The sharp decrease can in part be attributed to an initiative launched by the Council’s Housing team in November to address the issue of families having no alternative but to stay in temporary housing across the district.

In the run up to the festive season, the team set themselves an ambitious target of sourcing alternative accommodation for 22 children under the age of 18 who were living in B&Bs in time for Christmas.

Working in close collaboration with colleagues from the Assets team to accelerate the release of empty properties from existing housing stock, and by supporting and prioritising identified families through the Council’s HomeChoice scheme, the team of officers, not only rehomed all the families living in B&Bs, by 24 December, but also reduced the overall number of children across the district living in other forms of temporary accommodation by 39%.

As of 20 January, there are no children living in Bed & Breakfasts in Warwick District. The remaining 30 children requiring temporary homes are being housed in Council-owned self-contained accommodation, which is allocated for this purpose.

Councillor Jess Melrose, Portfolio Holder for Housing commented:

“Although we welcome the success of this initiative, our aim is to go much further to ensure that all families in our district have somewhere to call home.

"The use of Bed & Breakfasts and other short-term accommodation is a last resort for those facing homelessness.

"Our immediate aim is to reduce the long-term use of B&Bs, by sourcing more appropriate self-contained accommodation in the private rented sector through the introduction of a private sector leasing scheme. In the longer term our strategy is to increase the availability of affordable housing across our district, particularly Council homes at social rent levels.”

National Homeless Strategy

The Government has recently released a National Homeless Strategy entitled "A National Plan to End Homelessness", which highlighted the national crisis on the use of temporary accommodation. It identified a record 132,410 households including 172,420 children are living in temporary accommodation in England. Furthermore, 2,027 families are currently living in B&B type accommodation beyond the 6-week statutory duty limit.

The National Plan will set a new target to eliminate the use of B&B for families, other than very short-term use in emergencies by the end of this parliament.