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Councils that repeatedly fail to end the use of bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation for families facing homelessness should be hit with ‘effective sanctions', MPs urged today. There are currently 135,000 households in temporary accommodation, including 176,000 children.The Government wants to ensure accommodation with shared facilities is not used by families for longer than six weeks and to eventually eliminate their use entirely. But the House of Commons' Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee wants action against councils that ignore the edict, including by ‘using out-of-area placements or other types of shared accommodation' to swerve targets.A report by the committee read: ‘The Government must ensure there are effective sanctions in place for local authorities that repeatedly breach the six-week limit and that are not taking reasonable steps to eliminate their use of B&Bs by the end of the Parliament.'A report last week by the children's commissioner for England, Rachel de Souza, raised concerns that the Government's six-week limit target only applied to privately owned B&B accommodation and did not extend to council-owned hostels with similar shared facilities.Nine in ten children in council or housing association run temporary hostels with shared facilities have been there for longer than the six-week limit, compared to just under two in three in privately-owned B&Bs. MPs want the Government to ‘publicly name councils that are unwilling to take reasonable steps' to tackle B&B use. The report called for a requirement for councils to put in place long term measures around the safety and standard of temporary accommodation.Labour chair of the committee Florence Eshalomi said some families were placed in accommodation ‘in disrepair' and with ‘serious hazards, such as damp and mould' and ‘infestations of rats, mice and other pests'.Vice chair of the Local Government Association's inclusive growth committee, Carl Cashman, insisted councils were ‘committed to providing suitable and decent places to live for those in temporary accommodation'.He added: ‘The truth is that increasing numbers of people are seeking support from their local authority while budgets decrease, and, when combined with the huge variation in types of accommodation available to the local authority, it presents significant challenges. ‘The gap between what councils pay out to fund temporary accommodation costs versus what they are paid back by government is already £1.5bn over recent years and is only set to grow. To arrest this trend the Government must change the way it reimburses councils for temporary accommodation costs and take further action to address the housing crisis that is in part responsible for these issues.'

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POLICY AND POLITICS

MPs call for 'effective sanctions' on B&B use councils

By Joe Lepper | 22 April 2026

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