Report to:	Lead Member for Adult Social Care and Health
Date of meeting:	15^th July 2022
By:	Director of Adult Social Care and Health
Title:	Homes for Ukraine - Payments to District and Borough Councils
Purpose:	To seek the Lead Member’s s approval to revise the payment arrangements to Borough and District Councils in respect of the activities they are undertaking to support the Homes for Ukraine scheme in East Sussex

RECOMMENDATIONS

The Lead Member for Adult Social Care and Health is recommended to:

agree to continuing to pay District and Borough Councils for ‘host’ payments under the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme upon receipt of an invoice;
agree to continuing to pay District and Borough Councils for ‘guest’ payments under the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme upon receipt of an invoice;
approve upfront grant funding being provided to each of the District and Borough Councils, with the amount of each grant calculated in accordance with paragraph 2.7 of this report;
delegate authority to the Director of Adult Social Care to agree the terms of the grant agreements and to take all other steps necessary to implement the recommendations in this report.

1 Background

1.1 District and Borough Council partners have been supporting the Home for Ukraine (HfU) scheme since the scheme was formed in March 2022. Their involvement has become more active recently as they have taken over the host and guest payment schemes and are responsible for supporting homelessness applications and the rematching process. Data shows that hosts opening their homes to refugees are more likely to be located in the more rural areas and in smaller communities of East Sussex across Wealden, Rother, and Lewes District, with fewer people, at this stage, in the main conurbations of Hastings and Eastbourne.

1.2 The government is providing funding at a rate of £10,500 per refugee, to councils, to enable them to provide support to families to rebuild their lives and to fully integrate into communities; this funding is not ringfenced. This funding includes a £200 welcome payment provided to each refugee who arrives in East Sussex. The government is also providing funding for councils to administer optional ‘thank you’ payments at the rate of £350 per hosting household per month. This funding is ringfenced.

1.3 Funding is being provided to meet all associated costs including providing services and meeting administrative costs. These services include homelessness assistance provided by the Districts and Borough Councils.

1.4 There continues to be a need for a rapid response by East Sussex County Council (ESCC) and partner agencies and organisations which continue to be challenged by Covid and other system pressures. There is a significant challenge to planning the response in a context where national guidance is evolving quickly, the number of refugees expected to arrive is increasing and uncertain and there are a multitude of complex problems to be resolved such as housing, community integration and long-term accommodation and employment opportunities. ESCC staff and partner services have been working at capacity for three months on HfU, on top of existing priorities, with this likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Mitigations include applying HfU funds to bring in additional staff and the development of more sustainable staffing models.

2 Supporting information

2.1 Government guidance is clear in respect of county councils supporting their district and borough colleagues with up-front costs. Districts and Borough Councils will incur costs and should be funded accordingly. Costs have been incurred by District and Borough Councils for some time now in supporting the scheme, providing homelessness and rematching support and, more recently, making host and guest payments. The government guidance ‘Homes for Ukraine: guidance for councils’ sets out as follows:

· “In England, in two tier areas, both districts and counties will have access to funds for their relevant duties under the scheme. Having engaged closely with representatives from the sector to determine the most appropriate payment mechanism, funding for both the £10,500 tariff and the £350 ‘thank you’ payments will be provided to upper tier councils.

· However, in two tier areas it will be a condition of the funding that councils must agree a plan locally to:

1. make prompt payments to lower tier authorities in relation to all the services which they provide to guests under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme, during the full duration of the scheme, including for services such as homelessness assistance for which lower tier authorities are responsible; and

2. make an immediate payment to lower tier councils in relation to any upfront costs.”

2.2 An offer has been made previously to District and Borough Councils to provide upfront funding to cover costs of payments, administration and to build some capacity to support the programme. This offer was declined in favour of invoicing for costs incurred. However, the approach of invoicing has created delays in resourcing their activities appropriately, leading to negative impacts on hosts and guests.

2.3 In recent meetings with the District and Borough Councils, we have discussed the issues of capacity and the potential for advance grant funding to increase the resilience within each organisation and reduce the impact on delivery of the scheme’s objectives through the provision of increased resources.

2.4 As previously stated, the government grant is intended to support District and Borough Councils’ activities and it is recommended we do this in two ways:

Districts and Boroughs to invoice for a proportion of costs incurred such as host and guest payments;
Grant funding to be provided in advance to enable District and Borough Councils to support their activities appropriately through increased capacity and resilience.

2.5 District and Borough Councils are administering the host and guest payments. The funding for host payments is ringfenced. The number of payments to be processed, with the associated cost, is set out in the table below:

District/Borough	Number of hosts to be processed for payment based on current arrivals at 29/06/22	Cost £350 per host per month
Eastbourne	50	£17,500
Lewes	96	£33,600
Hastings	37	£12,950
Rother	82	£28,700
Wealden	182	£63,700
Total	447	£156,450
NB: not all the above numbers are eligible for payment as of the date of this report

2.6 It is recommended that District and Borough Councils continue to invoice for these host payments as costs are incurred. Since early June, guest payments are also being made by Districts and Boroughs at £200 per person, the amount of money paid out is relatively low as the voluntary action groups distributed the majority of funds prior to the new system going live. It is recommended that Districts and Boroughs also continue to invoice for these guest payments.

2.7 It is recommended that a grant is paid to District and Boroughs in advance, calculated on a base payment of £75,000 plus the number of current arrivals, per District and Borough, at a rate of £150 per arrived individual; this would equate to the following:

D&B	Current arrivals at 29/06/2022	Base figure (£’000)	Total for £150 per arrival (£’000)	Total (£’000)
Eastbourne	108	£75	£16.2	£91.2
Lewes	208	£75	£31.2	£106.2
Hastings	83	£75	£12.45	£87.45
Rother	209	£75	£31.35	£106.35
Wealden	456	£75	£68.4	£143.4
Total	1,064	£375	£159.6	£534.6

2.8 Grant payments would be supported by Grant Agreements between the Council and each Borough and District Council. The Grant Agreements will clearly set out the purpose, expectations, deliverables and reporting requirements for the grant monies. This will ensure that ESCC is able to evidence and validate these third-party payments when submitting mandatory claims and reports to central government, as per the requirements set out in the grant determination letter received from the DLUHC on 30 June 2022.

2.9 The total payments contained within sections 2.5 and 2.7 of this report will be fully funded from the central government grant paid to ESCC in respect of the administration of the Homes for Ukraine scheme in East Sussex and not have any impact on the Council’s revenue budget

3 Conclusion and recommendations

3.1 District and Borough Councils are incurring cost due to administering payment systems to hosts and guests, managing homelessness cases and supporting rematching.

3.2 Significant delays have been experienced in setting up payments systems due to a lack of capacity and resilience within their staffing model.

3.3 Workload is increasing, and it is anticipated will continue to increase, given the current issues with relationship breakdown, rematching activity and homelessness applications. In order to be able to respond in a timely way moving forward, it is vital that the Borough and District Councils have the necessary capacity required to fulfil their part of the whole system response. It is therefore recommended that the Lead Member agrees to continue paying District and Borough Councils for host and guest payments upon receipt of an invoice for incurred costs, but agrees to make an advance grant payment, calculated as set out in paragraph 2.7 of this report, to each of the District and Borough Councils. Finally, the lead member is recommended to delegate authority to the Director of Adult Social Care and Health to agree the terms of each grant agreement and to take all such other steps as are necessary to give effect to the recommendations in this report.

MARK STAINTON

Director of Adult Social Care and Health

Contact Officer: Sean Ruth, Lead Officer - Homes for Ukraine

Tel. No. 07881 273746 Email: sean.ruth@eastsussex.gov.uk