The number of households in temporary housing in Brighton and Hove has hit a four-year high.
In the last seven months of 2025, more than 2,000 households were in temporary housing each month, reaching a high of 2,170 in November and December.
And nearly 50 homeless households a week were assessed as being “owed a duty” to be housed by Brighton and Hove City Council over the past year.
The highest number was 189 in September, with the figure dropping to 133 households in November and 130 last month.
Temporary housing is one of the biggest pressures on the council’s budget and, last month, an overspend of £6.3 million was forecast, of which £5 million was for spot-purchased nightly accommodation.
When setting its budget last February, the council allocated funding for 193 households a night but demand has been so high it has had to find money for 600 households a night.
At a meeting of the council’s cabinet last month, the Labour deputy leader of the council Jacob Taylor said that officials had been looking hard at high-pressure areas such as emergency and temporary housing.
Draft budget papers going before two of the council’s overview and scrutiny committees next Monday (19 January) forecast that the cost of temporary accommodation will go up by £12 million in 2026-27.
Work to reduce the pressure on the budget by about £5 million includes increasing the supply of temporary housing by block booking accommodation rather than spot purchasing it which is more expensive.
The council is also looking to reduce the number of individuals and families in temporary housing with a new advice team and plans to accelerate moves from temporary homes to social housing.
Last month, the council said that it was also reviewing its portfolio of land, property and other assets, with a view to raising £30 million over the coming three years.
Some properties, such as the old Slipper Baths, in Barrack Yard, off North Road, Brighton, could be turned into housing to reduce the amount paid by the council to private landlords for temporary housing.
In October, the cabinet agreed to buy 13 homes for temporary housing to save £164,000 a year.
People living in temporary housing are classed as homeless because where they live is not considered a long-term home.
Temporary housing can be anything from a room in a bed and breakfast to a flat rented through the council from a private landlord.
The council’s cabinet adviser on homelessness, Councillor Paul Nann, said: “We have continued to see an increase in demand for our homelessness support services, including temporary accommodation, despite the dedicated work of the service and partners across the city.
“We remain committed to supporting those people in temporary accommodation into settled, long-term homes.
“We recently launched our new Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2025 to 2030, which puts a strong focus on the prevention of homelessness and rough sleeping.
“Part of that focus is a shift towards early intervention services, reaching residents and providing support to prevent homelessness before it occurs.
“We made a significant investment in this area and will continue to do all we can to support people in secure, affordable and quality housing.”
I am convinced that as a result of Section 21 the council could go bankrupt over the number of homeless they will be forced to house soon. Thousands of rental properties have been removed from the market and those that remain will now cost much more to rent and landlords will be incredibly careful who they let to. In the past they may have taken a chance on someone. Now they will go through their bank statements, social media records, referees with a fine tooth comb before renting a property which will make it far harder for people with kids, on universal credit, the self-employed, recent immigrants etc to rent,
The main pressure on most councils, not just Brighton, is in fact, Adult Social Care.
It was obviously going to happen here and in the rest of the country.
When the government, central and local, goes to war on a part of the economy investors move to other opportunities.
All the time councillors agree to fork out millions and millions each year to big private landlords, like Baron Homes and their other connected companies, Moretons, Chestnust etc, residents are being let down by the council.
As for the ‘overspend’ it is simply poor budget management on councillors’ part to have failed to understand the scale of the problem and make sure there was enough funding to meet their likely legal housing duties when they set their budget last year. They didn’t. No doubt this year councillors will pass an unrealistic and unachievable budget again, rather than do the obvious, which is to highlight the ongoing Labour government’s under funding of local authorities.
Central funding is clearly the main culprit for most councils’ budgets at the moment. I agree with you on this point; there’s only so much you can stretch. Too little butter over too much bread.
Whilst that conversation is happening, I’m happy to see local projects like bringing temporary housing in-house, because that produces year-on-year savings which help balance the books. A piece of a larger strategy, but an important one.
The government’s war on landlords with overlegislation, plus the local council with its landlord registration scheme ON TOP of Article 4 HMO licencing is not helping. It is now reaching a tipping point there there is almost more cost and hassle than value in being a landlord but that doesn’t seem to make properties released onto the market as a result of landlords leaving the market any cheaper to buy for those in housing need. On top of this you have greedy agents pressurising landlords to raise rents in order to extract more agent costs and fees! The perfect storm is coming together to put a lot more people on the streets.
“Over-legislation” – you seem to have forgotten Grenfell already. The impact that cutting red tape in relation to fire safety standards and building safety had there cost 72 people their lives. Landlords who can’t provide safe and decent accommodation, should not be landlords in the first place.
If we want to prevent more people from ending up on the streets, we need to stop depending on a system designed to extract wealth for private gain and focus on genuinely affordable homes at scale through council-led development and expanded social housing.
That’s not anti-landlord. It’s pro-community.
Let’s call them what they should be called. Council housing. We should ensure the system is not rigged toward the private sector, thousands of households are stuck, in a system which is broken. All the mums have tried tell the administration they didn’t want to listen, now they have had enough. Seeing an £19m direct award given authority by one person the leader sets a danergous new prescident.
I had someone in the new hobby place council flats when they moved in the rents for a three bedroom were £800pcm, there now paying £1200pcm. To the council.
So important we focus on homes at social rents, when the tower blocks go, will replacement homes follow the hobby place model?
Something has gone terribly wrong. Been doing this ten years, mostly under Labour Administrations. This is the worst I’ve ever known it. In terms of people feeling abandoned, isolated and fed up.
Well, Hobby Place makes perfect sense, since that figure is within LHA for 3-beds, so it would be fully covered by housing benefits at £1200pcm. It’d be great if everything were 30% social rents, but the reality of paying back loans and mortgages for properties simply does not work without heavy subsidies, as I’m sure you’re aware of with your extensive…history. And every LHA rent puts pressure on market rates to go down.
I think the strategy is going in the right direction, making savings by putting things like temporary housing in-house, looking at collaborations, and working on an ALMO.
Certainly more to be done, and there is the underlying issue of affordability that is a central government challenge; but definitely not insurmountable.
The department for temporary accomodation is literally almost all private sector. Council have had years to fix this, governments could borrow to build for years.
I will give you an example, Whitehawk has £16m annually extracted from its community wealth, taken in rents and council tax. Over ten years that’s £160m excluding inflation.
There certainly not pumping that money back into the area, so where is it going?
£30m spend on temporary accomodation budget, the labour government recently cut the homeless prevention grant by 45%, the was already not preventing they were using the £11m to give to landlords. Subsidise. Shocking the system locally.
Until we see a direct replacement of Emergency Accomodation which is expensive, to an fill in house model, nothing will change under the plans.
Meaningless without a full plan
As I said, the strategy is going in the right direction, making savings by putting things like temporary (and emergency) housing in-house, looking at collaborations, and working on an ALMO.
Councils do borrow to build; there have been several hundred completions in the last couple of years, but it’s not an unlimited tap. However, to suggest that it’s as simple as that is a misrepresentation, considering your extensive experience with the issue.
There’s more nuance to your central government claim as well, as this was primarily due to restructuring into broader programmes, like the RSPRG. But what you describe is more the general trend of budgets for councils – having to do more with less, and is certainly not topic-specific.
To reiterate my original point, it’s a positive movement and a piece of a larger puzzle to solve.