A North London council has warned of a ‘housing emergency’ as it reveals it spends around £100,000 a day on temporary accommodation. It has identified housing as one of the key pressures impacting council finances across the country, with many local authorities again expected to announce council tax rises this month to help cover the soaring costs.
Across London, there were more than 330,000 households on local authority waiting lists for social housing in 2024, according to government figures – the highest in more than a decade. Brent Council currently has 33,000 households on its housing waiting list, which equates to nearly one in ten of all residents living in the borough. Some families have been on the list since last century.
Of those households, 2,266 are currently being housed in temporary accommodation by the council, with that number expected to continue to rise year on year as the current social housing supply fails to keep up with the growing demand. This is forcing councils, like Brent, to rely more heavily on expensive temporary solutions – such as hotels and private rental properties, often outside of the borough – which London Councils has called ‘the single biggest financial pressure in London’.
The Leader of Brent Council, Cllr Muhammed Butt, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “The amount of money we spend on temporary accommodation is huge. It will need more than just the council to do something about it. I don’t think we should have sold council homes, it’s easy to say that [in hindsight] but we are now seeing the impacts. The cost of building now is becoming horrific. Developers have gone out of business, housing associations are merging.”
He added: “We need to be honest, the chances of us helping [residents] to find a property in Brent are getting remote. The pressures we are facing are immense. We are having to look at places like High Wycombe, Milton Keynes, or Slough [but councils] are competing with amongst each other.”
Between 2011 and 2021, the population of Brent has increased by 9.2 per cent – from around 311,200 to around 339,800, according to data from the latest Census. The borough’s population has increased at a faster rate than both the overall population of London (7.7 per cent) and the UK more widely (6.6 per cent).
This rapid growth in population has put extra strain on social housing, with around 150 families a week presenting themselves as homeless, according to Brent Council. The local authority has said the current housing supply ‘cannot cope with this surge in demand’. The average wait time for a two-bedroom home in the borough is now more than a decade, whilst the wait for four-bedroom properties is over 20 years.
This has meant ever increasing costs for the council, with expensive hotels and private rental properties needing to be used to plug the gap in social housing availability. This includes having to house people outside of the borough, which also comes at a greater cost.
There are currently 608 households living in accommodation outside of Brent due to the lack of available local housing – all of which are within a 90 minute distance of the borough. This has contributed to the council’s temporary housing bill reaching around £100,000 per day – with the London-wide total costing a staggering £4m a day.
Brent Council is unapologetically pro house building, which it claims is essential to tackling the on-going crisis. In order to tackle the housing waiting list numbers as they currently are, the council would have to build 5,041 new homes – the majority of which would need to be one and two-bedroom properties. However, there are no signs that the demand will not continue to rise.
Brent council’s current target is to build 1,700 homes by 2028, a fraction of the number required. Over the last three years the council has delivered 249 homes, with an additional 880 forecast to be built over the next two financial years.
Brent Council told the LDRS that, as it is a demand-led service, it wouldn’t know how long it would be before the waiting list numbers started to decline. The local authority added that it ‘would never have sufficient supply of social housing’ to meet the demand so are dependent on the supply of affordable private rented accommodation. It is hoped that the Renters Reform Bill, which is expected to become law this year, will give more security to renters.
Without additional support from the government, Brent Council suggests the consequences for local authorities will be ‘bankruptcy’ and are urging the administration to intervene by reviewing ‘out-of-date funding formulas and commit to tackling homelessness at a national level.
Brent Council to see a raft of measures introduced, including; a boost in the Homelessness Prevention Grant Funding to reflect the rising levels of demand; to remove the cap on Local Housing Allowance payable for temporary accommodation – which has been frozen at 2011 rates despite costs growing significantly over the past 13 years; enable councils to buy more homes from private landlords; and remove red tape on the Affordable Homes Programme.
Cabinet Member for Housing and Residents Services, Cllr Fleur Donnelly-Jackson, said: “The solution to our housing emergency will not come from within Brent, as the housing crisis did not begin and will not end from within our borough. We are subject to the same external forces that all councils are, be that misguided policy choices on Right to Buy, or the impact of inflation on building costs and viability.”
She added: “What Brent, like all London boroughs needs, is a strong national housing market, matched by ambitious new towns and cities, creating jobs, and turbo-charging supply of housing. There is no resolution to the housing crisis without a renaissance in council house building. This must be underpinned by a financial settlement that recognises the path to economic growth runs through a thriving local government sector.
“The history books tell us all of this is possible when vision meets political will, with homes for heroes a lesson from our own national story in the art of the possible. I welcome this government’s commitment to getting on with the task at hand, which must be to build, build and build.”
Grant Williams is a journalist and Local Democracy Reporter (LDR) for Reach PLC, reporting on local government, politics and community issues across London. As part of the Local Democracy Reporting Service, he has contributed to Harrow Online, covering council decisions, housing developments, transport, planning matters and stories affecting local communities across Harrow and Brent.
