English councils pay private landlords millions in incentives to house homeless families | Homelessness

Councils in the UK spend millions of pounds a year to convince private homeowners to host homeless families, and the campaignists call it a “a meaningless waste of public money”.

Data collected by the campaign group Generation rental Through demands of information freedom, 37 councils showed that in 2024-25, 10,792 times spent more than £ 31 million for one-time cash payments.

Data from 32 London Councils and 10 Councils outside the capital, with the biggest legal homelessness problems, showed that local authorities are increasingly using these payments to host homeless or evacuation families.

In London, the amount spent by councils for incentives for private homeowners has increased by 54% since 2018, and its data has been collected for the last time.

Generation Rent’s General Manager Ben Twomey said: “The rising rental cost and the government’s decision to freeze local housing allowances made the councils almost impossible to the country.

“With an desperate offer to avoid placing people in temporary stay, they have to pay tens of thousands of pounds to individual homeowners to accept their homes. This is a meaningless waste of our public money.”

The Manchester Municipal Assembly spent the host incentives by spent 3.3 million pounds in 2024-25, spent the Enfield Council in North London, spent £ 2.7 million, spent 2.3 million pounds in Western London and spent the Birmingham Municipal Assembly spent 1.7 million pounds.

Most of these local authorities face budget deficits and make deductions on services and Council tax increases. The Manchester Municipal Assembly reported a budget gap of 18 million pounds earlier this year, while the Birmingham Municipal Assembly made the biggest deductions in the history of local authority after effective bankruptcy.

The highest one -time payment to a landlord was paid by the Southwark Council in South London, and many other councils often paid more than £ 10,000 to hosts. In 2018, only one council in London reported that he paid $ 10,000 or more in a single incentive payment, while six reported that he did it at 2024-25.

Twomey described the rental market as “like the Wild West ve and the landlords led the system to rank the system at the expense of people who have lived their pockets and the local councils trying to host them”. The authority called on the government to provide the authority to limit rent increases to resolve local housing allowance rates and to help the mayors of Metro to prevent the application.

Chris Norris, the Policy Director of the National Settlement Hosts Association, said that the incentives were önemli a bad way to finance the housing system, but it came out of a tremendous deficiency between the local housing allowance rates in almost every region of the country ”.

Authorized, hosts, “increasingly increasingly, local housing allowance or universal loan dependent people can not afford to be rented” and incentives allowed the hosts to borrow the possible families, he said.

Norris also said that homeowners have been offered incentives to receive tenants who have “perceived to represent a higher risk, such as substance addiction problems or people who have leaving the prison.

“Obviously, this is doing a job and the least bad option that many local authorities can use now,” he said. “It would help hosts to meet and offer accommodation, but it would be much more efficient and fair if the government has made it a welfare system that allows people to access homes.”

However, campaignists said that the system is open to abuse and that the landlords could play councils against each other or give evacuation notifications to make more payment.

Grace Williams, Housing and Renewal Executive in London Councils, He said that the capital is struggling with the ız the most extreme homelessness emergency in the country ve and that they are facing great difficulties in fulfilling their legal duties to find accommodation for homeless residents.

“Instead of using expensive hotels and B&Bs, working with local hosts in the specially rented sector can provide better results and better value for homeless families,” he said.

Birmingham Municipal Assembly, incentive payments in the city of more than 25,000 people in the housing registry of the fact that “a necessary and pragmatic response,” he said.

Ealing Council said incentive payments that access to the rented sector, such as lack of credit history of homeless households, helps to overcome the obstacles of access to the rented sector.

A Manchester Municipal Assembly Spokesman The specially rented sector was better and more suitable and safer for money, one of the alternative options of the “expensive hotel and B&BS, which was illegal and limited up to six weeks, except in exceptional cases.