Temporary Accommodation

(asked on 12th September 2017) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the long-term sustainability of temporary accommodation as a housing solution.


Answered by
Marcus Jones Portrait
Marcus Jones
Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
This question was answered on 18th September 2017

Time spent in temporary accommodation means people are getting help and it ensures no family is without a roof over their head. The numbers of households in temporary accommodation remains well below the September 2004 peak.

Local authorities have a duty to ensure that any accommodation provided for a homeless household under the homelessness legislation must be suitable. In considering ‘suitability’ authorities must, by law, consider whether the accommodation is affordable for the applicant, its size, its condition, its accessibility and also its location.

In 2012, we changed the law so that councils can place families in decent and affordable private rented homes. This now means homeless households do not have to wait as long for settled accommodation, spending less time in temporary accommodation.

In addition, we have allocated £550 million until 2020 to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, as well as supporting the Homelessness Reduction Act, including: protecting £315 million of funding to local authorities and £149 million of central government funding for homelessness programmes.

We have also replaced the Department for 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.

DCLG publishes regular statistics on rough sleeping, statutory homelessness, temporary accommodation and homelessness prevention and relief. 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.

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