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Homeless people from the Welsh capital are being given emergency accommodation across the border in south-west England.

Cardiff council has run out of temporary accommodation in the city and been forced to place two families 40 miles away, in Somerset.

Other councils have been forced to find accommodation for homeless people beyond their boundaries, but this is believed to be the first time a local authority has had to house people in another country.

Although there is no government deadline for ending B&B use for homeless families as there is in England, Cardiff council set itself an ambitious target to get all its homeless families out of bed and breakfast accommodation by April. It currently has 82 such families in B&Bs.

But the number of homeless people Cardiff is required to house has increased massively since 18 months ago, when it did not need to use B&Bs to house its homeless. A major factor in this has been the Homelessness Act, which came into force in Wales in March 2001 –a year before it came into effect in England.

The law gave new groups of homeless people, including those leaving the army and prison, priority for accommodation and, unlike people in similar situations in England, they do not have to prove that they are vulnerable.

Cardiff attracts people from all over Wales. There’s nothing we can do unless we get government assistance

Lynda Thorne, Cardiff council

Lynda Thorne, Cardiff council's first deputy leader, said: "It's like London; Cardiff attracts people from all over Wales.

"There's nothing we can do unless we get assistance from government or the assembly."

The loss of 10 council homes every week to the right to buy has added to the shortage, said Thorne: "We used to have a lot of leased property so we did not have to use B&Bs, but the increased demand for accommodation has changed this."

The council plans to lease several hundred properties from registered social landlords and developing hostel accommodation as an alternative to B&Bs for some of the 8000 people on the Cardiff housing waiting list.

Homelessness applications in Wales as a whole have risen from 12,771 in 2000/01 – just before the Homelessness Act came into force – to 17,030 in 2002/03.