PLANS to tackle homelessness and rough sleepers with an extra £1.7million have been announced.

Haringey Council secured the money from the Department of Communities and Local Government Homelessness Prevention Programme.

It has been given a share of two separate grants as part of the North London Housing Partnership – the first being £917,500 for a prevention programme.

This will see a network of trailblazer areas established to provide early assistance and advice to households to prevent them from becoming homeless.

The North London Housing Partnership Programme also secured a Rough Sleeping Programme grant of £390,000.

This will help expand an existing programme, to provide more emergency accommodation for rough sleepers or people at immediate risk of sleeping on the streets.

Separately the council has also been awarded a Rough Sleeping Programme grant of £397,875.

This will fund a programme delivered by charity Thames Reach, to encourage voluntary and faith groups work with existing services, to share information and resoruces.

It will also pay for a project led by homeless charity St Mungo’s, to work with mental health, drug and alcohol services and North Middlesex Hospital to support rough sleepers.

This will enable the charity to work with the local community and with rough sleepers’ families and friends, to establish a Community Hosting service.

This will give them a safe place to go while the authority works to resolve their situation.

It will also ensure Haringey can appoint a dedicated Rough Sleeping Strategy and Monitoring Co-ordinator to work with North London authorities and the Greater London Authority to tackle homelessness.

Cllr Alan Strickland, Cabinet Member for Housing, Regeneration and Planning said: “We are determined to do more to prevent our residents becoming homeless and to better support those who do.

“Haringey’s Housing Strategy makes clear that we can’t tackle these issues alone, which is why we’re working closely with other boroughs and are pleased to have won this vital injection of new funding.

“It is not right that more and more people are finding themselves sleeping rough in 2017 and these new projects show our determination to do all we can to support residents in crisis.”