A HOUSING support service received over 8,000 calls from people who were either homeless or believed they faced the threat of homelessness during the pandemic.

The calls were made to Housing Options, a Bradford Council run service that offers housing advice and support.

Later today the Council's Corporate Scrutiny Committee will be given a report on poverty in the Bradford District.

It is a report usually presented to the committee annually, but this will be the first to take in the impact of Covid 19 and lockdown on the District's poor.

The report says: "the most vulnerable groups have not only faced the highest sickness and mortality rates, they have also borne the costs of the wider economic, educational, social and cultural impacts of the pandemic. This has deepened the challenges we were already facing."

At the start of the pandemic the "Everyone's In" programme was launched to provide temporary housing for the homeless. The service would include support to find more permanent housing.

'Shameful' that 30 per cent of Bradford children live in poverty

The report to the committee says that through this scheme the 435 people were supported off the street.

Of these 283 were helped to move on to more permanent housing.

The report details the measures taken to reduce poverty during the pandemic, including:

  • 3,000 laptops were handed to pupils to support home learning
  • A tuition programme was developed for 600 Year 11 students
  • 23,000 young people on free school meals were provided with sporting activities over Summer
  • £3.7m was invested in Skills House - a training scheme to help the unemployed get the skills needed to get back to work
  • Investment of national grants into suicide prevention schemes, improving public mental health, reducing obesity, focusing on inequalities and vulnerable communities.

It also says a "poverty proofing the school day" pilot will be started in 22 schools this month.

The committee will be told: "The impact of, and response to, the pandemic has created a new poverty landscape.

"The pandemic has deepened existing inequalities, highlighted emerging ones such as digital exclusion and a debt crisis, and resulted in a wide range of strategies and policies being renewed and redeveloped."

The committee meets in City Hall at 5pm today.