Select committee: Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 24
1st Report - England’s Homeless Children: The crisis in temporary accommodation
Published 3 Apr 2025
Addressed to Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee Children in Temporary Accommodation All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government clearly recognises the scale of the homelessness crisis in England, and we welcome the scale of the Government’s ambition to tackle it. We welcome the Government’s target to deliver 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament, however, as the Minister for Homelessness and Democracy outlined, we must not lose focus on the need for social and affordable housing to alleviate the crisis in temporary accommodation. (Conclusion, Paragraph 91) The Government must ensure that social and genuinely affordable housing forms a substantial proportion of its 1.5 million target, given the importance of these tenures to ending homelessness in England. In the forthcoming long-term housing strategy, the Government must set out how the national housing target will be achieved by tenure, including a target for Social Rent homes to promote genuinely affordable housing as part of the housing mix. The Government must also recognise the urgent need for immediate interventions, as outlined in this Report, to improve temporary accommodation provision and to support families into more settled homes. (Recommendation, Paragraph 91) 49
From: Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, 1st Report - England’s Homeless Children: The crisis in temporary accommodation (HC 338), 3 April 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 16 June 2025 (deadline 3 June 2025).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the inquiry and says it is keen to work with the Committee on its recommendations as it develops the homelessness strategy, agreeing with some points and disagreeing with others.
- It does not agree that councils should never place families in accommodation with facilities shared with single adults, saying well managed placements can be appropriate in some instances, though it agrees this "should be rare".
- It states that it wants to "eliminate the use of B&Bs for families other than in genuine emergencies" and is working with 20 local authorities through the £8 million Emergency Accommodation Reduction Pilots.
- On temporary accommodation standards, it intends the Decent Homes Standard to apply, "subject to consultation on the detail", and plans to consult on how best to apply Awaab's Law to accommodation occupied under licence.
- It commits to publishing the homelessness strategy "later this year" rather than by July 2025, and says detailed minutes of ministerial meetings "are not normally disclosed".