Temporary Accommodation
Households in B&B have tripled since 1997
Households in all forms of temporary accommodation, London
Over 50,000 households in the capital were temporarily accommodated by the London boroughs in March 2002, which was 50 per cent more than in 1999. Overall, one in six of these households was placed in bed and breakfast accommodation, compared with around one in ten in 1997.
Of the households in temporary accommodation, the number staying in bed and breakfast accommodation increased nearly three-fold between 1997 and 2002, and those in private sector temporary accommodation more than doubled.
London’s housing stock is very different from that in the rest of England: just 4 per cent of households in the capital lived in detached properties in 2001/02 compared with over 20 per cent nationally. In London over a third of all households lived in purpose built flats or maisonettes.
Local Authority housing stock in London decreased by 5 per cent between 1991 and 2002 due to a wide range of factors: primarily 'Right-to-Buy sales', ‘Large Scale Voluntary Transfers’ to registered social landlords, sales to sitting tenants and private owners, and selling into shared ownership.
Building of new dwellings in London has fallen over the last 30 years. In 1980/81 there were an estimated 23,200 completions, and this decreased to 14,200 in 2001/02. The draft London Plan has a minimum target for 23,000 additional homes to be completed per year.
There has been a large rise in London’s house prices since mid-1996, and prices are still the highest in the UK. At the end of 2002 the average price for a property in London was £210,100 compared with £134,300 for the UK as a whole.
Source: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
Notes: Households temporarily accommodated by local authorities are those pending enquiries, while awaiting rehousing under the 1985 Act or after being accepted as homeless under the 1996 Act, as at the end of March each year. Includes households which, after acceptance, remain in their existing accommodation while having the same right to accommodation as those placed in temporary accommodation ('homeless at home').Figures include estimates for missing data.
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