Temporary Accommodation: Tackling Poor Conditions
House of Commons · Written Statements · 22 Jun 2026 · 1 speech · Official Report
I am grateful to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee for their report published on 22 April 2026, and our response, laid and published today, sets out the actions Government are taking to improve the quality and supply of temporary accommodation. My long-term priority remains to prevent homelessness and tackle the root causes, but where temporary accommodation is necessary, it must be safe, decent and stable. Today I want to set out the wider steps Government are taking to ensure this is the case. We are making encouraging progress against commitments we set out in December 2025 in our cross-Government child poverty strategy and national plan to end homelessness. First and foremost, we will continue to focus on the most harmful forms of homelessness, and particularly the unlawful use of B&B accommodation for families where essential facilities, such as kitchens and bathrooms, are shared. We have achieved a 63% fall in families with children staying in B&Bs beyond six weeks, compared to the same time last year, and remain on track to eliminate this by the end of the Parliament. More widely, the latest homelessness statistics show some signs of stabilisation, with numbers of households in temporary accommodation falling for the first quarter since 2022. We are also helping councils invest in good-quality temporary accommodation, through delivery of the £950-million fourth round of the local authority housing fund, and through exploring options for...