A COUPLE from Bude are stepping up the campaign to save their accommodation service for local homeless people — after Cornwall Council severed their contract to provide the facility, writes Suzanne Cleave.

Steve and Norma Shaw have run Kisauni, on Downs View, for over five years. The couple took the business on as a regular bed and breakfast, but around four and a half years ago, their son became ill, and they needed to look for other alternatives to their business.

At the time, there was a government directive for councils to find alternatives to standard bed and breakfasts for homeless people.

They toyed with the idea of selling the property, but thought that they would give the new scheme a go.

They contacted the former North Cornwall District Council with their proposal and told the officers that they wanted to try something different.

The couple decided they would put a fridge and microwave upstairs so that the homeless people wouldn't have to go out to eat, and they also decided that they would stop taking in regular tourists.

Steve admits that they were a little scared at the prospect of taking in homeless people, and added: "When you say 'homeless,' people tend to think of a drunk on a bench."

However, the council snapped the proposal up, and gave the couple a three month trial.

Their aim, as Steve explained, was to "get these people back on their feet as soon as possible and out of the system."

They were able to offer accommodation to couples, families, people on their own — with most of them being local people from the Bude area, who, for a number of reasons, had become homeless.

Steve and Norma were happy with the council's three-month rolling contract, and prior to the unification of the council, they contacted the then leader of Cornwall County Council, David Whalley, who is from Bude, to inquire as to what would happen when it becomes a unitary authority.

The new council came into force in April, and a month later they received, out of the blue, a letter from Cornwall Council informing them that the contract would only run for another three months, and after that time they would have to run it as a standard bed and breakfast.

The letter, from Gill Avis, the Senior Homelessness and Advice Officer at Cornwall Council, said: "I regret that following the formation of the new unitary authority, Cornwall Council, we are no longer able to continue with the room retention arrangement you have had with the former NCDC.

"This is due to the need to bring all of the policies, procedures and financial arrangements of the former county council and six district councils into line, to make the most efficient use of our resources."

The letter continued: "I am therefore serving you three months' notice from the date of this letter to end our arrangement with you to retain the three rooms at Kisauni.

"Of course we would still hope that you would be happy to accept homeless households on case by case bed and breakfast basis, if and when the need for accommodation in your area arose.

"I should like to take this opportunity to thank you both for the help and support you have given to the homelessness team at North Cornwall and to our customers over the past three years."

The couple — who have spent around £10,000 bringing the accommodation up to various regulations — were shocked at the letter and started gathering support to fight the council's decision.

Steve said: "These people are Bude people. If somebody becomes homeless in Bude, they should be put in a place where they can stay near their family and friends. There's still a high percentage of people from Bude that become homeless and they chuck them out of the area.

"We don't take in tourists. We help our guests and we try and juggle our lives around to help. It helps build them up to get them back in the community. We're part of the community. We must have had about 100 people through here. It works. We're struggling to survive and all we're saying is keep it going."

A petition has been started and there is a campaign page on the social networking site, Facebook (type in 'Bude service under threat'). Steve and Norma have urged as many people as possible to sign the petition or leave comments on the website.

See this week's 'Post' for the full story.