According to the council, in 2012 the region’s three homeless hostels were “bursting”.
There were 200 households considered to be in desperate need and 30 households in bed and breakfast accommodation, costing the local authority £750,000 a year.
But months after implementing a new strategy, the council’s team had emptied one of the hostels, reduced the priority list to single figures, slashed the cost of B&B placements to zero and handed a £250,000 saving back to the council.
Eight years after the new strategy was introduced, the housing department is preventing and relieving 350 households from becoming homeless every year.
The department has also gone from spending £1 million a year on B&B provision to having a spend of zero.