Councils spend more than £8 million a day on temporary accommodation

Councils spend more than £8 million a day on temporary accommodation

Today the government has released new figures that show councils in England spent a total of £2.93 billion on temporary accommodation to accommodate households who are homeless between April 2025 and March 2026. This is an 88% increase in five years.

The figures for April 2025 to March 2026 reveal:

• Councils spent a total of £2.93 billion on temporary accommodation, an increase of 88% in five years, and the equivalent of £8.04 million every day.

• 65% of the total – £1.78bn – was spent on the most expensive types of private temporary accommodation: emergency B&Bs and nightly paid, self-contained accommodation.

• £823 million was spent on B&Bs: one of the worst types of temporary accommodation for families, who are stuck in one room, and have to share kitchens and/or bathrooms with strangers. This is an 89% increase in five years.

• £955 million was spent on nightly paid, self-contained accommodation. This is a 348% increase in five years. This is often the most expensive for families and local authorities, where families can be crammed into one room in the same way as in B&Bs.

These shocking figures show massive amounts of money are being spent ‘papering over the cracks’ caused by the housing emergency instead of tackling its root cause.

Well over a billion pounds (65% of total spend) is being drained from public funds every year and poured into some of the most expensive forms of private accommodation. This gets the country no closer to ending homelessness, with thousands of families stuck in accommodation, which is often cramped, insecure and poor-quality for months, if not years on end.

Earlier this year, Shelter welcomed the prime minister’s diagnosis that a mass council house building programme is needed to free families from homelessness and return millions of pounds to the public purse through a boost to social rent revenue and savings to the overall benefits bill.

The Autumn Budget is the key moment for the government to make progress on its council housing promise. It must seize this opportunity to remove the financial barriers currently preventing councils from building social homes at scale. This includes removing the stranglehold created by historic housing debt that was passed onto councils by central government in 2012, which has now grown to £31.8bn. Councils took on the debt as part of a council house financing agreement, the terms of which have been repeatedly broken by successive governments.

In the meantime, the fastest way to help families escape from damaging temporary accommodation right now is to unfreeze housing benefit, so that more parents can afford the cost of the bottom third of private rents in their local area.

Mairi MacRae, Director of Policy and Campaigns at Shelter, said: “We have spent years treating the symptoms of the housing emergency, without addressing its cause. Without enough social homes, we’re throwing money at private companies to provide cramped and often grim temporary accommodation, which gets us no closer to ending homelessness.

“Councils once built the majority of social rent homes in this country. It is completely senseless that in today's world they are forced to waste billions on temporary accommodation instead and are held back from building the social homes that would end the housing emergency.

“The government must use the Autumn Budget to get councils building again and prevent families from being wrenched from their communities and stuck in damaging temporary accommodation. It should remove the historic housing debt that is blocking councils from building social rent homes and immediately unfreeze housing benefit so families can afford a privately rented home in the meantime.”

ENDS