UNCERTAINTY remain over plans for a homeless health hub at St Stephen’s church hall in Bournemouth.

After a three-hour examination of a BCP Council cabinet decision to go ahead with the project, council leader Drew Mellor says the authority remains committed to buying the building and working with partners to set the centre up.

He promised the council will limit costs to £800,000 and says if it does not gain adequate assurances from those who will operate the facility the authority will walk away.

Cllr Mellor claims it is better for the council to buy the building and for a partner organisation, or partners, or a new Community Interest Company, to operate it  – mainly because they will have better access to funding and attract services in kind.

Opposition councillors have questioned why costs have risen, some claim by 50 per cent in a year, and why, if the proposition was so attractive, it had not been achieved before now, with another organisation taking the lead.

Cllr Vikki Slade said she wondered why the council leadership seemed so determined to buy the church hall, claiming it had not looked at commercial alternatives.

Cllr Lesley Dedman said she was convinced the building, which needs extensive work, including a new roof, was the wrong location for the service and would remain “a white elephant”. It was also claimed the site has a potential problem with a retaining wall.

Others probed why such a large town centre building was needed when there are less than 30 registered street homeless across the whole council area, although it was acknowledged that a far greater number were likely to already be sofa surfing, sleeping in cars, or were at risk of homelessness.

The special overview and scrutiny committee was told that no money had changed hands with the church although there was expected to be a 25-year clause in the sale contract which would give the church 25 per cent of any rise in value of the site, should the council later sell it on.

Cllr Vikki Slade said many people though the only reason the council was so interested in the hall was because the site could eventually be developed for high end flats.

But the council leader said the objective was solely to help people suffering from homelessness who needed support, which fitted with the aim of getting the council homeless rates down to zero.

Housing brief holder Cllr Karen Rampton said the site was already being used for homeless people and was somewhere which was close to the town centre, but discrete, and not off-putting for those who needed help.

She said that with costs of homelessness put at between £14,000 and £21,000 per person, per year, the use of the centre, with all professionals working together, represented good value for money and was being widely welcomed by both those working with homeless people and the general public.

Cllr Slade questioned whether the likely number of users of the centre, compared to the cost of purchase and the undisclosed costs of running it, was proportionate to the number of people likely to be helped.

She claimed that Cabinet had not taken this into account and had ignored officer advice about value for money. She said there was also no evidence that it had consulted with homeless people about what they might want, given that there are other facilities, including the homeless bus, which serves their needs. She also complained that much of the decision making had been taken behind closed doors.

Cllr Mellor conceded that the Cabinet discussion could have been more open but said that parts of the process were commercially sensitive.

“Advice was clearly taken and all the options were looked at…this is a priority area for us and our partners and will support our investment in the town centre, this is a permanent asset which will continue to deliver for us and our partners,” he said

Later he told the committee: “There is an absolute willingness for partners to buy into the vision…we have got the community ready to go and tackle this problem in a way we have never tackled it before if we can unlock this building….we have got committed people ready to do it and we believe we should use our capital to unlock it.”

The overview and scrutiny committee decided not to call in the Cabinet decision fearing it would delay the project and have asked for officers to investigate alternative sites while the process of finding a partner to head-up the centre continues. It has also asked for a full break down of project costs.