Inner-London councils are struggling to meet the demands of the 2002 Homelessness Act.
The first hard evidence that councils are not coping with the five-month-old legislation is that London boroughs are having trouble housing 16- to 17-year-olds, who get priority for accommodation under the act.

Councils are being forced to resort to expensive bed-and-breakfast accommodation because they do not have enough specialist facilities for homeless young people.

Brent council in north London has had 30 applications from homeless 16- and 17-year-olds since the act came into force in July, 23 of whom are in bed and breakfasts. Perry Singh, head of the council鈥檚 housing resource centre, said there were not enough suitable places for them.

He said the 拢54,000 the council received from the government to house the new priority categories 鈥渋sn鈥檛 going to do the trick鈥�.

A representative of Westminster council said it too had seen a rise in the number of 16- and 17-year-olds in need of housing. He said because homeless teenagers in full-time education could not claim housing benefit, the council had to pay for housing them.

The Association of London Government is pressing for targeted grants for local authorities with high temporary housing costs as part of its response to the local government revenue support grant formula, which determines how much each council gets to fund service provision. London authorities spend over 拢100m a year from their own resources on temporary accommodation.

ALG head of housing Peter O鈥橩ane said: 鈥淎uthorities similar in other ways may have different levels of supply of affordable housing compared to the homelessness demand.

鈥淎ccordingly the numbers, and the cost of, temporary accommodation vary sharply across the country. This variation in costs isn鈥檛 picked up in the revenue support grant [the fund paid to local authorities by central government].鈥�

Source

Housing Today