The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation’s report into child mortality found that between April 2019 – March 2025, 104 children have died with temporary accommodation indicated as a contributing factor to their vulnerability, ill-health or death. It is unacceptable that temporary accommodation is contributing to the tragic deaths of children. The Child Poverty Strategy and our National Plan to End Homelessness set out the government’s commitments to tackle unsuitable or poor-quality accommodation and ensure children in temporary accommodation do not experience gaps in health care provision.
These include our commitment to eliminating the unlawful use of Bed & Breakfast accommodation for families by the end of this Parliament as well as working with the Department for Health and Social Care through the Inter-Ministerial Groups on Child Poverty and Homelessness to introduce a clinical code to improve data and prevent incidents in temporary accommodation, ending the practice of discharging newborns into B&B or other unsuitable shared accommodation, and providing proactive outreach to families in temporary accommodation.
Following the success of our £10.5 million Emergency Accommodation Reduction Pilots, with local authorities with the highest use of B&B accommodation, we will expand our work to drive place-based good practice through an Emergency Accommodation Reduction Programme, backed by £30 million over three years.
The government is also providing £950 million of investment for the fourth round of the Local Authority Housing Fund – the largest investment in the fund to date - to support local authorities in England to increase the supply of good quality temporary accommodation and drive down the use of unsuitable B&B and hotels.
Chapter 17 of the Homelessness Code of Guidance provides detailed guidance on suitability of temporary accommodation. It sets out that temporary accommodation will not be suitable for a household with children under the age of 2 if there is not adequate space for a cot for each child aged under 2. It also sets out that housing authorities should consider what support is available for the provision of a cot when a household do not have access to one. You can read the Code of Guidance here.
Alongside this, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act will provide the strongest protections in a generation, making sure vulnerable children are identified and supported. We are also introducing a new temporary accommodation notification duty, to inform schools and specified health providers when a child is placed in temporary accommodation, to allow additional or different support to be provided to these children.
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