Greens demand urgent action on £2.3m temporary accommodation bill
Green councillors are calling for an urgent review into Norwich City Council’s use of privately-owned temporary accommodation, after it was revealed that the council has spent £2.3m over the last 5 years to fill gaps in the lack of council-owned housing.
Local authorities are required to provide temporary accommodation to those at risk of imminent homelessness. It is an essential service, but Labour-run Norwich City Council has increasingly been relying on expensive, often substandard privately owned units, some as far away as Ipswich. As a result, the bill to the taxpayer for this service has increased year-on-year for five years (discounting an outlier in 2020-21 as a result of the ‘Everybody In’ initiative during the pandemic).
Often, people are housed in B&Bs without access to the facilities they need to live and far away from their work and family, while the council ends up with a hefty bill for a poorly delivered service.
Greens are demanding that the council’s administration immediately makes a plan for improving standards and reducing this cost in the long term, by learning from other councils who manage to reduce temporary accommodation spend with innovative ideas, while keeping tenants in Norwich and in decent homes. Greens are suggesting more council-owned property and modular homes that can be constructed quickly and at low-cost, and are also calling on the Government to stop the forced sale of council homes.
The average time spent in temporary housing in Norwich is six weeks, which is as high as it is legally allowed to go. Green councillors believe this is far too long, causing excessive stress for tenants and adding strain on budgets, and that wait times need to be brought down urgently through action from both local and national Government.
Councillor Alex Catt, deputy leader of the Green Group at City Hall, said: “People facing homelessness deserve security and a decent place to live that will not require them to move away from work and family.”
“Yet the Labour councillors at Norwich City Council have allowed huge bills to rack up for far-flung and insecure accommodation. We need more council-owned temporary accommodation to improve standards for those in need and also deliver these services in a cost effective way.”
Councillor Ash Haynes said: “The cost to the taxpayer of stop-gap accommodation rose 41% between 2019 and 2023. Temporary accommodation is a critical service for those at risk of homelessness, but with the average stay already at the legal limit and a large and growing increase in costs each year, we hope that the Labour administration at City Hall will take urgent action to lower these costs and better support our tenants.”