More than 100 homeless residents in Brighton & Hove City Council hostels received presents this Christmas after the council’s Health and Safety Team collected more than 600 donations to distribute. The gifts were restricted to warm clothing such as socks, scarfs, gloves, hats and underwear as well as toiletries, chocolates and sweets.
Local families are swapping their council homes to combat the government’s under occupation rule, with one family negotiating a seven-way swap before Christmas taking them from a 4-bed house in rural West Sussex to a 3-bed flat in central Brighton. More than 100 families have swapped their council homes this year freeing up their much-needed homes. The word is spreading with a number of council lead community ‘swap shops’ planned throughout the city after the success of the first event in 2013.
A new free money advice service for residents backed by Brighton and Hove City Council has been launched, called Moneyworks. The service is designed to help the most vulnerable in the city deal with debt, manage money better, and avoid unscrupulous loan sharks.
