Temporary Accommodation

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Anna Turley.)

I am so grateful to have the opportunity to bring the subject of the crisis of temporary accommodation to the House of Commons today. I thank the Minister for her time and attention this afternoon. Having first met at the ballot box in Bethnal Green and Bow in 2019, it is great to meet here again, at the Dispatch Box.

It means a lot to me to raise this issue today on behalf of my constituent Kelly and her family. Kelly is a proud mum of three, wife to Devon, and a fighter. After being served with a section 21 notice by her landlord, Kelly and her family were forced to leave their home. She was determined to find a new home in the private rented sector but faced so many barriers. One was that many landlords required her to find a guarantor whose salary bracket was not one shared by folks in her network. Another was that many landlords demanded six months’ rent in advance. For someone like Kelly who receives universal credit, having six months’ worth of Eastbourne private sector rent in the bank—to pay so much up-front rent—would disqualify her from universal credit in a heartbeat.

Despite pulling out all the stops to find a new home, having been displaced from their previous one, Kelly, her three children and their stepdad Devon have been backed into the corner of homelessness—into temporary accommodation until a longer-term home can be found via the council or the private rented sector. This accommodation is too small to cater to their aspirations and their needs, especially those of Kelly’s awesome teenage son, Joseph. This is a combination that, by its very nature, is temporary and not secure; accommodation that forces families to exist, not live, and that could not feel further from a home. That is not fair. I have taken up Kelly’s case, and my team and I are working hard to support her, but what I find so extraordinary about Kelly is that in the midst of unspeakable hardship she is so often zooming out and reflecting on just how broken the whole system is, and she has been a tireless advocate for reforming it. A week or so ago, she said:

“Josh, take me to Parliament, and we’ll speak about it up there!”

Days later, I secured this Adjournment debate, which enables us to do exactly that.

I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. It is an important issue, and I agree that it is admirable for someone in such circumstances to pull out and see the bigger picture. To add to that bigger picture, in the borough of Hackney, half of which I represent, the forecast cost of temporary accommodation is £54 million this year, and there are eight primary schools’ worth of children, equivalent to 1% of our population, living in temporary accommodation. I am sure that the hon. Member would agree that the position is unsustainable, and I congratulate him again on bringing it to the attention of the House.

I could not agree more, and I will come to the costs of temporary accommodation later. The hon. Lady knows as well as I do that the National Audit Office described the situation as unsustainable. It needs a resolution, which is why today’s debate is so important.

On securing the debate, I called Kelly, shared the news, and she said in reply:

“What needs to be said is going to be said in the place it needs to be said to the person it needs to be said to. You are the right person to say it, Josh.”

It is therefore so humbling to welcome Kelly and her son Joseph to the Public Gallery. I hope that I am the right person, that I say what needs to be said, and that I do not let Kelly and families like hers down. With her blessing, I have shared some of Kelly’s story today. She is just one of the 117,450 families who are in temporary accommodation in this country right now. That is a 12% rise compared with last year. Heartbreakingly, more than 150,000 children are living in temporary accommodation, which is enough to fill 5,000 classrooms.

I want to mention the plight of children missing from school. There is a massive problem with children going into temporary accommodation and simultaneously losing their school place because they have moved out of the area, or alternatively trying to retain their school place in the hope of being able to move back to the area, and then missing school for a sustained period. I wanted to draw attention to that particular difficulty. As far as I am aware, at the moment we do not measure educational outcomes for children who have been in temporary accommodation. Would the hon. Member encourage us to start doing that?

I absolutely would encourage that. There needs to be more co-ordination between local authorities, educational settings and health and care settings. Many have advocated for a notification system in order to aid the knowledge of those situations, so that they can be addressed.

The circumstances are devastating, and we hear from hon. Members who have made interventions that that is the case in their patches too. Shelter estimates that more than two thirds of people in temporary accommodation have inadequate access to basic facilities—to cook, for example. Many food banks, including mine in Eastbourne, supply kettle packs, because many families in temporary accommodation are unable to cook or heat the food that they get from a food bank in any other way. Isolation is also a consequence, especially for those who are placed in temporary accommodation miles away from their support networks, or where the rules of their accommodation ban visitors. Most shockingly, according to the Shared Health Foundation analysis of the national childhood mortality database, temporary accommodation has been a contributing factor in the deaths of 42 infants since 2019. We cannot go on like this.

Not only is that unacceptable on a human level, but as I said earlier, the National Audit Office has been clear that the situation is unsustainable for local authorities—especially mine in Eastbourne. In my hometown, the number of families in temporary accommodation has doubled since 2019. That, combined with our food bank becoming the busiest Trussell Trust food bank in the country—it distributed more food parcels per head than any other in the UK—led to my campaign to declare a cost of living emergency in Eastbourne. It was the first place in the UK to do so, and that unlocked emergency support for those struggling most.

The surge in temporary accommodation led to the financial cost to the council jumping from £2.2 million in 2019 to the £5 million projected for this year.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his indulgence in giving way again. He is right to cite the National Audit Office’s excellent work to shine a light on the issue. Does he agree that if we turned those many millions spent on temporary accommodation into money spent on good-quality affordable social housing, we would go a long way towards solving this problem?

The hon. Lady has a crystal ball, because she has again pre-empted something I will say later. I absolutely agree, and I commend her work in her former role as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, which I know took a deep interest in this matter.

Costs in Eastbourne have skyrocketed. In fact, the council has said that 49p of every £1 that the council collects in its share of council tax is currently spent on temporary accommodation. As a result, Eastbourne borough council has been forced to consult on incredibly tough saving decisions to avoid issuing a section 114 notice, and the picture is similar in other councils.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the decision by the last Conservative Government to freeze local housing allowance for temporary accommodation claimants at 2011 rates is causing increasing pressure on local authorities, such as mine in Ashford?

There is a lot of clairvoyance and telepathy going on here, because I will also refer to that matter later. We absolutely need to consider what is going on with LHA rates, which have been frozen at the same level since 2011—a different era.

The Local Government Association said that local authorities in England have spent £2.29 billion on temporary accommodation—a 29% increase on the previous year, and 300% since 2015—and one in four councils say that they are likely to need emergency Government support to avoid a section 114 notice. So what are the solutions?

First and foremost, we must urgently improve conditions for families in temporary accommodation, such as Kelly’s. They should be entitled to essential facilities, and every effort must be made to prevent them from being displaced from their communities, support networks and the advice they need and deserve. Councils need emergency support to help them to avert imminent financial crisis. Eastbourne borough council leader Stephen Holt, who is also in the Public Gallery, led an emergency summit last year after which 118 other cross-party council leaders wrote to the previous Chancellor with proposals for emergency support. Those proposals fell on deaf ears, so I draw the Minister’s attention to that letter now. It includes proposals to uprate LHA rates with a view to updating them from their outdated 2011 levels.

We also need to address the appalling practice of people opportunistically renting private rented sector homes for the sole purpose of immediately sub-letting them to councils, at an inflated rate, so they can be used as temporary accommodation. That is contributing to the inflation. Beyond that, the Government must urgently publish a strategy to end homelessness in all its forms as soon as possible. That must involve building more homes, especially social housing.

My hon. Friend mentioned that 150,000 children are growing up in temporary accommodation. Does he agree that the health and educational outcomes of those children are adversely affected by their being in temporary accommodation, but the risk of moving reduces their chance to have a settled community and build up lifelong friendships? By developing more social homes with social rents, we would be able to give people secure tenures, and by removing hope value in development land parcels, we could develop more and cheaper social housing, reducing the economic pressures on the Government.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why I am proud that the Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for Britain to build 150,000 social homes a year; that was in our manifesto. Having grown up in social housing, I am especially proud of that commitment.

To conclude, I say to Kelly that I hope I have said what needs to be said, in the place that it needs to be said in, and to the person it needs to be said to. On behalf of all families in temporary accommodation, and all those who would otherwise find themselves there in the future, I make a plea to the Government: honour their experiences with reform, and dignify their humanity with action. Please do not let us and our councils down. This Government are our last hope.

I thank the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) for giving me the opportunity to contribute to his debate. I congratulate him on securing a debate on this extremely important topic. I agree with much of what he has said, and how he has highlighted the problem that we face.

My local authority of Newham faces an absolute crisis in temporary accommodation; the situation is one of the worst in the country. To give the House some indication of where we are, there are 6,700 households in temporary accommodation in Newham, which is more than in any other local authority. That number is growing by around 30 households a month. One in 20 homes in Newham is now temporary accommodation. The cost of temporary accommodation for next year will be £72 million, adding £31 million to the council’s budget overspend. Homeless applications this year are up by 26%, which adds to the borough’s waiting list—there are now 38,000 people waiting for housing.

While Chelmsford city council’s figures cannot match those given by the hon. Member, they are still stark. It is terrible to see how much they have changed over recent years. Does he agree that many councils around the country face this issue? In my constituency, the percentage of the council’s core spending that goes on temporary accommodation went up from 5.62% in 2020 to 24.44% in September 2024. The number of cases in 2020 was 256, but we are now looking at 500 cases. It is a massive increase that is very difficult for councils to cope with.

The hon. Lady makes a valuable point. The figures are hard to believe; sometimes I have to check that I have not misread them or added a zero. As she highlights, the issue affects councils across the country and seriously adds to their financial problems. This is clearly unaffordable and unsustainable, even in the short term. We desperately need support, so that we can deal with the impact on councils’ budgets; they face huge pressures already.

As the hon. Member for Eastbourne pointed out through the example of Kelly, his constituent who is in the Public Gallery, the issue is the impact on families. Since the cost of living crisis began, when the supply of temporary accommodation slumped and demand soared in my borough, my advice surgery has seen a massive increase in casework. People have come to see us who have been living for months in a hotel room—a perfectly decent hotel room for someone staying three or four days, but not for a family of four or five people for months on end. They are living in a single room without cooking facilities. The impact on the parents’ mental health and the children’s physical health and educational opportunities was really quite serious. It is difficult to deal with the sheer numbers.

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. I am old enough to remember when bed and breakfasts were commonly used for households who could not get permanent accommodation. That was rightly dealt with because it was a scourge on modern society. Does my hon. Friend agree that we are now slipping massively backwards because of the numbers he outlined, and that we need to find a quick solution, in order to support our constituents?