‘Horror’ of finding 155 children in one B&B
There was 'sheer horror' at the discovery of 155 children staying at just one B&B in Birmingham during the first lockdown, it has now been revealed.
The children – part of 85 families – were found at an undisclosed location along the Hagley Road, with up to four people sharing a room.
The 'siren call' situation was revealed by Councillor Lisa Trickett who said more should be done to solve the region's housing crisis. And she now fears these desperate conditions could again be repeated as the new national lockdown is set to come into force.
She spoke of the "sheer horror of one Sunday afternoon finding 155 children at a bed and breakfast on the Hagley Road having been placed by a number of authorities from this region. With no means of cooking, no means of education, no nothing."
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Councillor Trickett first revealed the incident at a meeting of the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), and has urged them to do more to solve the region's housing crisis.
"What [the first lockdown] really flagged up across the board was levels of housing need in our city and region," she said.
"And the lived experience was so acutely worse than any of the data could tell us.
"From old blokes who hadn't got their cookers fitted because they couldn't afford the gas and the cooking, whose life line was either a cheap meal in Wetherspoons or a Greggs pasty, through to people living in overcrowded temporary accommodation.
"And this was four people to a bedroom, and really brought home how challenging the living circumstances were.
Prevalent
"I think one that affected a number of us was this one Sunday afternoon when 85 families were present in a B&B, and there wasn't a means really available for them to safely use the cooking facilities within that B&B hotel.
"And then we identified that there were 155 children there, that came from across the region, and that to us was a real siren call of the absolute cost of the housing crisis.
"Those young people and children in that hostel had no access to food, to educational facilities, to recreational space. If you've got data on a mobile phone and you can't afford to update your data and it's run out, your child has no access. There's no shared wi-fi in these hostels.
"I don't think people realise how prevalent this crisis actually is and how many children it's impacting on. I've got an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old, and being locked up with those two in my house does my head in.
"You imagine being locked in a room with them and two other siblings of a much younger age, and that's the kind of experience that people were having in the lockdown last time.
"What we're doing, in not addressing the housing crisis in this country, is we're condemning a whole load of young people and children now to poorer life opportunities."
Regeneration
During the meeting on Monday, Councillor Trickett questioned housing and land portfolio holder Mike Bird and leading officers as to why the WMCA was not providing social housing to help meet the needs of the housing crisis.
In response, she was told that social housing was not within the remit handed down by government to the WMCA, with funds only available for specific projects such as the regeneration of brownfield sites.
However Councillor Trickett believes that the authority should and could be doing more, saying it is the 'responsibility' of the Housing and Land Delivery Board to meet the region's housing need.
"There's thousands of acres of land in public ownership in this region that we could be packaging and putting into a new form of housing that actually you could develop modular housing on," she said.
"And you could put out a commission saying we want 2,000 modular homes to be built on this acreage of public land, and we could be having new homes by the end of the year – not the end of next year.
"And that's what really scares me, is the sheer lack of insight and ambition. They're prepared to offer loans to property developers, but they won't consider actually looking at new models that bring through housing options that could address the housing need of the children and families that we found on the Hagley Road."
