The housing ultimatum: Out-of-area placements are hurting London’s homeless families
Relocations from London have become increasingly far-flung as councils become more hard-line as pressure on housing wait lists continues to explode
“It’s such a worrying time,” says Sarah Stubbings, a teaching assistant and single mother who lives in Harlow, Essex. “My children are playing up at school – my little boy has even started counselling. He’s all over the place because we don’t know where we’ll be going.”
Born and bred in the London borough of Enfield, Sarah was forced to leave the area with her young family in 2017 due to domestic violence. She had no choice about where the council relocated her. Moving away from London and her support network was a struggle at first, but she has since rebuilt her life.
Despite living in Harlow for over seven years now – the required time for claiming a ‘local connection’ to an area which would make her eligible for the social housing list – Enfield council did not provide her with permanent housing when she moved to the area and have therefore been legally unable to discharge their housing duty towards her, especially given she remains a ‘priority need’ resident.
“The landlord wants the property back, so I’ve got to move,” she says. “I could be moved anywhere in the UK, but they’re saying it’s likely to be up north, because they’ve got more property there.”
One of her children has just started secondary school, while her younger two are nearing the end of primary school. Sarah works full-time.
“I don’t want to go back to Enfield because of the domestic violence, but Enfield council are basically saying, you’re going to go wherever we put you, otherwise you’re intentionally homeless.”
Sarah was given a Section 21 order last May by her landlord (a no-fault eviction) and has been waiting for the bailiff letters ever since. “We’re really anxious,” she says. “All our family is in Enfield.”
How do out-of-area placements work?
Sarah’s story is not uncommon and speaks to an alarming trend. Councils across England have been struggling with chronic social and affordable housing shortages for years. London is especially affected. Last year, Savills released a survey which revealed that only 5 per cent of the capital’s housing was eligible for the London Housing Allowance [LHA], the amount private renters can claim in housing benefits.
Thousands reside in temporary accommodation while they wait for more permanent housing, including almost 90,000 children in London alone. Temporary accommodation can range from hotels and hostels, to privately rented or council-owned housing, and frequently does not meet adequate living standards.
The soaring demand and long waiting lists – as well as the huge costs temporary accommodation can rack up – have led some London councils to relocate its residents to more affordable private rentals or temporary accommodation outside of the capital. Just last month, Enfield council declared it was looking to buy up property in Liverpool to house its homeless residents.
London Councils, a cross party group that represents all 32 boroughs and the City of London, has said homelessness represents the “single biggest risk” to council finances and may cause effective bankruptcy. They estimated that councils in the capital had been forced to overspend on their homelessness budgets by at least £330m in 2024-25.
This issue is not unique to London; Birmingham and Manchester have also been known to send their homeless residents out of the local area, for instance. However, relocations from London have become increasingly far-flung – including to areas in the North East such as Telford and Hartlepool – as well as more hard-line.
Homeless families are given an offer of housing by their council, who have a legal obligation to support and house them. The offer must be affordable and councils must strive to relocate their residents within the local area “as far as reasonably practicable”, according to Section 208 of the Housing Act 1996. But in reality, many of these out-of-area placements are located hundreds of miles away from London and prioritise affordability over practicality. If the residents refuse the offer, under the Localism Act 2011, the council can legally end its duty of care and they are then deemed ‘intentionally homeless’.
A report published by The Observer in March revealed Enfield council had taken a particularly aggressive approach, leaving 100 families homeless last year after they refused private tenancy offers. Waltham Forest were reported to have sent the highest number of families outside of the capital. Other councils known to have used out-of-area placements include Redbridge, Barnet and Hillingdon.
“The statistics show that when families are given offers in the north of England, the majority don’t accept,” says Liz Wyatt, a spokesperson for Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth [HASL] campaign and support group. A report published by the organisation last year revealed 94 per cent of the offers Enfield made in 2023 were out of London: over 75 per cent rejected these offers. Enfield is reported to have sent people further from London than any other borough.
“Basically, people are being threatened with destitution,” says Liz. “We meet people who’ve refused these offers, and have maybe been sofa-surfing for months, often with children. So the consequences are devastating.” Social services are obliged to offer families with children emergency accommodation, but the options are typically substandard and often even worse than the temporary housing, with multiple families sharing bathroom and kitchen facilities. In some cases, social services have refused to cooperate on the grounds that the family rejected the offer of ‘suitable’ housing, Liz explains. Housing action and support groups like hers become the last defence against street homelessness for those who have refused out-of-area housing offers.
While it is possible to re-register with another council, the offer of housing “sticks with you”, Liz says. “The new council will find out what happened and will probably say you made yourself intentionally homeless.”
Ahsan Khan, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing and Regeneration at Enfield Council maintains that all offers of accommodation are affordable to the household and do not put its residents at risk of falling into arrears.
“The threat of being made homeless is incredibly difficult for anyone who faces it,” he says. “We always do our best to assist people who approach us needing help with the aim of ensuring that no one must resort to sleeping rough. In some situations, this may involve an offer of settled, stable housing outside of the borough where there is no suitable local alternative available.”
Unstable connections and poor conditions
Today, thousands of children live under the spectre of relocation or homelessness in England; around 164,000 currently reside in temporary accommodation, according to the Chartered Institute of Housing, accounting for nearly half of the entire homeless population.
Temporary accommodation is often run down, damp and cramped, with reports of children having to share beds with their siblings or even parents. Families frequently have to share facilities with strangers; and in some cases, have no access to a kitchen or food-preparation space, making it hard to provide nutritious food for their children.
The conditions of temporary accommodation were deemed a contributing factor to the deaths of 74 children between 2019-2024, 58 of whom were under the age of 1, according to a report by the Shared Health Foundation.
Such an unstable connection to one’s homelife and community can negatively impact children’s emotional and psychological development, as well as majorly disrupt their academic performance. Children can pick up on their parents’ anxiety, as Sarah herself experienced, and the home environment becomes increasingly tense and stressful.
“You could live in a decent temporary accommodation, but the uncertainty of it, the lack of support, the distance from school and family networks has a huge impact,” says Sam Pratt from the Shared Health Foundation, based near Manchester.
While councils have a responsibility to consider safeguarding measures and children’s well-being when relocating families – whether that be to private rentals or temporary accommodation – the locations are often poorly thought-out and even dangerous.
A 2019 report revealed Enfield council had relocated its vulnerable families to a converted office block in Harlow that was also being used to house drug addicts and adults with mental health problems.
“We’ve got great safeguarding protocols in other parts of the world, but in the UK, there’s none when it comes to temporary accommodation,” says Sam.
Juan Flores – a father of two – was made to relocate from Hounslow and sign a 24-month private tenancy in Ferryhill, County Durham, last November. The accommodation was run down; its windows and doors were smashed in, and there was graffiti on the walls.
“We are scared and terrified,” Juan told The Northern Echo. “We just want to move back to London. We had friends there.” According to Juan, the property had previously been used for drug-trafficking; threatening men were regularly seen lingering outside the house.
“Families just drop through the system”
One especially troubling aspect of out-of-area placements is the lack of communication between local authorities. Councils are legally required to notify the new councils about their residents’ arrival within 14 days of settlement. However, many councils are failing to do this consistently and the data is not thoroughly monitored.
“We’re seeing families placed up here without any support or notification to the receiving councils or the schools or GPs,” says Sam. “You’ll find families just drop through the system and then arrive at A&E when something serious happens, and no one knows anything about them.”
One of the doctors connected to the Shared Health Organisation witnessed the problem first-hand. While working in the children’s A&E department in Manchester, he noticed a family that looked out of place. “They had different accents, different clothes, and just sounded like they weren’t from Manchester,” says Sam. “He got talking to them and realised they had been relocated from London to Manchester and placed in temporary accommodation.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government does not currently require authorities to notify local GPs or schools about a relocated family, which makes the transition less fluid and potentially raises safeguarding issues.
“These aren’t safe places to be in,” says Sam. “We’ve known children who’ve had burns on their hands, fractures, broken bones . . . But no one knows they’re there.”
The foundation is campaigning for a nationwide notification protocol that would ensure children and vulnerable families do not slip beneath the radar and that support services are joined up. This is particularly important when it comes to education.
CEO of the Shared Health Foundation, Dr Sarah Neilson, stated last November at a parliamentary meeting that children are unlikely to explain their situation to teaching staff: “We know that children and families don’t tell schools themselves,” she said. “They feel so ashamed that they just hide it.”
There have been instances of children dropping out of the school system entirely – for months, even a whole year – then re-appearing elsewhere and going back to school.
The negative correlation between poor performance at school and housing insecurity is clear: the more times a child moves home (in uncertain conditions), the fewer GCSEs they will attain, a recent report by the Children’s Commissioner concludes.
“We know that the GCSE cohort particularly falls out of the system if the children go into temporary accommodation,” said Sarah (Neilson). “They miss exams and also tend to do reasonably badly compared to what they could do.”
Unlawful practice, financial waste
The use of temporary accommodation in the North-East of England increased by 216 per cent between 2020-2024, according to the Centre for Homelessness Impact; while in London, it rose by only 9 per cent. Those figures reflect the capital’s rising use of out-of-area placements in more affordable areas, a parliamentary report suggested.
“Some of these offers are so far away, they’re blatantly unlawful,” says Liz. “But lots of people don’t challenge it because they don’t know they have the right to, or they can’t find a legal aid lawyer with the capacity to take on their case.”
While legal breakthroughs are uncommon, Lisa Paley, mother of three, won her case against Waltham Forest in 2022, after the council attempted to relocate her and her family to Stoke-on-Trent, over 180 miles away from their home in North-East London. The council had failed to factor in significant additional costs such a move would have incurred, including travel expenses to one of the schools, and travel to and from London (so the children could visit their father).
“The councils will try to justify it,” says Liz. “We all know there’s a housing crisis in London, but that doesn’t explain their extreme behaviour.”
Decades of underfunding and inaction have led to a chronic shortage of social and affordable housing in London and across the country. The local authorities’ adoption of “cruel policies” like these far-off out-of-area placements appear to be impacting the most vulnerable members of society.
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