London is often held up as the jewel in Britain’s crown. Yet beneath the city’s gleaming skyline lies a less celebrated reality: ‘temporary housing’ that is anything but. Across the capital, families in need are housed by local councils in hotels, hostels and B&Bs at extraordinary expense. What is meant to be a short-term emergency fix has calcified into a way of life for tens of thousands, sometimes for years . It is expensive, unsuitable and corrosive, to both family life and the public purse.

Councils across England spent £2.29 billion on temporary housing last year, up nearly 30 per cent in only twelve months. Half of that went on the most unsuitable forms of housing imaginable, nightly-paid B&Bs and hostels, the sort of places families are meant to avoid, not endure.

Councils

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