We have a legal obligation to help those who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, and to offer them appropriate, safe and secure accommodation and additional support, based on their housing needs. Like many other local authorities across the country, we've seen a rise in people who are seeking help because they're homeless. 

This means that either we have to place homeless single people in costly and unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation, or we have to rehouse them in social housing or private rented accommodation before they're ready to manage a tenancy, which can often be hard for them to keep up in the long term without significant support. 

One of our goals is to help people find more stable housing options. To do this, we need to provide supported accommodation that gives people the appropriate help to become self-reliant, and the ability to successfully move to more permanent accommodation.  

We don't currently have enough supported housing to accommodate those who are legally homeless and eligible for this type of accommodation. Therefore, we need to look at how we can increase our temporary housing provision. 

Proposed plans for Tannery East in Shrewsbury 

As part of our temporary housing programme, we're considering using The Tannery East Building, St Austins’ Street, Shrewsbury to create 61 units of accommodation as self-contained supported housing one-bedroom units for single homeless people who are legally homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. 

The proposal will bring a number of benefits to individuals, the community and the local authority, such as reducing the use of inappropriate and high-cost bed and breakfast accommodation.   

Accommodating homeless households in B&B/hotel accommodation isn't ideal due to the lack of space and facilities, and the difficulty in providing support to them in that setting, in addition to the high cost this represents to the council. 

Offering temporary housing with extra and tailored support will help to overcome obstacles to living independently in the community and in the home, and help individuals to move on to longer-term housing and into work, education or training. These plans will depend on cabinet approval and planning approval. Local communities will have the opportunity to comment on the proposals during the planning application stage. 

Updates about the Tannery East temporary accommodation programme will be posted on our newsroom as and when plans progress.

We've created a list of frequently asked questions about the project. If you have any questions or comments about the Tannery East proposals, you can contact the project team by email at newtemporaryhousing@shropshire.gov.uk.