There are nearly 500 children in temporary accommodation including eight staying in hotels, a senior Bedford Borough Council officer has said.
The council’s chief officer for assessment, application and business support, Lee Phanco, was responding to a question from a member of the public at Wednesday’s virtual Housing Committee (January 18).
The question, from Shannon Johnstone, was read out by the committee chair, councillor Colleen Atkins (Labour, Harpur): “I understand that there are 530 households in temporary accommodation at the moment.
“How many individuals make up these 530 households, and how many of them are children?” the question asked.
Mr Phanco said that the data was checked earlier in the day.
“There are 686 adults that are in temporary accommodation, and there are 497 children,” he said.
“One point I would like to make around children in temporary accommodation because that is obviously a significant concern.
“Only eight of those children are accommodated in hotels, everybody else is in self-contained accommodation.
“At the moment the longest any of the families have been in hotel accommodation is just 21 days.
“We aim to ensure that families do not spend any longer than six weeks in hotels, and normally the stay is much shorter,” he said.
“So although it is very challenging for us at the moment to find accommodation, particularly at short notice.
“The homelessness team is doing an excellent job in making sure that families aren’t kept in hotel accommodation any longer than is absolutely necessary, and no more than six weeks,” he said.
Following the meeting, the Bedford Independent contacted the homelessness advocacy agency, JustUs, regarding these figures.
“Despite the efforts of the Council, the experience for many [children in temporary accommodation] is of frequent changes in school, overcrowded, poor quality accommodation, and even the little things like missing out on having friends knock for you to go out to play and simply not knowing how long you will be there for,” said Mike Hyden, JustUs caseworker.
“Many stay in temporary accommodation for years whilst fearing a phone call each day to say they have to move somewhere else immediately. It’s no way to live.
“Successive government’s failure to build enough homes for every family has far-reaching consequences, both now and for the next generations, and it seems to me it will cost us more as a society to ignore the problem than it will to actually fix it.”
by John Guinn (with additional reporting by Erica Roffe)
Local Democracy Reporter
