1 week Ago By [email protected] (Andrew Spence)
Hull City Council has spent over £3m housing people in temporary accommodation since 2021, new data reveals. There has been a significant increase in those living in temporary accommodation in England in recent years, and Hull Council have had to pay millions to house people . Figures obtained by a Personal Injury Claims UK FOI request show that Hull City Council has spent over £3m on providing temporary accommodation for over 600 households.
Temporary accommodation (TA) is the term used to describe accommodation, often hotels or B&Bs, secured by a local housing authority under their statutory homelessness functions. The data comes in light of the news that, across the UK, the number of homeless people in local authority-provided TA rose to record levels. In England, councils spent more than £1 billion on temporary accommodation last year, with the problem pushing some local authorities towards bankruptcy.
The figures show an almost 80% rise in the money spent by Hull City Council on TA from 2022/23 to 2023/24. A spokesperson from Hull City Council has said: "Hull is experiencing unprecedented demand for temporary accommodation." The Council has set out a list of UK-wide issues that are causing with crisis.
The scarcity of affordable housing linked to increasing rents in the privately rented sector The welfare benefits available to help people on low incomes to pay their rent not keeping pace with actual rents charged The gradual erosion of social housing stock over many years due to the Right to Buy The cost of living crisis negatively impacting on household incomes and on interest rates, making mortgages for individuals and landlords less affordable The spokesperson added: "The council has implemented a temporary accommodation acquisitions programme which will, over the next 12 months, deliver a significant increase in the number of self-contained units available for homeless families. We are also initiating new approaches to avoid the need to place households in temporary accommodation all together, wherever that is appropriate. "This, along with our Bed and Breakfast elimination plan, is already reducing the number of families that we need to place in unsuitable and expensive hotel and B&B accommodation for more than six weeks.
Our goal is to eliminate the need to use such accommodation altogether, but currently, due to the unprecedented demand, we have no other option." Keep up to date with all the latest breaking news and top stories from Hull with our free newsletter.
