According to new analysis from the Local Government Association, the percentage of total housing budget that councils are spending on homelessness and temporary accommodation has tripled since 2015.
This has come alongside a call for the next government to reset its relationship with local government and ease the pressure being placed on council budgets.
Analysis from the LGA of the Revenue Account Budget Data has shown that council spending for homelessness in 2023-24 increased by £733 million in comparison to 2015/16. This means that the 2015-16 spending of £315 million has now become £1.048 billion, with the 18% of budget spend on councils in 2015-16 becoming 60%.
The knock-on effect of this is that early homelessness prevention services will suffer, as more of the budget is being allocated for dealing with those who are already homeless, as opposed to tackling the issue through early prevention services.
A warning has also been issued by the LGA, outlining how council spending is supporting almost 113,000 households that are living in temporary accommodation; a figure which is expected to rise without a concerted effort to address social housing shortages.
In order to try and tackle the ongoing homelessness challenges, the LGA has called for the new government to give local authorities additional powers and do more to support homelessness solutions, including:
- Reforming Right to Buy to support the 1:1 replacement of social housing stock
- Abolishing permitted development rights, and reforming viability assessments for housing developments
- Bringing forward legislation to ban Section 21 no fault evictions
- Investing more into social housing through preferential borrowing rates through the Public Works Loan Board
- Increasing Affordable Homes Programme grant levels to deliver more affordable homes
- Committing to uprating LHA rates to the 30th percentile of local rents
- Immediately increasing the subsidy for temporary accommodation so it is no long frozen at 0% of 2011 LHA rates.
The Local Government Association’s Housing Spokesperson, Cllr Claire Holland, said:
“Homelessness pressures on councils are spiralling as a larger proportion of their budgets is put towards costly temporary accommodation due to a lack of social housing.
“The way to properly resolve the issue is to address the shortage of suitable housing across the country and build up councils’ stock of social housing.
“Councils need to be given the powers and resources to build affordable homes their communities need so they can resume their historic role as a major builder of affordable homes.”
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