{"id":45119,"date":"2025-04-23T23:38:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T23:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/45119\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T23:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T23:38:10","slug":"homelessness-driving-london-councils-to-brink-of-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/45119\/","title":{"rendered":"Homelessness driving London councils to ‘brink of bankruptcy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A record-high 126,000 households in England are being put up by councils after falling into homelessness with more than 160,000 children growing up homeless.<\/p>\n

A high proportion of households living in temporary accommodation are in London. Around 183,000 Londoners are in temporary accommodation \u2013 equivalent to one in 50 residents of the English capital.<\/p>\n

London Councils said costs have also spiked due to landlords ending their arrangements with boroughs either to sell their property or seek tenants paying higher rents on the open market.<\/p>\n

Over recent years, 45,000 homes have been lost<\/a> from London\u2019s private rented sector, mainly at the cheaper end of the housing market, increasing the reliance on expensive nightly paid accommodation, including hotels.<\/p>\n

The cross-party group has called on the government to step in at June\u2019s spending review, warning emergency support from the government may be required to prevent councils issuing section 114 notices \u2013 effectively declarations of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

Councillor Williams said: \u201cLondon boroughs are doing everything we can to turn this situation around, but we need urgent action from ministers. Only national government has the powers and resources required to bolster councils\u2019 budgets and reduce homelessness pressures \u2013 particularly through investing far more in affordable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Labour government is set to lay out local government financial plans at the spending review, while long-term housing and homelessness strategies are set to follow shortly after.<\/p>\n

London Councils is urging ministers to close the subsidy gap for councils and raise local housing allowance rates to help low-income renters afford soaring private rents<\/a>. The group also wants local housing allowance<\/a> to rise each year alongside inflation.<\/p>\n

More long-term grant funding for affordable housing is also required to help councils build their way out of the current crisis, London Councils said.<\/p>\n

Peers discussed the cost of temporary accommodation on local authority finances in the House of Lords<\/a> on Tuesday (22 April).<\/p>\n

Speaking on behalf of the government, Baroness Sharon Taylor said: \u201cThis government recognises that homelessness levels are far too high and that this can have a devastating effect on those involved. It also places a huge financial strain on councils providing temporary accommodation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have allocated an extra \u00a3233m to councils directly for homelessness, taking total funding to nearly \u00a31billion<\/a> this year. The deputy prime minister is chairing an inter-ministerial group to develop a long-term strategy to deliver the long-term solutions that we need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.\u00a0To support our work buy a copy of the magazine<\/a>\u00a0or get the app from the\u00a0App Store<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Google Play<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A record-high 126,000 households in England are being put up by councils after falling into homelessness with more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,6332,6333,257,12,24850,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-45119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-homelessness","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-temporary-accommodation","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114389916448981180","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}