Bedford Borough Council has reduced its forecast overspend on temporary accommodation by £3.6 million in a single year, councillors have heard.
A progress report to the Budget and Corporate Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday (27 January) said in the current financial year (2025/26), the Temporary Accommodation forecast overspend had reduced from £4.8m to £1.2m.
Cllr Graeme Coombes (Conservative, Wixams and Wilstead) described the reduction as “a significant achievement”, noting that the number of households in temporary accommodation had plateaued rather than fallen, meaning savings had been delivered through service changes rather than reduced demand.
The report added that this improvement has been driven by a “range of measures and actions” taken through the transformation project.
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Head of housing, homelessness and customer services, Anna Robbani, said: “It’s been achieved through lots of different strands of work… there’s not been one big hitter.
“[Including] a focused piece of work around income and housing benefit streamlining… by negotiating unit costs, some block bookings, some property acquisition, [and a] huge amount of casework behind the scenes to increase rehousing outcomes for customers.
“We’ve reduced the numbers going in through increased prevention work.
“[But] there’s a lot more to do.”
The report said hotel placements for homeless households had fallen from 185 in January 2024 to 35 by September 2025.
It added that negotiated nightly-let rate reductions have “delivered £700,000 in cost avoidance” since April 2025.
The storage/removals function had been “redesigned and brought in-house”, and is “now a nil cost”. The council had been spending £30k per month on storage.
The committee agreed that progress had been made in many areas but recommended that the council’s Executive continue to focus on delivering additional council-owned property.
By John Guinn
Local Democracy Reporter
