A record 177,530 children were living in temporary accommodation in England at the end of March, new government data shows.
The research, which was published on Thursday, shows the number of children living in these conditions is higher than the population of North Lincolnshire or the London borough of Kingston upon Thames.
Over the last year the figure has risen by 5.2% and by 0.8% in the last three months.
The statistics – from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – also show a record 135,580 households were living in temporary accommodation on 31 March 2026.
More than 86,000 of the households living in such conditions contained children.
Against this backdrop, Lee Buss-Blair, director of operations at Riverside, said the findings were a ‘stark reminder of the depth and breadth of the homelessness emergency across England’.
‘There are 177,530 homeless children living in temporary accommodation (TA), more than the entire populations of North Lincolnshire (171,336) and Kingston Upon Thames (172,692),’ he said.
‘With councils spending over £10bn on TA over the past five years and growing support needs of people affected by homelessness, it is deeply worrying that half of supported housing providers (56%) have said they will have to close or decommission services due to funding cuts.’
In similar vein, the Treasury has described England’s supported housing sector as being ‘at crisis point’. Its review says the number of bedspaces at accommodation projects for single homeless people fell to 32,466 in 2023 – around 23,000 fewer than in 2008.
The review also found that half of providers said in 2025 they would have to close or decommission some schemes.
Although the majority of the findings are negative, there are some signs of improvement in the temporary accommodation system. The number of families in B&Bs has reduced over the past year, with 1,900 households with children in them at the end of March.
Image: Vitaly Gariev/UnSplash
In related news:
Leave a Reply