ZERO evictions for rent arrears is among the goals of a new team bidding to get to grips with housing issues in the Basingstoke borough.

A new housing partnership board has been formed of councillors, council officers and representatives of housing associations, the health service, Citizens Advice Bureau and social services who will help formulate a homelessness and housing strategy for the borough. One of its priorities is to prevent homelessness arising from rent arrears.

Board member Andrew Cobb, the council's strategic director, said: "Our most recent figures show that the main housing associations in the borough evict something in the region of 60 tenants a year for rent arrears. About five a month is the maximum. But none of these are vulnerable people."

Cabinet member for housing, health and homelessness, Cllr Laura James said: "We want to work to prevent this from happening. We want everyone involved to sign up to a new protocol - a new way of working. We want to tackle the problem before people get so far behind with their rent.

"I am committed to reducing it totally. We want to prevent people from being evicted - that is what we are working towards. This is one of the things we are doing to tackle homelessness."

Cllr James explained that ways of tackling homelessness included identifying vulnerable people and training and educating them in the basic skills required to maintain a tenancy. The aim is also to speed up the process of obtaining housing benefit.

Cllr James said: "Nationally, we think what we are doing is quite unique. Under the Government's new Homelessness Act we have to have a housing strategy in place by next July. We are ahead of the game in the work we are doing.

"The emphasis of the act is going to be the prevention of homelessness. We are already as a borough with our partners looking at how we can deal with this."