Homelessness

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend is quite right. There is a short-term and very long-term effect on young people who get trapped in temporary accommodation. Councils must make sure that temporary accommodation is suitable for the needs of the household. Households can request a review of their accommodation if they feel it is unsuitable and it an applicant is not satisfied with how the council has handled their case. We have launched emergency accommodation reduction pilots, backed with £5 million, to work with the 20 local authorities that have the highest use of bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless families. Through the Renters’ Rights Bill, we will be applying the decent homes standard to the private rented sector; this includes a clause to bring temporary accommodation into the scope of the decent homes standard.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister may have seen the Sunday Times article by Martina Lees with the headline:

“Our grotty B&B bedroom costs taxpayers £2,383 a month”.


Can the Minister update us on the local authority housing fund, which enables the purchase of rundown properties for use on a temporary basis for temporary accommodation, which will save an enormous amount of money? In the long-term, with ownership by the council or a housing association, those properties can be used for years to come, providing vastly better value for money than the £283 a month for really grotty accommodation in the private sector.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord is correct to flag up that issue, and I thank him for his work on housing and homelessness. The funding that the Government have introduced—the £450 million third round of the local authority housing fund—will support local authorities to get better quality temporary accommodation for homeless families. The third round is expected to deliver over 2,000 homes by 2026; funding will then be provided over the next two years, and will include revenue funding to support councils to deliver that fund. We are putting our money where our mouth is, but trying to resolve a problem that has occurred over many years is taking a great deal of effort. We will continue to strive to make sure that we put an end to the chronic homelessness we have seen in this country. It is time that we made sure everyone has a decent home to live in.