Fewer homeless people are being put up in temporary housing in Eastbourne, a senior councillor said, but the figures show that the total still tops 140.
Labour councillor Gill Williams, Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet member for housing, said that the number had fallen by more than a quarter since August.
The council said that the number of homeless households from Brighton and Hove in Eastbourne was 197 last August. By April the total had fallen to 143.
Eastbourne Borough Council and the town’s MP Josh Babarinde have criticised Brighton and Hove for putting homeless households into emergency and temporary housing in the area.
Councillor Williams said that the interim policy – to use a fifth of the council’s empty properties as temporary housing for vulnerable families in overcrowded accommodation – had helped to reduce the number of households in out-of-area placements.
She also recognised that people on the council’s waiting list would be concerned about empty properties being used as temporary housing, hence 80 per cent of available homes were still being allocated to people who often had been in need of a home for some time.
Councillor Williams said: “Too many households, including families, are spending extended periods in temporary accommodation.
“That’s unstable, that’s expensive and in some cases regrettably out of our city. This does have a clear impact on children’s wellbeing, education and access to local services and support networks.”
As the council is buying back more properties as well as building new homes, Councillor Williams said that more homes were becoming available every week.
The council recently said that it would convert three former student houses – or houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) – back into family homes in Bevendean.
Since January, the council has used 42 of its own empty properties for temporary housing. A further 19 homes are due to be added by next month and a further 43 are in progress.
Green councillor Sue Shanks said that there was a national crisis in temporary housing which had resulted in children’s deaths in other parts of the country.
Councillor Shanks said that she had visited households in overcrowded temporary housing in her ward of West Hill and North Laine, with one bedroom and no room for children to play.
At a council cabinet meeting last week, she said: “We do welcome the council’s report and the attempts to deal with this.
“We hope that we’ll get more support nationally from the government on ending the right to buy, controlling short-term lets, Airbnb and allowing us locally to set rent controls.”
The council currently has 2,100 households living in temporary housing, with almost half of them families with children.
A report to the cabinet said that demand for temporary housing was growing by about 166 households a year and, without taking action, the council could face 2,860 households in temporary housing by 2029-30.
The cost of temporary housing is one of the biggest pressures on the council budget, with an expected overspend of £6 million in 2025-26, compared with the budget.
The budget for the current financial year had an extra £11 million set aside to tackle homelessness and officials were expected to find savings totalling £5 million.
The report to the cabinet made reference to a new contract to stabilise spending on nightly paid emergency accommodation.
The cabinet approved a proposal to stop using council-owned empty homes as temporary housing by the start of May next year – and the total was expected to be 180 properties.
Members also agreed to start a new hardship fund for those in the relevant council-owned and long-term leased properties who may be affected by rent reviews but who were not receiving benefits.
The Labour leader of the council Bella Sankey said that the aim was to drive down the number of people in temporary housing.
It was also to build more social and affordable homes to ensure people on the housing register could have a decent, safe and good-quality home.
Councillor Sankey said: “In a relatively short space of time over the last few years we have taken a number of incredibly bold interventions to shape our local housing market and start shaping it in the interest of our local residents.
“Over the coming year and coming years we will be looking to take even more bold action to really try to address this housing crisis once and for all.”
One can only hope that with a Sussex and Brighton Strategic Authority the respective individual authorities will focus on a pan Sussex strategy, rather than blame culture.
Stats may skew in a few years as emergency placements in Peacehaven will likely fall under B&H.
It’s a really good point, and I hope so too. A strategic approach to the challenge of homelessness seems to me the most logical and impactful approach. Like-for-like comparisons will be difficult during the transitional years. I completely agree with you there, too. I fear that skewed stats might be used to weaponise a bad-faith narrative—something the SA will need to watch out for, methinks.