Norfolk council spends nine times as much on B&Bs due to rising homelessness
It's spent £145k on B&B accommodation in 2022, compared with an average annual spend of £16k
A Norfolk council has warned that it is spending roughly nine times as much cash on bed and breakfast accommodation than it normally would, due to rising homelessness.
The Borough Council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk said it had spent some £145k on emergency B&B accommodation in 2022 so far, compared with an average annual spend of just £16k.
Appeals for help with homelessness, lodged with the authority, have risen by roughly 27% in just six months and council officials warned the situation could worsen further.
At a meeting of the authority’s homelessness and housing delivery task group on Monday, December 19, councillors were told there had been some 330 instances of people telling the council they were facing homelessness in the third quarter of 2021.
But by the second quarter of 2022, that figure had risen to 420.
An officer said the rise was “obviously putting pressure on all of the types of accommodation that we’ll use to try and support those people coming to us for help”.
He said the council had been forced to look more frequently at using B&Bs to accommodate people, when they would previously have been only rare used.
“We’ve unfortunately had to use B&Bs for families, something that we’ve certainly avoided completely in recent years,” he said.
“At a personal level, obviously, it’s terribly difficult for people with children and so on, trying to live in accommodation like that, and we have legal responsibilities in terms of minimising the number of weeks that we ever let that happen.”
He added that the rise in homelessness had been caused by rising rents, as well as a significant rise in landlords giving their tenants section 21 notices, known as ‘no fault evictions’, as they decide to sell their properties.
Labour councillor Sandra Collop asked if there may be an increase in people becoming homeless due to not being able to afford their mortgages.
The officer replied that such a rise was possible, even following the changes that were made following the 2008 financial crash, though there was likely to be a lag before any rise is seen.
Officers added that they were working to increase the accommodation available to homeless people, and the group agreed to meet again, possibly as soon as February, for an update.