Almost triples in a year

also increasingly wanting working guarantors for anyone on benefits, particularly on Universal Credit.

At the social care, health and wellbeing scrutiny committee meeting on July 5 councillor Sonia Reynolds said: “If we lose registered social landlord housing and the access to it, it’s going to be a major concern for us.

“The grants are all going to provide affordable housing and that’s becoming less affordable.”

The local authority says it is working hard to try and prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

And the number of people prevented from becoming homeless has increased over the past year – in 2016-17, there were 55 people out of 89, with the number rising to 59 people out of 79 in 2017-18.

Ms O’Brien said: “We would like to see people coming to us at a much earlier stage so we can either help them maintain their tenancy with specialist support or, in some cases, give them financial support.

“We have a large floating support scheme run by The Wallich.

“We look to give people support when they are homeless as well but it becomes much harder due to the very high demand for support services such as mental health.”

She added: “Very often it is the clients we have which lead chaotic lifestyles that registered social landlords don’t want to accept due to their tenancy history, and this then makes it more likely for them to become homeless and have to apply for a change of circumstances in their benefits which now means they are transferred to Universal Credit. They all knock on from one to another.”

The council is also looking to begin a pilot based on Housing First, a model designed to provide open-ended support to long-term and recurrently homeless people who have high support needs.