A record number of children are living in B&Bs beyond the legal limit as England’s homelessness crisis pushes councils to breaking point.

MPs said there is a “dire need” for housing reform, with the lack of affordable homes forcing cash-strapped local authorities to haemorrhage their funds on temporary accommodation.

The “crisis situation” means there is less money in the pot to focus on homelessness prevention, the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.

Councils are instead having to prioritise short-term solutions which can include putting families in bed and breakfasts – the fastest rising temporary accommodation type over the past decade, a Sky News analysis of government data found.

Temporary accommodation is meant to be a short-term solution for people who are homeless while they wait for more suitable and long-term housing options.

But the rising number of homeless households in England, driven by a shortage of social or otherwise affordable housing to move on to, means that increasingly this fix is anything but temporary.

A recent Sky News investigation found that children in some parts of England are spending as long as five-and-a-half years on average in temporary accommodation.

Length of stay has increased significantly in many areas since 2021, with particularly long stays in London and the South East.

B&B use was the fastest rising temporary accommodation type over the past decade, rising fourfold from 4,400 households in 2014 to a record high of 18,400 by 2024, according to government figures.

The data shows 6,000 of these households included children, of which two in three had been living there for longer than the 6-week legal limit.

All of this is cripplingly expensive for councils. B&Bs, meant to be reserved for emergencies only, were the largest single spending category in council homelessness budgets in 2024, at £723.9m.

This is more than triple the amount spent in 2014, which was £218m adjusted for inflation.

Overall, temporary accommodation costs to local authorities have risen from more than £1.6bn in 2022-23 to around £2.1bn in 2023-24, the PAC said.

‘Crisis situation’

The PAC is calling for a clear strategy and stronger support for local authorities to address what it called “a crisis situation”.

Despite there being an overarching homelessness strategy for each of the devolved nations, England does not have one.

Committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said this had left local authorities “attempting to save a sinking ship with a little more than a leaky bucket”.

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MPs also urged the government to justify its Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates, which calculate housing benefit for tenants renting from private landlords.

The committee said 45% of households in receipt of the benefit face a shortfall between what they receive from the government and what they are being asked to pay in rent, and the issue is “exacerbated by the lack of affordable housing”.

The government has pledged to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament, but it has not set a target of how many of them will be classed as affordable.

Sir Geoffrey said: “My committee is deeply concerned by the number of people currently being housed in sub-standard, overpriced and at times, wholly inappropriate accommodation, sometimes a long way from their previous home.

“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.”

He added: “Local authorities find themselves at breaking point as they haemorrhage funds to cover the rising costs of housing families in temporary accommodation.

“We are calling for an overarching strategy that addresses the need for better connectivity across government departments to tackle the root causes of this crisis.

“Without one, we fear this will remain an issue into which money is simply poured, without effectively tackling the blight of homelessness.”