Temporary accommodation costs Doncaster Council over £4m to house over 1,300 people
There has been a significant increase in those living in temporary accommodation in England, and the City of Doncaster Council has had to pay millions to house people.
The number of those living in temporary accommodation in Doncaster is on the rise, with over 1,300 households staying in provisional premises, which is costing the council over £4m a year, a new investigation has revealed.
Figures obtained by Personal Injury Claims UK found that, in 2023/24, 1,318 people are living in temporary accommodation in Doncaster.
Temporary accommodation (TA) is the term used to describe accommodation secured by a local housing authority under their statutory homelessness functions.
The data comes in light of the news that, across the UK, the number of homeless people in local authority-provided TA rose to record levels.
In 2023, about 109,000 households in England – including 142,000 children – were in emergency housing between June and September, up ten per cent on the same period the previous year.
Back in 2021/22, the number of people staying in TA in Doncaster stood at 1,342, with a possible cause for this being the ongoing cost-of-living crisis forcing people to find other, cheaper places to live.
A year later, this number decreased to 954, which is the lowest number of people living in TA in the past three years.
Over the past year, the city has experienced a rise in the number of TA residents, with the number standing at 1,318.
When authorities run out of immediate space in specific TA premises, other types of accommodation are used to house people such as hotels and bed and breakfasts (B&Bs).
Hotels are one the main forms of TA, and across England in the past year, 50,546 people lived in hotel accommodation, up 10% from last year.
With the number of TA residents increasing significantly, so has the cost of temporary accommodation, with local authorities and councils having to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds.
In addition, the short-term rental market, such as Airbnb, has reduced the number of properties that councils can use.
Personal Injury Claims UK also obtained figures on how much temporary accommodation has cost councils and housing authorities in the past three years.
In 2021/22, TA cost City of Doncaster Council £3,863,000, rising to £3,940,000 a year later.
The cost of TA has jumped to £4,190,000 in 2023/24, with households being placed in more expensive properties.
A spokesman for St Leger Homes said: City of Doncaster Council and St Leger Homes of Doncaster, who manage 20,000 homes on behalf of the council, said: “The city of Doncaster is facing the same challenges with homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation as the rest of the country.
"Numbers have been rising nationally and have been compounded by the impact of the Covid pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.
"We do all we can to prevent households having to go into temporary accommodation but, like other councils, the numbers of people approaching threatened with homelessness remains high.
"Temporary accommodation is used in a number of difficult or emergency situations such as private landlord evictions, domestic abuse and relationship breakdown.
"The council is currently reviewing the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy to make best use of all resources available to assist people threatened with homelessness and those who are sleeping out.”