Boat carrying migrants leaves France (Image: Getty)
Councils are struggling to house homeless families after the Home Office snapped up empty properties for .
It comes as 6,000 households with children have been placed in bed and breakfast accommodation because local authorities have nowhere else for them.
The practice was condemned by MPs, who said that as well as cutting the number of homes available it pushed up local rents.
Home Office officials have now promised to let councils have the first choice of available properties in their area.
MPs said cash-strapped authorities face a homelessness “crisis” and Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: “A lack of affordable housing, a focus on short-term solutions and no clear strategy to tackle this issue have left us with thousands of families in deeply troubling circumstances.”
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The Committee highlighted the problem of “competition” between the Home Office and local authorities, saying: “We are dismayed to hear that local authorities looking to acquire temporary accommodation for homeless households still sometimes find that the Home Office has outbid them to accommodate asylum seekers in the area.”
And in a new report it said Home Office officials had admitted there were concerns about “paying higher rates than the local authority in an area with small amounts of rental accommodation, and driving up rents as result”.
The Government is attempting to move asylum seekers out of hotels but has scrapped the previous government’s policy of using large sites such as former RAF bases, and instead is attempting to procure smaller properties across the country.
There are currently 220 hotels used to house asylum seekers and the number has risen by six since the election. Most recent figures show 35,651 asylum seekers are in hotels, up by 6,000 since the election, at a cost to taxpayers of £5.4 million every day.
So far in January 1,098 cross-Channel migrants have arrived in small boats.
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Councils spent £2.1 billion on temporary accommodation last year and MPs on the committee raised “deep concerns” about the number of families being housed outside their local area, which has now risen to 39,000. This includes families from London moved to places such as County Durham, Walsall, Sheffield and Liverpool.
The MPs said: “It is unacceptable that, as at June 2024, almost 6,000 households with children were being housed in a B&B”.
They said: “We are alarmed at the detrimental impact that living in B&B accommodation has on people’s lives – not least on children, whose safety and wellbeing can be profoundly compromised by such living arrangements.”
A Government spokesperson said: “We are taking urgent and decisive action to end homelessness for good, including committing £1 billion in additional support for homelessness services and address the use of emergency accommodation.
“We’re talking the root causes of homelessness, committing in our Plan for Change to build 1.5 million new homes, which includes building the social and affordable homes this country needs, and are changing the law to abolish Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions – immediately tackling one of the leading causes of homelessness.”