On 03 March 2025, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee published a new report on children in temporary accommodation.
The report features recommendations aimed at reducing overall levels of homelessness, including a renewed focus on prevention, better gearing the welfare system towards ending homelessness, and full, cross-governmental implementation of the new Homelessness Strategy Ministers have pledged to deliver.
Homeless Link welcomes the Committee’s support for these measures, which are also endorsed in our Breaking the Cycle report.
Crisis in temporary accommodation
‘England’s Homeless Children: The crisis in temporary accommodation,’ focuses on the specific challenges facing young people living in often highly inappropriate temporary accommodation for unacceptably long periods of time.
The report also acknowledges, however, that the crisis in temporary accommodation can not be addressed without wider reforms to relieve and prevent homelessness across the population.
The decision to freeze Local Housing Allowances, a lack of strategic coordination at a national level, and a fundamental lack of social housing were all identified by the Committee as driving factors of rising homelessness levels, which has in turn led to overwhelming demand for temporary housing.
These same issues too often undermine the efforts of Homeless Link members to prevent homelessness, and support people to move on from homelessness. We call on Ministers to consider these points extremely carefully as work on the upcoming Homelessness Strategy and the Comprehensive Spending Review continues.
'False Economy' of freezing LHA rates
Reflecting on the Committee’s report, Sophie Boobis, Head of Policy and Research at Homeless Link, commented:
“Homeless Link agrees with the committee’s assessment that freezing LHA rates is a ‘false economy,’ which risks driving people into homelessness. We also echo the call for government to ‘evaluate the link between welfare reforms and homelessness’ to make sure all departments are coordinated behind the government’s declared mission of getting back on track to ending homelessness.”
“Ensuring ‘that social and genuinely affordable housing forms a substantial proportion of its 1.5 million target’ of new homes built by the end of the Parliament will also be a critical part in reducing the unacceptable number of people currently without a secure home.”
Please visit our Campaigning and Influencing webpage for more information on Homeless Link’s policy recommendations for a more effective and efficient approach to reducing and preventing homelessness, including all the details of our Breaking the Cycle report.
