Councils are spending £2m a day on temporary accommodation because of a shortage of housing, analysis by the Local Government Association (LGA) has revealed.
According to a report in Inside Housing:
“The LGA said councils have been forced to spend £2.6bn to house people in temporary accommodation over the last three years and the total spend has risen by 30% since 2013.
In its submission ahead of Wednesday’s Budget, the LGA is calling for central and local government to work together to tackle the mounting pressure on temporary accommodation budgets.
The number of affordable homes added to the nation’s stock in 2015/16 fell by 52% and was the lowest number in 24 years. Just 6,550 social rented homes were built in the same year.
The number of households councils have placed in temporary accommodation has risen by 50% since 2010. Almost 75,000 households are currently living in temporary accommodation, including bed and breakfasts, hostels and private rented accommodation.
The LGA is also calling for a temporary lifting of the Local Housing Allowance freeze to help provide more accommodation for vulnerable families.
It also criticised the government’s “late” decision to reallocate £241m of New Homes Bonus funding in 2017/18 to fund social care and called for this to be reversed.
It found more than a third of councils are worse off as a result of this shift in funding because they are losing more in New Homes Bonus than they are gaining through social care funding.”