A NEW privatised homelessness service will have up to 20 per cent fewer beds than the one it is replacing despite rising numbers of rough sleepers.

Councillors agreed to the formation of new accommodation and support homelessness service which would see the total number of beds available in the city reduced from 443 to potentially as low as 356.

Green councillor Phelim MacCafferty said that he could not “in all conscience” agree to a new scheme that would reduce beds.

But council officers said the plan would help people stuck living in halfway hostels for years to move on to more permanent homes.

The new service is the first overhaul in nine years and is designed to cope with increasing numbers of single rough sleepers and especially increasing numbers of homeless people with complex needs.

The plans include putting out to tender a number of council-run services including New Steine Mews Hotel and The West Pier Project, both hostels which attract repeated complaints of anti-social behaviour.

The in-house services affected currently employ almost 40 full-time equivalent jobs.

Issues in the current system that have been highlighted are a lack of flexibility, the need for women-only accommodation and a lack of support for homeless people suffering from substance misuse and trauma.

New models of peer support for vulnerable women and a specialist service for older rough sleepers with addiction issues are planned,

Green councillor Phelim MacCafferty said: “I speak to my Brunswick residents and they want homeless situations to be resolved.

“I can’t then in all conscience vote for reducing the number in the city that are meant to be helping homeless people.

“I also don’t believe that turfing out these services [to the private/voluntary sector] is the way to deal with this problem.”

Acting adult social care director Brian Doughty said under the current system people were getting stuck in hostels for years.

He said: “The new proposal where necessary will move people through into greater independence and into more permanent accommodation, this model will achieve it.”

He added that under the new scheme, homeless people would no longer have their needs assessed in shop doorways as was currently the case but in a “safe space” within 72 hours.

Labour councillor Emma Daniel also told the meeting that one way the council would not be looking to resolve the homeless situation in the city with the onset of winter would be to allow them to take residence in empty buildings claiming that any move would be unsafe.

New services are expected to come into operation from May to November next year.