£7m cost of housing the city's homeless

NOW COUNCIL SAYS IT'S MAKING PLANS TO TACKLE THE SITUATION

- CARL EVE

COUNCIL chiefs have said they are making plans to tackle the city’s housing and homelessness crisis as figures reveal they had to spend more than £7m to house people in temporary accommodation since 2021.

A freedom of Information request by the firm Personal Injury Claims UK claimed that the 906 households had lived in temporary accommodation in Plymouth during the financial year of 2023/24.

Temporary accommodation (TA) is the term used to describe accommodation secured by a local housing authority under their statutory homelessness functions. The data came in light of the news that, across the UK, the number of homeless people in local authorityprovided TA rose to record levels.

In 2023, about 109,000 households in England, including 142,000 children, were in emergency housing between June and September, up 10% on the same period the previous year.

In 2021/22, the number of households in TA in Plymouth stood at 777, with a possible cause for this being the ongoing cost-of-living crisis forcing people to find other, cheaper places to live. A year later, this number increased to 1,052 – the highest number of people living in TA in the past three years.

Over the past year, the city has seen a slight drop in the number of TA residents, with the number currently standing at 906.