Children in Temporary Accommodation: England

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

Today, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee publishes our first report of the Session, following our inquiry on children in temporary accommodation. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for kindly granting time for this statement, and the Committee’s staff for their assistance in producing the report.

This morning, over 164,000 children woke up without a permanent roof over their head. Their parents were unable to sleep, worrying about making the long journey to work and school, about the state of their accommodation, and about when they will finally get a home of their own. Given that the number of children in temporary accommodation rose by 15% in the last year alone, we know that there will not be an overnight fix to this problem. That is why our Committee’s first inquiry of this Parliament focused on the stories of children in temporary accommodation, and the impact that the increasing amount of time families are spending in what should be temporary accommodation is having on those children. How can we expect children to have the best start in life when they are living out of suitcases? How can we expect them to grow up without the basics of a private bathroom or kitchen, and how can we expect them to be ready for school if it takes them hours to get there, on a route that is always changing?

When a family with children become homeless, their local authority has a duty to provide housing for them until they can settle in a more permanent home. This temporary housing could be a privately rented property, short-term social housing, a council-owned property or nightly paid accommodation, such as a bed and breakfast or a hotel. Our inquiry found that far too often, temporary accommodation is completely inappropriate for families, and in some cases is unfit for habitation. We heard about cases of families living in accommodation that is excessively cold, that has serious damp and mould, and that has mice infestations. Temporary accommodation is often overcrowded; sometimes older children have to share beds with their parents or siblings, and babies cannot crawl or learn to walk due to a lack of floor space.

However, that accommodation is costing the public purse a fortune. In 2023-24, local authorities in England spent around £2.29 billion on temporary accommodation, and London boroughs alone spend £4 million a day on temporary accommodation. The cost of homelessness services has led to at least one local authority applying for exceptional financial support from the Government. Representatives of local authorities across England who we heard from during our inquiry all agreed that the cost of temporary accommodation is utterly unsustainable. Even the term “temporary accommodation” is misleading, because these placements are often far from temporary. As of March 2024, more than 16,000 families had been in their temporary accommodation for over five years. Can any of us imagine starting secondary school, in year 7, in temporary accommodation, and still not having a home of our own when we leave in year 11? That is the reality for so many young people in so many families—young people who are often voiceless, out of sight, and stuck in completely unsuitable accommodation.

Our report is therefore entitled “England’s Homeless Children: the crisis in temporary accommodation”. It was apparent to us that we have not only a housing crisis in England, but an acute crisis in temporary accommodation. During our inquiry, we heard about conditions so appalling that they are having a negative impact on children’s health. We heard that housing conditions are contributing to respiratory illness, sleep deprivation and mental health conditions in children. Most shockingly, we heard that temporary accommodation has been a contributing factor to the deaths of at least 74 children in the past five years. Of those children, 58 were under the age of one. In one of the richest countries in the world, that is shameful. That alone should inspire us all to act urgently and bring an end to this crisis before more innocent lives are lost.

Why, then, are local authorities not required to inspect the quality of their temporary accommodation at all? There is no requirement for local housing departments to carry out in-person checks on the properties being used. Our report recommends that local authorities carry out mandatory inspections of housing before it is used as temporary accommodation, as well as whenever new residents are placed in that housing, to ensure its basic suitability for children and families. Perhaps the worst form of temporary accommodation is bed and breakfast accommodation. B&Bs are rarely self-contained, meaning that families must share facilities with complete strangers. We heard about alarming cases of prison leavers sharing bathrooms and kitchens with families, and heard evidence that families had been placed in housing with men with a history of domestic abuse. Local authorities must work with the Government to put an end to those mixed placements in order to mitigate the clear safeguarding risks.

In some areas, demand pressures have forced local authorities to place homeless children in temporary accommodation outside the area. Families are often left with no choice but to move away from everybody and everything they know, including their friends and support networks, sometimes not knowing when or if they will return. For children, an out-of-area placement can mean hours spent travelling to and from school, or needing to move schools entirely. Just last week, new research from the Children’s Commissioner highlighted a stark link between the number of times a child in temporary accommodation moves school and low GCSE results. Only 38% of children who moved homes five times while at school achieved five GCSEs, compared with 65% of children who had only one home address. While we were not able to consider this latest evidence in our inquiry, those findings demonstrate the point that we need to keep improving data collection and reporting across public services, so that we can fully understand the health and education impacts of child homelessness.

We also recommend that the Government establish a formalised notification system, so that a child’s school and GP are alerted when they become homeless. The Government have set up an inter-ministerial group, which will publish a strategy on ending homelessness later this year. While we welcome that announcement, we recommend that the inter-ministerial group considers the link between welfare reforms—particularly the re-freezing of the local housing allowance—and homelessness.

Fundamentally, England’s housing crisis is an affordability crisis, and the same can be said about the temporary accommodation crisis. We know what has caused this problem: there has been a failure of successive Governments over decades to deliver new homes. The Committee supports the Government’s ambition to deliver 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament, but we also stand ready to help scrutinise those plans as they come forward. We must ensure that these new homes are safe, of high quality and are genuinely affordable. A long-term part of that strategy is a national target to promote social or affordable rent homes in the housing mix. Clearly, building those homes is the long-term objective, but the 164,000 children in temporary accommodation, and their families, cannot wait. They need an immediate response from the Government.

This is personal for me. I still remember being placed in temporary accommodation at a bed and breakfast in King’s Cross. I remember the joy and the relief of receiving our home and the keys. It was somewhere we could build a home and not have to carry belongings around in a black bag. Sadly, those 164,000 children in temporary accommodation will have to wait years for that same feeling, and they will continue to suffer under an unacceptable system for too long.

I thank my fellow Committee members, and the many homeless organisations, local authorities and others who presented evidence to our Committee during this inquiry. We look forward to receiving the Government’s response, and I commend the report to the House.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend my hon. Friend not just on this report, but on her strong leadership of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. In the report, the Committee describe the very real lives of the 3,770 children from my borough who are in temporary accommodation. That is enough to fill eight primary schools. There are other impacts, too. She talked about what the Government are doing, and the report mentions the report that is expected in July. Can she give the House any indication of when that report will come, and what will her Committee do to follow up on it?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my fellow Chair, the Chair of the Treasury Committee. This is really important. As we said, we welcome the Government’s inter-ministerial group, which meets regularly to consider key findings. It is vital that it works to end homelessness across the UK. We are pushing the Government to bring forward their strategy before the summer recess; it is vital that local authorities, charities and organisations can plan before the summer holiday, when, sadly, more children will be shunted from one borough to another if we do not get to grips with this issue.