Housing & Homelessness

Rough sleeping in the London Borough of Sutton is not as high as inner London boroughs. However, we do have some who sleep rough and others who are living in Temporary Accommodation both in and out of the borough. These would be considered at risk of rough sleeping.

Sutton Community Works have contributed to discussions about rough sleeping and seeking to alleviate the problem in several ways over the years. We have been part of the rough sleeping forum since 2010 and through our work with Street Pastors and Foodbank have helped with emergency food, sleeping bags, and signposting to the relevant agencies.

In Jan 2019 we ran a pilot winter shelter that lasted for 31 days and we helped 6 guests into accommodation after the shelter in partnership with Encompass the housing team at Sutton Council.

We ran the shelter again in Jan 2020 for 63 nights and we had 16 guests and all who were eligible were helped into accommodation. We are still in touch with some of them post-shelter. We ran from 5 different church venues providing hot meals, a bed, emotional support, and signposting to external agencies such as DWP, Inspire, Sutton Uplift, see below.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 we were not able to run a shelter in 2021. However, we did run an Emergency Accommodation Project.

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We are running a Winter Homeless Shelter from Jan-Mar 2026 across 4 different church venues with referrals from the Council Housing and Homeless Team. We provide a warm welcome; a hot meal; sleeping on a warm camp bed; overnight stay and breakfast. We also seek to support guests into more settled accommodation. So far we have had five guests and one has already moved into more settled accommodation.

Well-Being Scheme

We partnered with Encompass [the LATC] of Sutton Council and a team of 6 of our volunteers called 109 single individuals living in temporary accommodation mainly outside the borough. We did this during the winter months from Dec-March 2021 and made 50 positive interventions making residents lives and living conditions better.

Rosehill Emergency Accommodation Project

We were offered a 10-bedroom B&B in Rosehill in December 2020 and were successfully in gaining funding in January 2021 from Homeless Link. The funding enabled us to pay a lease on the property from Feb to June inclusive and employ two full time trained housing professionals to support residents in successfully moving on to more settled accommodation.

Those who came to live in the property were placed in temporary accommodation during the government “everyone in “strategy in 2020. They would have been candidates for the Winter Shelter had it been able to run. We had 12 single men stay with us during the five months of the project and 9 were successfully moved on to more settled accommodation. Three have stayed on at the property under the management of the existing landlord.

We were pleased with the outcome of the project, and it gave us an opportunity to explore the possibility of running supported accommodation. We will be looking ahead to winter 2021 and seeing how we can serve those who are struggling with homelessness and rough sleeping.

Housing & Homelessness

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Well-Being Scheme

Rosehill Emergency Accommodation Project

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