Sevenoaks council to consult on new homelessness strategy as housing register reaches 1,142

Sevenoaks District Council will consult residents on a new five-year homelessness strategy from 13 July to 21 August. Its housing register now holds 1,142 households. Here is what the plan and the figures show.

Sevenoaks District Council is set to ask residents for their views on a new five-year homelessness strategy, with a public consultation due to run from 13 July to 21 August 2026. The draft went to the council’s Cabinet on Tuesday 7 July, which was asked to approve it for consultation before the final version returns to Full Council for adoption on 1 December. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review, Cabinet 7 July 2026)

The strategy, which sits with Cllr Perry Cole, the council’s Portfolio Holder for Housing and Health, sets out how the council will try to prevent people losing their homes and how it will house those who do. It replaces the 2023 to 2028 version that Full Council adopted on 21 February 2023, and it has been rewritten to take in the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and the Government’s new National Plan for Homelessness. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review)

Why the council is rewriting the strategy now

Every local housing authority has to publish a homelessness and rough sleeper strategy at least once every five years, so a refresh was due. This one has been reshaped by two changes in the law and policy. The Renters’ Rights Act, in force since 1 May 2026, has abolished Section 21 “no fault” evictions and moved private tenants onto assured periodic tenancies, and it puts a new duty on the council to investigate and enforce where landlords do not fix hazards. Alongside it, the Government’s National Plan for Homelessness pushes councils towards earlier intervention and closer working with health and welfare services. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review)

The strategy keeps the three themes of the last one: prevention, meaning helping residents before they reach crisis; intervention, the support given once someone is homeless; and sustainable solutions, longer-term housing options for vulnerable households and rough sleepers. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review)

What the figures show

The council’s own review sets out the scale of demand. It reports that the number of households approaching the council for homelessness help has fallen from 105 a month in February 2023, when the last strategy was adopted, to an average of 89 a month in 2025 to 2026. The council attributes the drop to earlier intervention work that stops a formal homelessness case being triggered in the first place. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review)

Chart by Sevenoaks Online

The pressure on social housing is heavier. The council says its housing register held 1,142 live applications, and that it had received 2,640 applications to join the register since April 2025. Against that demand, it let 251 social homes in 2025 to 2026, about 21 a month, broadly in line with recent years. The report also notes that only 29 units of social housing have been delivered across the whole Sevenoaks District since 2019, which it says lengthens waiting times and adds to the cost of temporary accommodation. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review)

The five most common reasons people approach the council, according to the review, are domestic abuse; friends or family no longer willing to accommodate them; the end of a private rented tenancy; having no fixed abode; and a non-violent relationship breakdown. Domestic abuse and related harassment made up 16 per cent, or 12, of approaches in November 2025; of those 12, five were from people already living in the district and seven came from outside it, which the council links to duties introduced by the Domestic Abuse Act. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review)

The pressures the council names

The review is candid about what is making the job harder. It points to the gap between Local Housing Allowance rates and actual rents, and to the fact that the housing benefit subsidy for temporary accommodation is still capped at 90 per cent of the 2011 Local Housing Allowance rate, which does not cover what the council now pays for nightly emergency rooms. It notes that all Kent authorities are competing for the same accommodation, pushing more placements outside the district, and that the housing association Golding Homes is focusing on Maidstone and withdrawing from areas including Sevenoaks. The council also records that, over the past three years, housing staff have faced rising verbal abuse, physical threats and in some cases racism from customers, and now have access to counselling support. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review)

On the other side of the ledger, the council lists work it says is helping: a Sevenoaks Landlords Hub that now has 149 registered landlords, a Changing Spaces scheme that helped 32 households downsize before it ended in September 2025, and £1.3m of Local Authority Housing Fund money towards temporary and affordable homes. It also flags a rural exception housing scheme completed at Millbrook, Bough Beech, near Chiddingstone, the first such scheme in the district since 2012. (Sevenoaks District Council, Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Strategy Review)

What happens next

If the Cabinet approved the draft on 7 July, the consultation runs from 13 July to 21 August 2026 through surveys, meetings and focus groups with councillors, partners and residents. The results then go back to the council’s Housing and Health Advisory Committee on 6 October and to Cabinet on 20 October, before Full Council is asked to adopt the final strategy on 1 December 2026. (Sevenoaks District Council, Cabinet agenda, 7 July 2026)

What it means for you

If you are worried about losing your home, you do not need to wait for the strategy. The council runs a free housing advice service and asks people to come forward as early as possible, because the earlier it knows, the more it can do to prevent an eviction. You can find the routes to help, including the housing advice drop-in and the HERO service for benefits and budgeting, on the council’s homelessness and finding a home pages, or by calling the housing advice team.

The consultation from 13 July is the point at which residents, tenants, landlords and community groups can shape the priorities in the strategy, so it is worth a look if housing in the district matters to you. The full report and its figures are published with the Cabinet agenda for 7 July. The wider question of where new homes will go is being decided separately through the council’s draft Local Plan; we set out the proposed sites and housing numbers in our report on the revised Sevenoaks Local Plan. For how housing growth feeds through to local bills, see our guide to Sevenoaks council tax bands, and to follow building work near you, our explainer on Sevenoaks planning applications.

Sources

Image: Sevenoaks District Council Offices by Richard Kelly, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.