Brighton and Hove's housing record demands more than a bigger temporary system

Brighton and Hove City Council reports a new high of 2,358 households in temporary accommodation, encompassing almost 3,600 people, including 1,400 children.¹ The question for councillors is how to turn emergency shelter into a route to a permanent home.

A roof is essential. But a temporary placement should be judged as the start of a solution, not its completion. Children’s need for stability cannot be reduced to whether a council has found somewhere for them to sleep.

The pressure is substantial: the council assessed nearly 50 households a week as qualifying as homeless and needing housing during the first half of the year.¹ Treating each placement as a separate emergency risks missing the underlying failure. A housing system should be assessed by its capacity to prevent this insecurity and resolve it durably.

Brighton’s predicament also reaches beyond the city: Cornwall’s temporary accommodation caseload increased from 250 households before the pandemic to 912 in March 2025, many of them families with children.² That shared direction warrants sustained scrutiny of housing provision, rather than a succession of disconnected local crisis reports.

Brighton and Hove’s proposed response includes buying and leasing more accommodation, with a programme expected to add 500 temporary homes over three years.¹ Bringing more provision under public control is a defensible response to dependence on private suppliers. It should give councillors a clearer responsibility for both cost and conditions.

The financial case is concrete: spot-purchased accommodation costs the council £46.95 per night after housing benefit, compared with £34.45 for block-booked accommodation.¹ Reducing that expense matters. Savings should be tested against the security they help deliver, alongside the rooms they purchase.

The danger is that a better managed temporary system becomes the limit of political ambition. Councillors should demand a credible path from emergency accommodation to permanent housing, and report progress against it. Prosperity deserves to be measured partly by whether families can establish a stable home. Brighton and Hove’s record makes that a test public officials cannot reasonably set aside.