A council audit in spring 2024 found 211 people in Stoke-on-Trent who were ready to move out of supported housing, and 26 with a suitable property lined up.
That one figure explains most of what is difficult about placing people in this city. The bottleneck is not the front door. It is the back door. People who no longer need supported housing cannot leave it, so the beds behind them do not free up, and the person you are trying to place today waits.
This page is for the people making those placements. It sets out what we provide, what we have learned about which placements hold, and how to refer.
The local picture
Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2025–2030 followed a review completed in September 2024. Around it sit the following:
- 3,007 homelessness enquiries in 2023/24, up 28 per cent on the previous year
- Over 3,000 households on the housing register, up 38 per cent
- 846 households placed in hotels during 2023/24, including 203 families with children, at an average stay of 16 nights
- A rough sleeping snapshot of 35 people in November 2024 — the highest recorded in the city since the count began in 2010, up from 25 the year before
- Commissioned supported housing capacity of 492 accommodation-based units and 126 floating support units
- Just under 1,500 people moving into supported housing in 2023/24, a quarter of them under 25, against 1,789 people on supported housing waiting lists
The council’s homelessness hub, Hanley Connects, supports over 900 people a month, and 74 new bed spaces for rough sleepers were created under the previous strategy. The pressure is not for want of effort. It is that demand has grown faster than the accommodation behind it.
What we provide
Our properties are shared accommodation, normally two to four bedrooms. Each resident has their own room and shares the kitchen and bathroom with a small number of other people. Every house is:
- Fully furnished, so a resident can move in the same day without having to find furniture
- Inclusive of all bills — gas, electricity and water are covered, so there are no utility accounts for a resident to set up, fall behind on, or be cut off from
- Available with no deposit. A service charge applies and the amount depends on the property, but there is nothing for a resident to find up front
Those three things remove most of the practical barriers that stop a placement happening on the day you need it to happen. Nobody is waiting on a deposit, a white goods delivery or a utility account before they have a bed.
Where we fit in Stoke’s current arrangements
From 1 April 2026 the council has commissioned its homelessness prevention and rough sleeping services under a new framework worth around £13.55 million, running to March 2029 with the option to extend to 2031. Honeycomb Charitable Services holds the main Homelessness Prevention and Rough Sleeping Pathway Service, YMCA North Staffordshire holds the young people and teenage parents network, and Gingerbread Family Support holds the young homeless families service.
We are an accommodation provider rather than a commissioned support provider. In practice that means we work alongside those organisations rather than in competition with them — they hold the support, we hold the housing, and a placement works when the two are properly joined up. If you are delivering under that framework and you need accommodation to place into, that is the conversation we want to have.
Who refers to us
We work alongside registered providers and housing associations, and take referrals from:
- The council’s Housing Solutions Service and the Rough Sleeper Outreach Service
- Public authorities using the Duty to Refer, submitted through Housing Jigsaw
- Commissioned support providers working under the council’s framework
- Probation — Stoke and Staffordshire sit within the Staffordshire and Stoke Probation Delivery Unit — and providers delivering the Community Accommodation Service Tier 3 (CAS3), which funds up to 84 nights for eligible prison leavers from the first night of release
- Hospital discharge and mental health teams, including assertive outreach
- The Changing Futures programme, for people facing multiple disadvantage
- Domestic abuse services, including the Sanctuary and Safe Accommodation Service
- Drug and alcohol treatment services
- Young Person Housing Needs Officers and care leaver teams
Tell us everything, and we will give you a straight answer
We assess every referral on its own facts, against the specific house and the people already living in it. What we need from you is the complete picture — risk history, previous evictions, arrears, conditions attached, support that is in place and support that is not.
We would far rather have the whole picture and say no than have half of it and say yes to a placement that fails. A refusal costs you a phone call. A failed placement costs your client their accommodation, and it makes the next one harder to arrange. If we cannot hold a placement, we will tell you quickly and tell you why.
Five things that decide whether a placement holds
None of these are complicated. All of them get skipped when a placement is made at four o’clock on a Friday.
1. The risk picture is complete
The most common cause of early breakdown is a referral where something was left out — usually because the referrer feared that full disclosure meant a refusal. It is the single most expensive thing that can go wrong, and it is entirely avoidable.
2. The person has seen the place
Someone moved into a house they have never visited, in a part of the city they do not know, away from their support network and their script, will frequently be gone inside a month. Where it can be arranged, we want the person to see the room and meet whoever manages the property before they move. It costs an extra day and it changes how long placements last.
3. Support starts the day the tenancy does
Transitional housing only works when accommodation and support arrive together. Where support is still being arranged at the point of placement, the first fortnight is when things come apart — benefit claim unmade, first appointment missed, arrears beginning.
Tell us who is providing support, how often, and who we contact when something changes. If it is not in place yet, say so and we will agree a realistic start date rather than taking the placement and hoping.
4. Housing benefit is settled before the move, not after
Where accommodation is provided with care, support or supervision by a registered provider, housing costs are generally met through Housing Benefit rather than the Universal Credit housing element. Getting that right at the outset is the difference between a stable placement and one that collapses into arrears by week six.
Because our properties are fully furnished and include all bills, there are no separate utility arrears building up alongside the rent — which is one of the quieter reasons placements fail elsewhere. Our guide to exempt accommodation and who it is for sets out how the benefit position works.
5. There is a move-on plan at the point of referral
Given those figures — 211 ready to move on, 26 with somewhere to go — this is the one that matters most in Stoke. Transitional accommodation without a move-on plan becomes permanent accommodation by default, and then it is one less bed for the next person.
Tell us at referral what the intended next step is — the housing register, private rented, return to family, a different level of support — and roughly when. It shapes how we set the placement up, and it means we are working on move-on from week one rather than month nine.
We also support the principle behind the council’s Pre-eviction Protocol with supported housing providers, introduced in November 2023: where a placement is at risk, the right move is to flag it early rather than serve notice and hand the problem back to you.
A note on the Article 4 Direction and HMO controls
Stoke-on-Trent City Council announced on 8 October 2026 that a city-wide Article 4 Direction is due to come into force on 23 October 2026. It would remove the permitted development rights that currently allow a family home to be converted into a small HMO for three to six people without planning permission. A statutory consultation still has to run, with a further Cabinet report deciding whether to confirm the Direction, so it is worth watching for the confirmed position rather than assuming the detail is settled.
Alongside it the council has proposed a city-wide additional licensing scheme for smaller HMOs, and emerging Local Plan policy would refuse new HMOs where they would exceed 5 per cent of homes within a 50-metre radius, with ward-level caps on top. The council estimates around 2,000 HMOs in the city, roughly 1,500 of them small and currently unlicensed.
For referrers the practical consequence is straightforward. The supply of new small shared accommodation in Stoke is about to get tighter, not looser. Existing, properly managed provision becomes more valuable, and relationships with providers who intend to stay in the market are worth building now.
How to refer
Email us at [email protected] or call 0203 370 6999 and we will take the referral from there. Please have the following ready, because it lets us give you an answer rather than a holding reply:
- The support needs and the risk assessment, in full
- The benefit position, and whether a claim is already in place
- Who is providing support, how often, and the named contact
- The intended move-on route and a rough timescale
- Any conditions attached to the placement
If your client would rather make contact themselves, they can fill in the application form on our Tenants page.
Working with us
MKM Housing Ltd has provided shared and supported accommodation since 2020, operating across Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent and Coventry alongside registered provider partners. Read more about us, or get in touch.
Sources: Stoke-on-Trent City Council Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2025–2030; Stoke-on-Trent City Council Article 4 Direction announcement, 8 October 2026; Stoke-on-Trent City Council Homeless Prevention and Rough Sleeping Support Services contract award, February 2026; MHCLG rough sleeping snapshot, autumn 2024; local reporting on the council’s 2024 supported housing move-on audit.
