Calls to turn former library into ‘super home’ for Southend’s homeless

Calls for a former library to be turned into a ‘super home’ to house Southend’s homeless have been branded ‘totally inappropriate’. Delaware House, at the junction of Maplin Way and Delaware Road in Shoebury, is being sold by Southend Council for £2.6m and has attracted interest from house developers.

But during a meeting on Thursday night, Steven Wakefield, independent councilor for Shoebury, suggested the site could be used as a large hostel to house homeless people in one place. The suggestion sparked a number of concerns from other councilors about the “concentration” of large numbers of homeless people in one place.

Mr Wakefield said: “The Maplin Way site has had a lot of work done on it and it has cost the council a lot of money to replace the doors and upgrade the site. We have a lot of hostels scattered around the city. It would be a better idea to bring all the dorms into one place except the women’s dorm.

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“It would be more cost effective to run that site with staff and then we can sell the existing hostel sites and make a better profit. The people we have in other housing would have somewhere to go where we have staff to manage them. It would be a better way and we would make a profit on our existing sites.”

At the meeting James Moyies, Tory councilor for West Shoebury, said he needed time “to recover from the suggestion of a super hostel in west Shoebury”.

After the meeting, he said: “It’s just completely inappropriate. The site is ideal for housing. It is at the center of many homes along Delaware Road and Maplin Way. It’s not a good place for a super hostel to bring all the potential challenges of putting people in a condensed area in the middle of West Shoebury.”

Delaware House previously housed a library on the first floor and a blood testing clinic on the ground floor, along with a nursery.
Anne Jones, councilor responsible for planning and housing, said: “The delivery of hostels does not sit solely with the council or South Essex Homes. And most of our pensions are with a provider that we take responsibility for homelessness. Concentration would be a very contentious issue.”