East Devon District Council definitive 'No' to homeless hotel 'plan'

Plans for supporting homeless people in East Devon will not be amended to include new hotel accommodation in Exmouth, it was confirmed this week.

With numbers of homeless people housed in B&Bs at historically low levels anyway, EDDC bosses have rubbished allegations that the town’s new Premier Inn is being lined up to use for such a purpose.

NONSENSE

"Claims that plans are afoot for EDDC to ask Premier Inn to help house the homeless are fanciful nonsense," said Cllr Jill Elson, EDDC Cabinet Member for Sustainable Homes and Communities. "We have certainly not talked with Premier Inn about anything to do with this sensitive issue.

"I imagine some have seen news stories about hotels being used in this way elsewhere in the country and jumped to conclusions.  We have no plans to house homeless people from East Devon or anywhere else for that matter in such a prime seafront location."

PREVENTION

In the last 12 months, across all of East Devon’s seven towns, there have been just nine occasions where EDDC has housed homeless households in temporary B&B accommodation, at a cost of £34,761.  There has been a total of 699 days spent by homeless households in temporary accommodation across the district, the vast majority of this in ordinary privately-rented houses or flats.

"Our approach is quite clearly to work hard in many different ways to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place," continued Cllr Elson.  "While in the past in Exmouth we had a few properties used for B&B, we now no longer have them due to this prevention work."