Local councils spent £1.2bn providing temporary accommodation for homeless households last year, a staggering 55 per cent increase in just five years according to latest government figures.

These figures, which relate to the year ending March 2020, show costs rose 9 per cent year-on-year. 

Over this same period the amount being paid to private accommodation providers has also increased. 

A total of 87 per cent of these housing costs are now paid directly to private landlords, letting agents or companies.The amount paid to these private accommodation providers has increased 66 per cent in the last five years, from £621m in 2014/15 to £1bn in 2019/20.

Shelter, the homeless charity that has published these official figures, says more than a third (38 per cent) of the money paid to private accommodation providers was spent on emergency B&Bs – widely considered some of the least suitable places for families with children to live.

Spending on B&B accommodation has increased by 73 per cent over these five years.

Shelter chief executive Polly Neate says: “The decades of failure to build social homes means too many people on lower incomes are stuck in unstable private rentals – increasing their chances of becoming homeless. This cycle of destitution persists when those who lose their homes turn to the council for help, because councils have so little social housing left, they can’t alleviate their homelessness for good. All they can do is pay over the odds for insecure temporary accommodation.

“If the government fails to act on this crisis, the economic chaos of the pandemic is only going to make what is already an awful situation worse, as even more people are forced into homelessness. The government must commit now to spending ‘smarter’ with a rescue package for social homes. By investing £12 billion over the next two years, we could build an extra 144,000 lower-cost homes, including 50,000 desperately needed social homes.”