Homelessness in England at highest level on record, watchdog says

Homelessness is at its highest level in England since records began and is expected to worsen, according to a scathing investigation by the public spending watchdog into the last government’s attempts to tackle the problem.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said that despite a range of measures introduced under Theresa May’s Conservative administration in 2018, homelessness had soared, with record numbers of families now trapped in unsuitable accommodation.

A combination of sky-high rents, insecure tenancies, housing benefit cuts and severe shortages of social housing were fuelling the problem, which was costing the taxpayer £2.4bn a year and threatening to bankrupt district councils, it said.

The NAO’s report , published on Tuesday, provides a sobering picture of the scale of the problem inherited by the Labour government, which promised in its general election manifesto to “put Britain back on track to ending homelessness”.

The NAO report findings include:

• The number of households accepted as homeless by their local council has risen by more than one-fifth over the past five years, from 64,080 in the third quarter of 2018-19 to 78,980 in the same period last year, an increase of 23%.

• Just under 113,000 households, including almost 146,000 children, were living in temporary accommodation in the third quarter of last year, at a cost of £1.6bn, up from 83,540 in 2018, a rise of 35%.

• More than 33,000 households were living in temporary accommodation outside their local area last year, a 42% increase in five years as councils – particularly in London and the south-east – struggled to find affordable properties to place families.

The NAO said the government had failed to get a grip on the poor quality of temporary housing endured by many homeless families, with local authorities increasingly forced to book households into B&Bs and hotels to meet overwhelming demand.

Although councils are supposed to use B&Bs for households with children as a last resort only, the latest figures showed 4,560 households with children were put up in B&Bs, of which 2,960 had been living in them for longer than six weeks.

The NAO said: “The situation has worsened since we last examined the issue in 2017. Despite the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act in 2017, homelessness numbers are at a record level and expected to increase.”

A separate Conservative initiative to eradicate rough sleeping in England by the end of 2024 also failed, after figures published earlier this year showed the numbers of people spending the night on the streets or in tents or cars had risen for the second year running.

Related: Rough sleeping in London hits highest level in a decade

May introduced the Homelessness Reduction Act, which came into force in 2018, giving councils new duties in an attempt to get a grip on the problem and rectify the Tories’ dismal record on homelessness over the previous eight years.

However, the NAO concluded that despite some small improvements, the position had since worsened. The government has yet to publish a strategy or set targets for reducing homelessness, leaving England as the only part of the UK without an overarching action plan.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government welcomed the NAO report: “Homelessness levels have skyrocketed and too many families are living in temporary accommodation. We will take the action needed to tackle this issue and develop a long-term, cross-government strategy working with mayors and councils to put Britain back on track to ending homelessness.”

Claire Holland, the Local Government Association’s housing spokesperson, said: “We need government to take urgent action to implement the recommendations highlighted in this report, by adopting a genuinely cross-departmental approach to tackling homelessness, and producing a long-term strategy.”

A separate NAO release showed the last government spent £9.2bn trying to improve the attainment of disadvantaged children in England, only to leave office with the gap at GCSE level wider than a decade ago.

Closing the attainment gap has been a priority for the Department for Education (DfE), particularly after the disruption caused by Covid. In 2023-4, it devoted about 15% of its annual budget to a range of interventions aimed at achieving that.

The NAO’s report, also published on Tuesday, found that despite the investment, disadvantaged pupils still performed less well than their wealthier peers in all areas and across all school phases.

The NAO raised concerns that the DfE had limited evidence of the impact of many of its interventions. It also lacked “a fully integrated view of its interventions or milestones to assess progress and when more may need to be done”, the report said, leading the NAO to conclude that the DfE could not demonstrate it achieved value for money.

The report said: “The DfE has evidence to support some of its interventions and uses this to help schools and early years providers to make decisions.

“However, it does not yet understand the outcomes resulting from a significant proportion of its expenditure on disadvantaged children. It also does not have a fully integrated view of its interventions, or milestones to assess progress and when more may need to be done.

“This, and the lack of sustained progress reducing the disadvantage attainment gap since 2010-11, means that DfE cannot demonstrate it is achieving value for money.”

A DfE spokesperson responded: “Too many children are being held back by their background, and this report shines a light on the work that is needed to break down barriers to opportunity and improve the life chances of all children.

“This government is fully focused on supporting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, learning from the past and drawing from the NAO’s findings and recommendations.”