A COUNCIL scheme offering homeless families in Fareham a £1,500 incentive to move to the north has been met with mixed feelings from experts.

The year-long pilot scheme launched by council housing chiefs will see families offered the cash sum to move to rented social housing in cities as far away as Liverpool and Middlesbrough, as reported in yesterday's Daily Echo.

However, while Fareham homeless workers agree with the scheme in principle, concerns have been raised that moving people to a new area will not always solve their problems in the long term.

Steve Dent, chairman of the Friends of the Homeless in Fareham and Gosport charity, said homeless people and families have often built up support with familiar mentors, which they would inevitably lose by moving.

"I'm not sure that this isn't just a case of moving homelessness around the country," he said. "I work with homeless people on a regular basis and most of them want to stay in the area they are from because they have family ties and friends here.

"Many people have built up a support net of people helping them who can talk to them about their situation and know their history. I would be worried that although the scheme would see them in a new home they could find that a week or month down the line that it is not working out for them and they don't have the familiar faces there to help that they had before."

Under the pilot scheme, housing officers would help six families find somewhere appropriate to live in authorities that had social housing to spare. The £1,500 would help them with the cost of moving and connecting to utilities.

Councillor Ernest Crouch, Fareham housing chief, said if the scheme was successful he would plough more money into it next year.

Fareham Community Centre chairman Audrey Sitch criticised the move, stating that the money would be better spent on people within the community.

However, Two Saints Housing Association chief Simon Mantle, who oversaw the opening of the Gosport Road homeless hostel in Fareham last year, said moving to another region was a risk some families would be willing to take.

"I support this scheme in principle but there must not be any element of compulsion in it - people must be able to make their own choices," he said.