Distant Dover and Luton earmarked as destinations for Lambeth’s homeless

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

Homeless South London families could be sent to Dover and Luton under a plan by Lambeth council to reduce its spend on hotels.

The local authority is in advanced negotiations to take on new build developments in the Kent and Bedfordshire towns as temporary housing.

Council documents claim the accommodation will provide ‘high quality, family-sized accommodation within a reasonable travelling distance of the borough’.

The coastal town of Dover is about a two-hour drive from Brixton, where Lambeth council’s town hall is located. Direct trains from London Victoria station to Dover take the same time.

A car journey from Brixton to Luton meanwhile takes an hour and 40 minutes. The quickest trains from St Pancras International can take just less than half an hour to the commuter town.

There are more than 4,500 Lambeth families in temporary housing. In June, 78 per cent of placements were nightly paid private accommodation, such as hotels.

On average, the council spends about £14,000 per year housing a family in nightly paid accommodation. Lambeth believes this type of temporary housing is expensive and wants to reduce its reliance on it.

One of the ways the council intends to do this is to increase its supply of different kinds of temporary housing, like the developments in Dover and Luton. Known as private sector leased (PSL) accommodation, this type of housing is leased off the private sector for years at a time.

The council said it is cheaper and usually of better quality. Lambeth has already acquired leases on a number of developments to use as temporary accommodation, including 82 flats in a new build development near East Croydon railway station.

Danny Adilypour, Lambeth’s deputy leader for housing, investment and new homes, told a housing scrutiny committee on Tuesday that the Labour-run council had three goals to deal with the temporary accommodation crisis.

He said: “The first is the need to work on that homelessness prevention strategy. The second is to increase our supply of alternative, longer-term temporary accommodation (TA) provision so we can reduce our reliance on expensive nightly paid TA and thirdly, increasing our ability to move on from TA into the private rented sector where that’s appropriate.”

Alex Clarke, the council’s assistant director of housing needs, told the committee that it could take five years for the strategy to pay off.

He said: “For those households that are in temporary accommodation, we want to find accommodation which is of a better quality, [and] which is of a lowest cost to the council. But most importantly we want to move away from using nightly paid accommodation, which is very expensive for the council, and very low quality for residents.”

Pictured top: Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton (Picture: Robert Firth)