Short-term fixes and long-term solutions to the temporary accommodation crisis

Posted: April 3, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bed and breakfast, Temporary accommodation | Tags: HCLG committee |Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

If anyone needs any reminding, two new reports reveal the depth and breadth of the crisis in temporary accommodation in England.

On Thursday the all-party Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee published the results of its inquiry into the ‘utterly shameful’ situation in a report that spells out the consequences for 164,000 children’s health, wellbeing, safety and education. 

The report reveals safeguarding risks including families with children ending up in the same temporary accommodation as strangers with a history of domestic violence or recently released prisoners. 

It highlights the huge costs of temporary accommodation (£2.3 billion and rising) and the consequences for local authorities but also raises serious questions about whether the legal framework and code of guidance are fit for purpose. 

And it raises issues ranging from the increasingly theoretical six-week legal limit families with children to be placed in bed and breakfasts(B&Bs) to use of multi-occupancy hostels that have the same shared kitchens and bathrooms but do not count as B&Bs to inadequate procedures for out-of-area placements.

To focus on just one of the knock-on effects, last week the Children’s Commissioner published research revealing a direct link between lack of a permanent home and a child’s performance at school. The more times a child moves home while at school the worse they do in their GCSEs.

Looking the exam results of children between Reception and Year 11, the research found that 65 per cent of those who lived in one home achieved five GCSE passes including English and Maths.

That proportion fell in pretty much a straight line to 50 per cent for children with three moves, 29 per cent with eight moves and just 11 per cent with 10 moves. 

These results are shocking if not entirely surprising given conditions in temporary accommodation and bed and breakfasts, what can be lengthy journeys to and from school and the psychological impact of so much insecurity.

When you consider that almost 17,000 families with children have been in temporary accommodation for more than five years and 60 per cent of those in London had been there for two years or more, the direct costs to the children themselves are obvious but there are wider costs to society too of tens of thousands of children not achieving their full potential. 

The big question, of course, is what can be done to fix the crisis and it’s one with extra urgency ahead of the spending review in June. 

In the short term, the answer has to include improving the quality and safety of temporary accommodation. 

The HCLG Committee makes a series of recommendations on this including formalised monitoring and notifications of out-of-area placements and updates to the code of guidance emphasising safeguarding risks and limits on the use of ‘non self-contained accommodation’, not just B&Bs. 

The MPs also call for more support for local authorities to acquire their own temporary accommodation, possibly including Section 106 stock that housing associations are reluctant to buy.

In the medium term, the government is promising answers in a homelessness strategy that will follow the spending review. 

But the MPs express frustration at lack of information from the Inter-Ministerial Group on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping.

So far it has not published any minutes or progress updates and it only met twice between November, when it was announced, and February, when the committee heard evidence. Unpromisingly, the Treasury missed the first meeting. 

The committee calls for more information and published updates on the group’s work and for the strategy to be published by July, before the summer recess.

But it stops short of recommending what should be in the strategy. There is no call for targets for the reduction of the number of families in temporary accommodation in general or for the elimination of bed and breakfast use for those with children (as was achieved under a Labour government 20 years ago). 

A pre-condition for both must be action to address issues that are increasing the number of homeless families needing temporary accommodation in the first place.

On this, the committee highlights ‘compelling evidence’ that the renewed freeze in Local Housing Allowance is ‘a false economy’ that will lead to more families losing their homes and yet more costs for local authorities and warns that the impacts could be compounded by cuts in disability benefits. 

But again it stops short of a firm recommendation to undo the freeze, instead calling for the Inter-Ministerial Group to evaluate the link between welfare reforms and homelessness.

The long-term solution to the temporary accommodation crisis has to be more permanent social homes – without this we are accepting that ‘temporary’ has become semi-permanent.

Here, the committee says the government must ensure that ‘a substantial proportion’ of the 1.5 million new homes it has pledged over the parliament are ‘social and genuinely affordable housing’. It adds that the upcoming long-term housing strategy must set out how the target will be achieved by tenure.

Surprisingly, though, there is no mention of the need for 90,000 social rent homes a year, a number that the committee has repeatedly endorsed in previous reports, including when it had a Conservative majority. 

Perhaps this is the committee treading softly and using its influence behind the scenes ahead of the spending review, homelessness strategy and long-term housing strategy, but sooner rather than later the government will have to decide where it stands.

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