Bed-and-breakfasts are no places for families to live
Local authorities are strapped for cash.
Barely a week goes by without news that one council or another is being forced to slash services or increase costs, be it leisure services, parking fees or something as basic as waste collections.
News that housing shortages mean they are now having to stump up ever-increasing amounts of money to pay for bed-and-breakfast accommodation for homeless families is concerning indeed.
Latest figures show there were 123,100 households in England living in temporary accommodation, a rise of 16.3 per compared to the previous year. This includes 159,380 children.
Of these, 6,000 were housed in bed-and-breakfasts, with 4,000 of them spending more than the maximum six weeks permitted by law.
This is wholly unacceptable. It is bad news for the councils, who do not have the money to pay for them, it is bad news for schools, who have to deal with the problems associated with precarious living arrangements, and most of all, it is bad for the families themselves.
The Government needs to work with local authorities to get a grip on this problem fast.