Thanet council’s homelessness RISE service could be moving to a new property if it is agreed to go ahead with a £2.87m conversion project which would also provide 11 temporary accommodation flats.
Proposals are to reconfigure 38-40 Grosvenor Place, Margate to create the one-bed properties for temporary accommodation (TA) as well as providing the permanent base for RISE which would include sleeping accommodation for up to eight people.
RISE would move out of its current base at the former refuge site in Edgar Road, Cliftonville, where it has been since the latter part of 2023.
A report to councillors says: “The anticipated cost of the conversion and refurbishment is £2.87m. It is proposed to complete the project in two phases.
“The first phase will be the conversion of the single storey extension to enable the relocation of the RISE project.
“The second phase will be the conversion and refurbishment of the remainder of the building to provide 11 self-contained flats. Both proposals are subject to planning approval.”
Last December Thanet council approved plans to build/buy circa 170 properties for temporary accommodation at a cost of f £38.762m with the aim of ending the need to place households in accommodation outside of the district.
The current building being used by RISE was a temporary arrangement and is no longer suitable. The building to be converted in Grosvenor Place is owned by the council and was previously occupied by the Probation Service.
RISE (Rough Sleeping, Intervention, Support & Empowerment) is funded by the government and is a multi-agency partnership between Thanet District Council, Forward Trust, Serveco, Department for Work and Pensions and Invicta Health CIC.
Its service helps those who find themselves rough sleeping or at risk of rough sleeping.
Council-owned temporary accommodation includes Foy House in Margate which has had 27 households pass through its doors since December 2022.
In Grosvenor Place the first part of the project would be the conversion of the single storey extension to provide 8 bedrooms with shared kitchen, bathing and laundry facilities, plus office space for RISE staff.
Following this a planning application will be submitted to convert the remaining part of the building into the temporary accommodation flats.
The conversion and refurbishment of the extension for the RISE service has an estimated cost of £580k which will be funded with a contribution of £318k from the government grant to the RISE service and £262k of General Fund borrowing, supported by the rent and housing benefit income from the eight rooms. bedspaces.
The total cost, including the 11 flats, is approximately £2.87m.
The proposal will be discussed by councillors on the scrutiny committee next Tuesday (March 11).
Thanet council plans to spend £38,762,000, across the financial years 2025/26 and 2026/27 to provide up to 170 new homes for households living out of area in temporary accommodation.
The council has already bought, or is in the process of buying, new properties specifically for people in need of temporary homes in a bid to keep down costs to third-party providers and reduce the need to send people out of district.
These include Foy House in Margate, a former guesthouse in Truro Road, Ramsgate which is undergoing works; 11 homes from developer Vistry at Westwood Point which are four two-bedroom properties and seven three-bedroom properties and six flats in Margate Road, Ramsgate.
The 170 proposed properties would be in addition to these and will be specifically for households that are currently living out of the area in temporary accommodation.
Nice job TDC
What will happen to the place in Edgar Road then? Didn’t Thanet Council purchase that at great cost to the taxpayers for the same purpose?
No, the oasis building was bought ( grossly overpriced given the state of the place) to be used initially by Rise and then converted into housing ( not sure if that’s for the councils socialchousing stock or part of the temporary housing plans).
The sooner it’s current use ends the better, though it’ll just be transferring the associated issues to another part of the town.
Will the council do something about the state of the road? We already have nappies and literal faeces and rubbish littering the street from the other HMOs. It’s meant to be a conservation area but looks like an open sewer on some days. This will only make it worse. Sadly people have no respect and literally sh!t on their own doorsteps.