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Britain’s rural child homelessness crisis is worsening, but nobody is talking about it- why? In this week’s newsletter, I’ll share exclusive data from the County Councils Network (CCN), who fear it’s because of a focus on major cities with regional mayors.
Coming up in this week’s newsletter:
Inside Britain’s shocking and overlooked rural child homelessness crisis. Today, the Government announced £10bn of funding to build social and affordable housing. Read my exclusive interview with Housing Secretary Angela Rayner here. And keep reading this newsletter to the end to find out why some people think Andy Burnham has “backed down” on his desire to build council housing – and why I think that’s a somewhat oversimplified take. Your need-to-know on Reform UK’s latest social housing policy.It’s August, which, conventionally, is supposed to be a quiet time in British politics. And yet, housing policy has become a focus this week.
As Rayner, Burnham and housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook finally announced the first wave of their allocations from the £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP), concern started to grow in rural areas that the lion’s share of funding was going to urban locations.
While it’s true that major cities have high levels of homelessness and a growing number of families languishing in temporary accommodation, the CCN warn there are now 23,000 homeless children in the same situation across England’s counties.
That’s enough to fill the average market town, and councils are warning that rural homelessness is becoming a “deepening crisis”, with areas such as North Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Durham seeing households in temporary accommodation increase more than sixfold.
In March this year, there were a record 23,186 children in county council areas growing up in temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfasts, hostels, hotels and privately rented homes, which councils are often charged expensive rates to let.
According to the CCN, the number of homeless children in rural areas has risen by 74 per cent since 2019-20. This increase is almost double the national increase of 38 per cent.
While many headlines have focused on the strain on migrant accommodation in recent months, asylum seekers cannot be housed in council temporary or social accommodation and are housed by private providers.
Indeed, as I’ve reported, the rise in homeless families with children has been brewing in the background for years, and experts say it is because there is less social housing than there once was, leaving more low-income families to rely on private rents, which they increasingly cannot afford.
Rents have outpaced overall consumer inflation in recent years – private rents have grown 3.7 per cent in the last year, compared to an inflation rate of 2.9 per cent.
Meanwhile state support available to pay those rents (the housing benefit portion of universal credit) has mostly remained frozen. Homelessness charities, such as Crisis, have said they are being approached for help by people in work who don’t qualify for state support but, equally, cannot afford local rents.
As I’ve reported from places like Hastings on the south coast, temporary accommodation costs have pushed local councils’ finances to the brink across the country. English councils spent a total of £2.2bn in the two years between 2023 and 2025, according to the Local Government Association (LGA).
For years, the focus has (perhaps rightly) been on the impact this is having on local councils in major cities. However, today the CCN are warning that rural councils are also seeing their costs “balloon” beyond a sustainable level.
Councils in county areas spent £124m on temporary accommodation in 2019-20, just before the Covid-19 pandemic. Five years later, those councils were spending £373m.
The CCN says that as well as soaring rents, a lack of affordable homes in many areas is fueling the problem and has called on the Government to step in.
Reform councillor Andrew Husband, the CCN’s housing and planning spokesperson, said that while they recognise the SAHP funding, they are concerned “virtually all the funds announced are going to England’s major cities”.
“It is vital that the Government recognises that homelessness is now both an urban and rural challenge, and provides funding to support the delivery of more social and affordable housing in England’s counties,” Husband added.
Husband, leader of County Durham Council, where the number of households living in temporary accommodation has risen more than 500 per cent from 19 to 118, said the authority is “swimming against the tide” as “more and more people” needed support.
“Since taking over as leader of the council almost 18 months ago now, I’ve seen first-hand how the problem has worsened, despite us supporting record numbers of people who have become homeless and progressing plans for more affordable homes,” he said.
“We’ve had to open homeless hubs not only in Durham city itself, but even smaller rural towns such as Tow Law,” Husband added before calling on the Government to develop a “homelessness strategy for rural areas”.
When I spoke to Rayner yesterday, she was clear that the Burnham Government’s intention was to focus on funding the building of homes for social rent, which could help families out of temporary accommodation.
However, whether there will be more funding for rural areas and, crucially, whether any of the worst-affected rural councils will be able to bid for funding to build new housing in the next round of the SAHP remains to be seen.
In the meantime, children will be stuck – sometimes for years – in temporary emergency accommodation which, as I’ve reported, is often unsuitable, unsafe and, sometimes, even dangerous.
Housing crisis watch
Forgive me for staying on topic this week, but several things stand out to me about the Government’s SAHP announcement.
Firstly, there are just three councils on their list of 33 “strategic partners” who have been allocated funding. These are: Cambridge City Council, Eastleigh Borough Council and Newcastle City Council.
Rayner told me that the Government would be “tilting” towards council house building and that this is just the start, but it looks like it is going to be a slow rebirth.
The Prime Minister has made it clear that he wants more councils (and perhaps mayoral authorities) to be able to build homes for social rent. Critics will argue that he has backed down on that in today’s announcement.
But, equally, he, Rayner and Pennycook have issued a clear statement of intention, and you could just as easily argue that Burnham has displayed a degree of pragmatism by getting this initial funding wave (which was largely already allocated when he became Prime Minister) out of the door quickly while also looking at how to support more councils in the next phase which, all told, will be aroud £21bn worth of funding.
Read my full interview with Rayner, in which I asked her when we might expect that second wave of cash, here.
What I’ve been reading
In his brilliant newsletter, Comment is Freed, Sam Freedman wrote last year about his “financial crisis theory of everything”. He recently removed the paywall from this post, which was a good reminder for me to revisit it. You should read it too. I am enjoying Arguably, the new Substack platform headed up by former New Statesman editor George Eaton, immensely. This week, there is a very interesting article arguing that politicians on the left urgently need to come up with policies to address the fact that people are having fewer babies because, at the moment, this conversation is dominated by the right. It is well worth a read.Hence then, the article about britain is facing a new housing crisis but not the one you ve been told about was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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