Harbour Place (HP) opened in December 1996. The organisation is a registered charity (charity no. 1068647) and company limited by guarantee (company no. 3396688).

Clients who use the facility are primarily from the East and West Marsh wards of Grimsby. The East Marsh is ranked in the top 1% of most deprived wards in the country with a Super Output area ranking of 64. 25% of the resident population lives in neighborhoods ranked amongst the top 10% most deprived wards in the country (source National Statistics).

A key part of the project’s activities include, supporting and advocating on behalf of clients through signposting, referral and access to a wide range of statutory and voluntary sector agencies. A recent survey of new clients to HP identified 175 as being homeless or in temporary accommodation.

The project beneficiaries are the homeless and other vulnerable groups. The definition of ‘homeless’ is wide and varied and may represent people who live in hostels or in temporary supported housing accommodation. ‘Street homeless’ is used to refer to rough sleepers and others who may have somewhere to sleep at night (e.g. a friend’s house, hostel where they cannot stay throughout the day, or night shelter) but do not have anywhere to go during the day. Rough sleepers are a sub-set of the street homeless population. As with ‘homeless,’ vulnerability covers a wide spectrum of people, those who come into HP are the homeless, those with mental health, dual diagnosis issues, self harmers, the lonely the elderly, many of the people on low incomes and state benefits. From HP’s perspective the vast majority of its clients are vulnerable in one way or another.

The centre has received National Lottery funding since 2003 based upon delivering specific outcomes. Further, supporting the centres excellent reputation of delivering outcomes for the last six years was the five year funding from the BIG Lottery which covers nearly 50% of the centres overheads (January 2009 to December 2013). A key requirement for the Lottery panel was that the centre had to clearly demonstrate its ability to continue delivering smart outcomes relating to client employability skills, in depth housing advice and support, health and wellbeing together with supporting volunteering that will improve life skills and employment opportunities. The centre has been highly commended for its outcome based success over many years by the lottery.

HP has a team of 7 staff supported by 8 trustees and up to 18 volunteers. The decision making process is straightforward due to the nature and size of the management and staff team. The strategic management of the project is managed on a day-to-day basis by the Project Director who consults on a regular basis with the Board of Trustees. Monitoring of outcomes for the project is carried by the Project Co-ordinators on a daily basis and recorded in line with HP procedures.

49 Freeman Street is Harbour Place’s training and administration building. It is used to develop training to help people find volunteering and employment opportunities. Like the centre, this will primarily focus on the East and West Marsh. It  includes an art group and a job club and will run alongside the Harbour Place.

The community is very generous and often donates bric a brac to the centre, 49 Freeman street is then used to house a temporary shop in order to utilise fully our donations and to raise much needed funds for the centre.

On 3rd July we opened our doors overnight for the first time to rough sleepers in what we hope will become an essential part of our service. Our team work with over 30 rough sleepers on a regular basis, many sleeping under the stars on in dangerous squats. We wanted to try to give that crisis intervention, be able to get people off the streets for three nights a week initially but hopefully increasing to seven days a week after our pilot period. Nationally the rough sleeper numbers have increased by over 200% and in North Lincolnshire we are no different. Since March 2017 we have worked with in excess of 90 individual rough sleepers and have managed to accommodate 69.  Since the start of the night shelter we have supported 16 individuals. Out of the 16, we have managed to accommodate 6 of them. We feel that this will continue if we are able to give that intensive support not only during the day but through the night.