Council leader says ‘truly broken’ temporary accommodation system needs ‘radical look’

By Adrian Zorzut, Local Democracy Reporter

A West London council leader has called for a “radical look” at London’s temporary accommodation system saying it is “truly broken” and costing the capital’s local authorities almost £1billion a year. 

Cllr Elizabeth Campbell, leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, said this posed an “existential threat” to councils, some of which she claimed were pouring half of their income into temporary accommodation.

Speaking at The Housing Forum national annual conference on Tuesday, cllr Campbell said councils across London were now spending £90million a month on temporary accommodation. 

She said: “In Kensington and Chelsea, our entire budget pressure is down to temporary accommodation and that is despite our homelessness prevention work being the best in London. 

“The awful thing is that this isn’t getting us good-quality housing that we can be proud of. It often means that we end up with rodent-riven, leaky and damp properties.”

She claimed this had forced councils to pour billions of pounds into the pockets of owners of cheap hotels and poor-quality private landlords. 

She added: “Never has so much public money been spent on such terrible outcomes. The system is truly broken and we need a radical look at solutions.”

Cllr Campbell said though she welcomed the Government’s offer of £1billion for council house building, it would take another decade to make any serious impact. She also warned funding would only cover the cost of temporary accommodation in London for one year.

She said: “We need help now. £1billion a year to house one-in-50 Londoners. There must be a better solution, there must be a better way to spend this money.”

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request found the council spent £49million gross on temporary accommodation in the 2023/24 financial year.

That is almost double what it spent in 2014/15, which at the time totalled £25.1million. The council said the increase was caused by a surge in demand and exacerbated in part by the Homeless Reduction Act.

They said as demand increased and less expensive accommodation became occupied, the council was forced to house those needing support in more expensive forms of accommodation. Kensington and Chelsea council said it currently has more than 2,000 households in temporary accommodation.

A similar FOI to Westminster council found the local authority’s spending on temporary accommodation jumped by £34million in a single year – the biggest in a decade. The central London council spent a total of £95million on temporary accommodation during the 2023/24 financial year, a 55 per cent rise from the previous year.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said it was “absurd” to continue throwing money at poor quality homeless accommodation and urged the Government to instead invest in helping families in London into safe and secure homes.

She said: “Decades of failure to build enough social homes combined with runaway rents and rising evictions has caused homelessness to spiral.

“Too many children are being forced to grow up homeless in grotty, cramped hostels and B&Bs, sharing beds with their siblings, with no place to play or do their homework. Rather than sinking money into temporary solutions every year, the government must invest in genuinely affordable social homes and support councils so they can start building them.”

Pictured top: Cllr Elizabeth Campbell leader of Kensington and Chelsea council (Picture: Kensington and Chelsea council)