{"id":222856,"date":"2025-01-24T07:12:51","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T07:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/24\/children-in-bbs-beyond-legal-limit-as-homelessness-crisis-pushes-councils-to-breaking-point\/"},"modified":"2025-01-24T07:12:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T07:12:51","slug":"children-in-bbs-beyond-legal-limit-as-homelessness-crisis-pushes-councils-to-breaking-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/24\/children-in-bbs-beyond-legal-limit-as-homelessness-crisis-pushes-councils-to-breaking-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Children in B&Bs beyond legal limit as homelessness crisis pushes councils to ‘breaking point’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Children<\/div>


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A record number of children are living in B&Bs beyond the legal limit as England’s homelessness crisis pushes councils to breaking point.<\/p>\n

MPs said there is a “dire need” for housing reform, with the lack of affordable homes forcing cash-strapped local authorities to haemorrhage their funds on temporary accommodation.<\/p>\n

The “crisis situation” means there is less money in the pot to focus on homelessness prevention, the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.<\/p>\n

Councils are instead having to prioritise short-term solutions which can include putting families in bed and breakfasts – the fastest rising temporary accommodation type over the past decade, a Sky News analysis of government data found.<\/p>\n

Temporary accommodation is meant to be a short-term solution for people who are homeless while they wait for more suitable and long-term housing options.<\/p>\n

But the rising number of homeless households in England, driven by a shortage of social or otherwise affordable housing to move on to, means that increasingly this fix is anything but temporary.<\/p>\n

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A recent Sky News investigation<\/a> <\/strong>found that children in some parts of England are spending as long as five-and-a-half years on average in temporary accommodation.<\/p>\n

Length of stay has increased significantly in many areas since 2021, with particularly long stays in London and the South East.<\/p>\n

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\"chart<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

B&B use was the fastest rising temporary accommodation type over the past decade, rising fourfold from 4,400 households in 2014 to a record high of 18,400 by 2024, according to government figures.<\/p>\n

The data shows 6,000 of these households included children, of which two in three had been living there for longer than the 6-week legal limit.<\/p>\n

All of this is cripplingly expensive for councils. B&Bs, meant to be reserved for emergencies only, were the largest single spending category in council homelessness budgets in 2024, at \u00a3723.9m.<\/p>\n

This is more than triple the amount spent in 2014, which was \u00a3218m adjusted for inflation.<\/p>\n

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\"chart<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Overall, temporary accommodation costs to local authorities have risen from more than \u00a31.6bn in 2022-23 to around \u00a32.1bn in 2023-24, the PAC said.<\/p>\n

‘Crisis situation’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The PAC is calling for a clear strategy and stronger support for local authorities to address what it called “a crisis situation”.<\/p>\n

Despite there being an overarching homelessness strategy for each of the devolved nations, England does not have one.<\/p>\n

Committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said this had left local authorities “attempting to save a sinking ship with a little more than a leaky bucket”.<\/p>\n

Read More:
Mum-of-three left homeless after reporting threats to police<\/a>
National scandal’ as number of children living in temporary accommodation reaches record high<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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MPs also urged the government to justify its Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates, which calculate housing benefit for tenants renting from private landlords.<\/p>\n

The committee said 45% of households in receipt of the benefit face a shortfall between what they receive from the government and what they are being asked to pay in rent, and the issue is “exacerbated by the lack of affordable housing”.<\/p>\n

The government has pledged to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament<\/a><\/strong>, but it has not set a target of how many of them will be classed as affordable.<\/p>\n

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Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player<\/p>\n


\n \"Sir
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\n 2:36<\/span>
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What are Labour’s housing plans? <\/span>
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Sir Geoffrey said: “My committee is deeply concerned by the number of people currently being housed in sub-standard, overpriced and at times, wholly inappropriate accommodation, sometimes a long way from their previous home.<\/p>\n

“A lack of affordable housing, a focus on short-term solutions and no clear strategy to tackle this issue have left us with thousands of families in deeply troubling circumstances.”<\/p>\n

He added: “Local authorities find themselves at breaking point as they haemorrhage funds to cover the rising costs of housing families in temporary accommodation.<\/p>\n

“We are calling for an overarching strategy that addresses the need for better connectivity across government departments to tackle the root causes of this crisis.<\/p>\n

“Without one, we fear this will remain an issue into which money is simply poured, without effectively tackling the blight of homelessness.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A record number of children are living in B&Bs beyond the legal limit as England’s homelessness crisis pushes councils to breaking point. MPs said there is a “dire need” for housing reform, with the lack of affordable homes forcing cash-strapped local authorities to haemorrhage their funds on temporary accommodation. The “crisis situation” means there is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/visualisation\/21281848\/thumbnail","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[175195,402,1388,2742,734,20912,2846,5600,6778,9360],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222858,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222856\/revisions\/222858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}