The cost of temporary housing for Brent Council has more than doubled in a year, according to the latest government figures. In what the local authority has called a ‘housing emergency’, it would need to outpace its building targets every year for a decade in order to house everyone on its register.
Councils across England spent £2.3 billion on providing temporary accommodation for homeless households in 2023-24, according to figures released by the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG). This is a rise of 29 per cent on the previous year and shows the scale of the problem councils are facing.
In Brent, the situation is particularly pronounced. The MHCLG data reveals that the council spent £69.6m on temporary accommodation in the year to March 2024 – more than double the previous year’s spend of £29.7m. Brent Council said: “Sadly, in the past three years, we’ve seen a 23 per cent increase in the number of homeless households applying for help.”
The number of residents on the borough’s housing register has now reached 34,000. Neighbouring borough Harrow spent £16.4m on temporary accommodation over the same period – an 18 per cent increase from the £13.9m the council spent the year before. Last year, councils across England and Wales received nearly £400 million in grant funding from the government to spend on domestic homelessness and temporary accommodation pressures.
One route to addressing the number of residents living in temporary accommodation, according to Brent Council, is by ‘boosting household income with high quality jobs’. Through Brent Starts – an adult education college – the council attempts to address this by providing courses and training programmes so residents can learn new skills and improve their job prospects.
Homeless charity Shelter has called for a halt to ‘pouring money into temporary accommodation’ and instead to focus on investing more in solutions that will ‘end the housing emergency for good’ such as building more council housing. Its Chief Executive, Polly Neate, said: “The severe lack of genuinely affordable social homes and extortionate private rents have condemned 164,000 children to homelessness while councils are running out of options of where to house them.”
There are currently 10 active affordable housing projects in Brent, which the council claims will deliver 668 properties by February 2026. The local authority is also lobbying the government to ‘turbocharge the additional Affordable Homes Programme grant’ in order to grow the overall number of affordable homes built in London as a way of tackling the housing emergency in the longer term.
The ten council-developed projects outlined are:
- Alperton Bus Garage – total number of homes: 155 – Estimated completion date: September 2025
- Two separate blocks at Fulton Road, Arlington and Queensbrook Building (Block D and E) – Total number of homes: 294 – Estimated completion Date: July, 2025
- Grand Union, Phase 2, Clearwater House (Block F) – Total number of homes: 115 – Estimated completion Date: June, 2025
- Clock Cottage, Kenton Road – Total number of homes: 13 – Estimated completion date: June, 2025
- Three separate blocks at 113-128 Carlton House and Carlton Hall, South Kilburn – Total number of homes: 72 – Estimated completion date: November, 2025
- Anevrin Bevan Court, Coles Green Road – Total number of homes: 9 – Estimated completion date: April, 2025
- Hylton Court, Willesden Lane – Total number of homes: 10 – Estimated completion date: April, 2025
Cabinet Member for Housing and Residents Services, Cllr Fleur Donnelly-Jackson, said: “The housing emergency has been indiscriminate, with the impacts felt far and wide across our city by renters and aspirant homeowners alike. In Brent, we now have 34,000 residents on our housing register, and while Brent is building record breaking amounts, we would need to surpass our housing target for over a decade before we match everyone with a home.”
She added: “Temporary accommodation by its very nature will never be a long-term solution to people’s homelessness. That’s why we have launched our ‘Find A Place You Can Afford’ initiative, which is about helping households secure affordable accommodation which reflects their income and providing the financial support to help them make the move.”
In addition, the council is also calling on the government to double the Homelessness Prevention Grant ‘to stabilise the growing financial crisis in temporary accommodation’, as well as reform the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) payable for temporary accommodation in Housing Benefit Subsidy and to ensure the LHA ‘continues to be uprated in line with market rents’.
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.
