Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in how many cases during (a) 2015, (b) 2016 and (c) 2017 homeless families were unlawfully placed in bed and breakfast accommodation for more than six weeks.

Time spent in temporary accommodation ensures no family is without a roof over their head. The Government is assisting areas to ensure that families spend no longer than 6 weeks in B&Bs, which includes protecting and maintaining the homelessness prevention funding at £315 million. We have also replaced Department of Work and Pension’s Temporary Accommodation Management Fee with a Flexible Homelessness Support Grant which local authorities can use more strategically to prevent and tackle homelessness. This amounts to £402 million over the two years from 2017/18.

While the number of households in temporary accommodation is below the 2004 peak, the law is clear that households with dependent children should only be accommodated in B&B in an emergency and for no longer than six weeks, which commences when the household moves in.

Local authorities have a duty to ensure that any accommodation provided for a homeless household under the homelessness legislation must be suitable.

Part B (Fire safety) of the Building Regulations sets requirements for fire safety where building work takes place, typically including the erection, extension or alteration of a building. Guidance is issued by the Secretary of State in Approved Documents, specifically Approved Document B (Fire Safety) Volume 1 (dwellinghouses) and Volume 2 (Buildings other than dwellinghouses).

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 also applies to premises that provide sleeping accommodation, other than where they are a private home. The Fire Safety Order requires a ‘responsible person’ (usually the owner, employer or landlord) to carry out and review regularly a fire risk assessment of a premises to ensure adequate and appropriate fire safety measures are in place to manage the risk that lives could be lost in the event of a fire.

The Government has produced guidance to help those with fire safety responsibilities in sleeping accommodation to comply with the provisions of the Fire Safety Order – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-safety-risk-assessment-sleeping-accommodation. The extent to which the fire protection measures in place in any particular building comply with these provisions is a matter for the responsible person’s risk assessment.

DCLG publishes regular statistics on rough sleeping, statutory homelessness, temporary accommodation and homelessness prevention and relief, including the numbers of households in B&B for over 6 weeks. These are published at national, London and local authority level. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics.