also securing additional accommodation to make sure anyone who needs it will have somewhere safe to stay.
We are working with other agencies to support and encourage people to claim welfare benefits wherever possible, including Council Tax Reduction.
We would encourage anyone in financial difficulty to contact our Council Tax team immediately using our online form.
Councillor Gill Williams
Chair of Housing
