Council loses 131 temporary accommodation homes to private landlords

A council lost more than 100 private sector homes it was using for Temporary Accommodation (TA) last year due to landlords asking for the properties back.

Lewisham council went from using 854 properties owned by private landlords – 568 procured from private landlords on leases and 286 private sector leased homes managed by the council – to 698, between November 2023 and November 2024.

The majority of the loss, 131 properties, was due to landlords asking for their properties back from the council.

According to a council report which will go before Lewisham’s housing select committee this week, the local authority has seen a “significant increase” in landlords taking back their properties.

The report said: “Both the economic downturn in the last few years and the changing housing market are resulting in an increasing percentage of private landlords choosing to increase their rent in line with market prices or choosing to no longer rent out their properties resulting in them disposing of the properties altogether”.

This means that the council has become “increasingly reliant” on the use of nightly paid accommodation, the most expensive form of emergency housing.

The use of nightly paid accommodation in Lewisham has risen from 745 at the start of April 2021, to 1,481 in November 2024.

The report said: “The use of nightly paid accommodation is the main driver contributing to our £12.9million forecasted overspend on temporary accommodation.”

There are currently 2,826 households in TA provided by Lewisham council.

The number of households approaching the council for support remains high, with 3,888 homeless applications submitted between November 2023 and November 2024, up from 3,698 applications the previous year.

The report cited a number of measures Lewisham council is undertaking in an attempt to address the supply challenges the service faces.

In December 2022, Mayor and Cabinet approved the council’s new Procurement Strategy.

The strategy aims to provide enough housing in the private rented sector to prevent those at risk of homelessness from entering TA, and re-settle households in TA into the private rented sector.

The council set out a target to procure 200 leased properties for TA by the end of March 2025. 

As of November 2024, 49 private properties were brought into use by the council, out of the 200 target. 

The report said: “Whilst procurement of temporary accommodation and private rented sector accommodation has been steadily increasing, it should be noted that this has been very challenging.”

The government recently announced £1billion of funding for local authorities to tackle homelessness. But, at least 49 per cent of the councils’ allocation must be spent on prevention, relief and staff, and cannot be spent on temporary accommodation. 

According to London Councils, boroughs across the capital collectively spend around £4million on temporary accommodation every day. This spending has jumped by 68 per cent in just a year. 

The local government collective said that councils across London are forecast to overspend on their homelessness budgets by £270million in 2024-25.

Pictured top: Lewisham Council’s headquaters in Catford (Picture: Google Street View)