Temporary housing is costing much more than expected this year as more people turn for help to Brighton and Hove City Council.
And a drop in the number of private landlords renting out property has left the council with fewer but more expensive options.
The council has estimated that it spent £8.9 million on temporary housing from the start of April to the end of October – 40 per cent over the £6.3 million budget for the period.
Even by the end of May the service was 20 per cent over budget as a growing number of people became homeless.
A report to the council’s cabinet said: “In England and Wales, there are now more households in temporary accommodation (112,660) than ever before.
“Brighton and Hove has done well to keep numbers stable but since December 2023 there has been a steady increase.
“During 2023-24, this increase in Brighton and Hove was 3 per cent, compared with 10 per cent nationally.
“As well as demand pressures there are also price pressures, with the average price of nightly accommodation increasing by 12 per cent since 2023-24.
“As a result of these pressures, the temporary accommodation service is forecast to overspend by £2.548 million including £1.146 million of savings at risk of not being met.”
A key aspect of the overspend is the “spot purchased” or emergency nightly booked housing which is forecast to overspend by £1.67 million.
By the middle of last month, the latest budget and spending report to the cabinet said that 352 households were housed in nightly booked housing.
This is “192 higher than budgets allow” and the forecast assumes that this will have reduced to 320 by the end of March when the financial year ends.
The report said: “The service is aiming to maximise the use of void (empty) council-owned stock where appropriate.
“Additionally, the price of nightly booked accommodation has seen a steep increase of around 12 per cent compared with prices in 2023-24.
“The underlying trend is that the number of households using nightly booked accommodation is increasing due to changes to the private rented sector, with many landlords exiting the market.
“This has a double impact on homelessness and the ‘end of private rented’ is the main reason for homelessness.
“But in the last two quarters, this has increased from 34 per cent of all new cases to 61 per cent.”
The council has an overall budget of about £1.1 billion a year although significant amounts are ringfenced, with the government setting out how the money has to be spent.
A key focus for the cabinet is the council’s “general fund” which has a revenue budget for day-to-day spending of about £260 million.
The report to the cabinet said that this was at risk of being overspent by about £6.8 million by the end of the financial year – or about 2.6 per cent of the total.
Demand-led services such as community care and home to school transport have added to the risk of the council spending more than budgeted.
Community care is already estimated to be more than £2 million over budget and the “cost pressure” for home to school transport is almost £700,000.
To add to the challenges, the council has also received less income than forecast in some areas such as parking services which is on course to make about £350,000 less than budgeted.
The cost of making a planning application went up this year but the council now expects to make about £300,000 less from planning fees than budgeted.
Pay increases have added to the council’s costs but grants from the government have not always gone up enough to fund these extra commitments, adding to the pressures on the budget.
The council had planned to making savings of £23.6 million in the current financial year but the report to the cabinet said that almost £4.5 million was unlikely to be achieved.
The cabinet is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 5pm tomorrow (Thursday 5 December) and to discuss the council’s finances. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
BHCC despises private Landlords and does everything in its power to make life difficult and costly. Ridiculous HMO licencing for 3 bedroom share houses is juts one example. Surprise, surprise….. “a drop in the number of private landlords renting out property has left the council with fewer but more expensive options” . BHCC’s hate for private landlords, along with landlord-unfriendly Westminster government policies, has resulted in many small provate landlords selling up in this city. BHCC you reap what you sow. Idiots.
TBH – it’s all quite predicatable.
I think it’s right that private rental sector is better regulated though as tenants have very little protection from bad landlords (albeit I know there are lots of good landlords too). Either way, surely we all know and can see that until the govt properly addresses the housing and homelessness crisis councils will be left paying a small fortune for things like temporary accommodation.
I can’t help but note that every time the current Labour administration have an overspend (like this £1.67 million one and others) it’s because of increasing statutory costs they have to fork out, yet when Greens had one they say its poor financial management and the £3million one they bang on about in May 2023 almost bankrupted the council. It really reduces trust in politicians when they truth twist in the way that they do.
IMO it’s failings of national policies impacting on both Labour and Green councils, but just interesting to observe the finger pointing and noise going on at the moment from lead councillors
So it turns out a war on landlords has consequences? I guess will see this trend continue across the country with labours continued war on landlords.
Yes you’ve got groups like Acorn and Shelter constantly bashing Landlords and yes many more homeless on the way.
None of this changes the fact that landlords are parasites who cause housing shortages and therefore higher property prices and higher rent costs. Paying private landlords to provide temporary accommodation isn’t exactly a cost effective measure. We need to ban Right to Buy and increase social housing stock, but the Red Tories in Westminster are ideologically wed to further austerity and low wages, so the necessary taxes can’t be implemented.
A limitation to Right to Buy makes sense to me. Ensure a council has a minimum amount of stock at all times.
I am not sure that BHCC hate private landlords but I think they have made a very naive mis-calculation re the rental property licensing schemes. They thought they would score some easy political points with the likes of Acorn et al, and raise funds in the process. The reality is that they will reduce the supply in this market with the consequence of increased costs for renters and pressure on their own housing provision. The ‘increased powers’ they claim to have gained were there in the first place if they had the inclination to use them.
The question is.. will they recognise their mistakes and row back?
It’s frustrating to see how the council seems to profit from the struggles of homeless and disabled individuals, rather than offering genuine support. Take someone I know, for example, who was housed at a YMCA establishment. The YMCA charged a staggering £1,400 a month—way beyond what most people could afford. Housing benefit covered this inflated cost, even though it exceeded the usual cap, yet the so-called “support” services promised to residents were barely visible or effective.
It’s not just YMCA; the council appears to strike deals with struggling hotel owners, agreeing to pay extortionate monthly rates to house vulnerable people in accommodations that are often unsuitable and unfit for purpose. Instead of focusing on affordable housing solutions, they also use their own charity housing chain, Seaside Homes, which owns around 500 properties. Rather than making these homes affordable or converting them to council-owned housing, they charge the maximum possible rent per bedroom.
This raises serious concerns about where the money is going. While we can hope that these funds are being reinvested into council services, there’s an unsettling suspicion that some of it might be lining the pockets of executives. The system seems set up to exploit rather than support those in need, and it’s clear that something needs to change.
I quite agree with this. There are in the region of 60 different providers in Brighton, and their quality is…varied, shall we say. Bringing it in-house seems like a reasonable move to ensure a standardised level of service and prevention of price gorging.
This council have waged war on landlords for years. Now with their licencing scheme on top of Article 4 HMO additional licencing, we are seeing ever more landlords selling up as all the compliance costs are no longer worth their while and they don’t necessarily want to pass these enhanced costs onto their tenants either. Meanwhile the council is one of the worst offenders at providing housing which does not comply with habitable living standards, while having the cheek to persecute landlords often offering significantly better standards.
This article concentrates on the council’s increasing problem in finding homes for people, and the declining number of private landlords is blamed – but the bigger picture is that our housing market is completely skewed.
A huge number of new flats have been built in the past few years, and yet many remain empty, or else are rented out to the top end of the market. You have to earn a lot of money to even consider renting out these new and immaculate high rise flats. For example, if you bank £3K per month from a good job, the rent alone may take half of that, and then you have energy bills and council tax on top.
A lot of private landlords who bought these flats as buy-to-lets must now be wondering what to do with their investments, with supply now outstripping demand at this richer end of the market. The flats is probably no longer increasing in value, and a further issue is the scandalous ‘service charges’ now being charged by building managing agents or freeholders. Landlords will now look elsewhere, for a better return on their investments.
The cheaper bedsit or one bed flats in our city used to be in multiple occupancy buildings, but many have been sold off, and in my road some houses have reverted to single dwellings for wealthier owner occupiers.
There are still some cheaper flats in our road, let by ‘sum landlords’ who do little maintenance on the buildings, and they slap white paint over any mould, or replace a broken fridge with a second hand one.
There’s inevitably a quick turnover of tenants in these properties, and that means the renters often leave within one year, without paying their council tax or their electricity bills – and those debts become to expensive to chase.
When moving on, these tenants often can’t carry away all their stuff, and we see furniture flytipped here.
Our council then picks up this cost, and ultimately that makes everyone else’s bills more expensive.
The reality of living in these bedsits is not great, from what I see. The rent is £850 per month for a bedsit or £1200+ for a one bed flat, and for those on minimum wage, banking less than £2K per month, the only way to survive is to double up and share as a couple, or even with three to a room. This overcrowding adds to the unstable living conditions.
The band A council tax charge adds £120 to your monthly rent, but heating costs in winter nowadays probably add another £150 to your outgoings. On top of this you’ll have phone charges, broadband, travel to work, and of course the costs of food etc.
The underlying picture painted is like a return to Dickensian times.
Why do these people think it’s someone’s duty to house them ? You’re supposed to work hard , save us to buy your own property , etc , etc it’s no good bleating how much landlords charge to rent they can charge what they like especially when people stop paying rent and damage the property or leave it looking like a pigsty then then have to take them to court to get rid of them before they move on and do something else bring back nick van hoogstraten now known as von Hitler to manage this situation
Michael+Barry, The flaw in your argument is that most people can no longer just ‘work hard’ to buy their own place in Brighton and Hove.
If you are renting then all your money goes out to landlords in rent or else in bills, so you probably have no chance to accumulate savings.
Even with a middle ground job, like a school teacher or nurse, your salary is not enough to accumulate the necessary deposit, or enough to secure the sort of mortgage needed to buy a modest flat.
Note that one bedroom flats in this city now start at about £250K, so you can do the maths.
Someone with a 30K salary can only borrow £140K, meaning you’d need a deposit of £110K.
Even with a 50K salary you would still need a deposit of £30K to buy a £250K property.
The high price of the property is the issue in Brighton and Hove. With a modest salary you are better off living elsewhere, where you can do the same job, but with cheaper property values meaning a smaller mortgage is required.
These economic facts will ultimately skew the local population, with first time buyers and most younger people no longer able to live here.
The typical second life stage is where a couple plan to start a family and need more bedrooms, and for the three bed house in Brighton and Hove you need over £500K. So just ‘working hard’ is no answer.
The council could very easily help address the housing shortage in Brighton if they just used the planning laws the council already passed in 2023 and that came through additionally in the levelling up bil. Specifically, these say that any property operating as an AirBnB in Brighton that has C3 (residential planning permission) needs to apply for C5 (short term let planning permission). The City directive put in place said that if this planning permission was applied for it would be automatically refused If the property was a residential property. If people do not adhere to this they can issues enforcement notices which mean the owner will receive an eye watering fine and eventually a court order to close the property. The council needs to start making landlords more aware of this new local planning law and enforcing it more rigorously. At the moment large London based property companies are just leasing large amounts of rental property in the city from landlords and turning flats into terrible AirBnBs and at the same time reducing the housing supply. One landlord did this to 200 properties which before he used to let to people on the councils emergency housing list. Anyone that wishes to report an AirBnB operating without planning permission can do it on this link https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/planning/planning-enforcement I am surprised the press haven’t covered this info more.
I think my argument from years ago about reforming emergency accommodation and bringing in-house is validated. They started doing it, then have stopped.
These costs are the councils own poor planning, not listening to all the evidence. We proved certain landlords were not only tax avoiding, but they are also dodgy relationships with senior officers, they get these lucrative contracts, provide little to no management or support and these slum hostels from hell, end up costing our society more, daily ambulance , police and fire brigade call out, drug deaths, stabbings, ceilings collapsing on others, suicides, loneliness and severe health issues not being met, let alone the costs the council are paying these providers to make the shituation worse.
Issue we have is Egos, the administration seem to have rolled back the positive directions they were making for this expensive private sector model.
They amend the rules, which opens up for social cleansing born and raised brightonians out of the area. Little to no action on Airbnbs locally. A task group…
This shituation is of their own making, we need reform the city should stop voting on administrations who cant deliver the change the city desperately needs.
Of course this shituation is making this a really shit city to live and work. With so many social issues, its like they have given up.
If they cant do the job, they should be sacked and replaced with people who can do the job this city needs.
If I was leading the policy around homelessness these spot purchased emergency accommodations would be cancelled and our assets put to much better use.
The positive thing is there is a lot of people desperate for some hope and leadership, a better community aspect to resolving homelessness.
Ironically my building has over 8 voids and there doesn’t seem to be the will to sort this. These are expensive maladministration mistakes which other non statutory services will be cut as a direct result of this incompetence.