Rough Sleeping: Families with Children

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this important debate. I will repeat and add to a couple of points that we have already heard.

It is not an unfortunate inevitability but a national disgrace that, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, families with children are still being pushed into homelessness and, in some cases, on to the streets. We are a country with immense resources and capacity to solve problems—one that spends tens of billions of pounds on weapons every year, and that has just opened Crossrail, the Elizabeth line, after one of Europe’s largest construction projects—yet we cannot guarantee that every child in this country has a safe and secure roof over their head when they go to sleep at night. That is a fundamentally moral contradiction, and it should weigh heavily on all of us, as parliamentarians with the collective power to change that status quo.

The statistics alone paint a bleak picture. In autumn 2025, an estimated 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night in England: a record high, and a 171% increase since 2010. We must remember that the figure, which is a snapshot of just one night, is widely acknowledged to have been undercounted. Even more shockingly, recent reports suggest that families with young children have been forced to sleep rough after being refused emergency local authority accommodation, in direct contravention of the law.

As we know, children in temporary accommodation are still classed as homeless, and the numbers show that over 175,000 children are currently homeless in temporary accommodation. Based on the most recent council-level data, as of June 2025 more than 600 children were living in temporary accommodation in Kirklees, where my Dewsbury and Batley constituency sits. These children are part of the around 375 family households in Kirklees in temporary accommodation as of March 2025. That temporary accommodation is costing Kirklees between £7 million and £8 million, which is money that could be better spent providing other public services.

Recent reports have shockingly suggested that families with young children are being forced to sleep rough after being refused emergency local authority accommodation, despite that being in direct contravention of the law. If families are reaching the point where they are unable to prevent their children from sleeping on the streets, in cars or anywhere else not designed for human habitation, then something in the system is clearly broken and the state is failing in its most basic obligations to its citizens.

One constituent, who has been contacting me regularly over the past several weeks, is a single mother with three children, one of whom has autism and asthma. The council has been unable to provide suitable accommodation for her and her children, and she has been sleeping in her car for the past several weeks. Her car is now uninhabitable, as it has been written off. She has been forced to accept temporary bed and breakfast accommodation. It is not suitable for her children, but she has nowhere else to go. I am sure that Kirklees is doing everything it can to help the family, but given the lack of resources and the lack of adequate family social housing, such examples are not as rare as they should be.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The hon. Member is right to highlight the resource challenges that local authorities have. From an outward perspective, my Chichester constituency is a very affluent area, with lower levels of homelessness, but in 1989 a gentleman died on our streets, and so a charity called Stonepillow was formed. It has gone on to support thousands of people experiencing homelessness across the Chichester and Bognor area. Does the hon. Member agree that although the charitable and voluntary sector has admirably stepped in where local authorities are too poorly funded to support people, it should not have to do so?

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. We all pay tribute to all the charities across the country, including the one in her constituency, that are stepping in to help people in times of desperate need, when Government and councils have not been able to provide the necessary support. I pay tribute to all those charities, but they should not have to step in to provide the basic necessities for children and families in our country.

Part of the failure undoubtedly lies with the immense financial pressures facing local authorities. Councils across the country are struggling to meet their duties to house those at risk of homelessness, including children, because of skyrocketing costs, limited housing supply and shockingly overstretched budgets. The cost of temporary accommodation alone has placed extraordinary financial strain on local government, with councils now covering more than half of those costs themselves, according to a recent analysis by the Institute for Government.

I see the consequences of this crisis at first hand in my constituency, where housing and homelessness are among the issues most frequently raised by my constituents. My office regularly hears from families who are on the brink of losing their homes and from people facing unfair evictions, struggling with rising rents or desperately seeking emergency accommodation at a time of unimaginable crisis. Increasingly, we see that these are not isolated individuals, but families with children who are living with the constant fear of having nowhere to go. Local authorities want to help, but they are operating with limited resources in the face of overwhelming demand.

Another shocking incident, reported by local media at the start of this year, is that a single mum of three, including a 12-year-old daughter with cancer, has been housed by my local authority in a one-bedroom flat with damp and mould for the past two years, after a no-fault eviction by a private landlord who wanted to sell their property. Such stories mean that we must be honest about the scale of the challenge facing us and the requisite ambition to adequately address it.

I have a number of questions for the Minister. First, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that no local authority unlawfully refuses emergency accommodation to families with children, and how will compliance with the statutory duties be monitored? Secondly, what additional financial support will be provided to councils that are struggling with the costs of temporary accommodation? Finally, what specific measures within the Government’s homelessness strategy are targeted at preventing families with children from ever reaching the point of rough sleeping in the first place?

Ultimately, this debate is about the kind of country we want to be. A society that allows children to sleep on the streets is a society that has lost sight of its most basic humanity. Ending rough sleeping among families is not simply a policy challenge, it is a moral imperative, and one that this Parliament must treat with the urgency it deserves.