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Alison ButlerThe Home Office must reconsider its decision to muscle families out of temporary accommodation
The Home Office has gazumped our bid for the new lease on a major temporary accommodation block and now families will be moved out. It must reconsider the decision, writes Alison Butler
I doubt if home secretary Priti Patel had heard of Stonebridge Lodge Hotel in Thornton Heath until last week. If she had, she probably paid little notice.
However, this modest-looking property is important to Croydon Council. For more than 20 years it has allowed our emergency homelessness service at any one time to give around 80 local families a roof over their heads.
That changed a few weeks ago when the Home Office outbid us with a 10-year lease to use Stonebridge Lodge as accommodation for asylum seekers, forcing out homeless families placed there by Croydon Council.
Our issue is not the Home Office finding accommodation for asylum seekers – after all, in the past decade alone Croydon has welcomed more than 5,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and we take pride in supporting them.
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No – it’s the way the Home Office has breezed into Stonebridge Lodge waving its cash, gazumped our housing team and given local families in need weeks to get out.
We already look after around 2,000 local families in temporary accommodation, which is very expensive and in short supply. Demand is growing – there were 50% more homeless applicants last year.
We always aim to place homeless households as locally as possible, specifically in the borough. This fulfils our legal obligations but is important because it keeps people closer to their jobs, schools and support networks.
“The Home Office has breezed into Stonebridge Lodge waving its cash, gazumped our housing team and given local families in need weeks to get out”
To achieve this we rely on local providers, so losing this mix of shared and self-contained units at Stonebridge Lodge does not just mean moving families in need elsewhere, but it also further reduces supply and increases costs.
This week our chief executive Jo Negrini wrote a letter of complaint asking the secretary of state to reconsider her decision and to explain the Home Office’s radio silence with us.
How did it do this? By outbidding a recent pan-London agreement between local councils in London that sensibly limits the prices paid for nightly let B&Bs, especially through block bookings.
It is galling that these attempts to manage a tough local housing market and cope with chronic government underfunding – around 70% cut since 2010 in Croydon alone – has been treated so cynically.
Moreover, this thoughtless Home Office decision disrupts the families who face having to leave Stonebridge Lodge and the many more for whom we will find it harder to source financially viable and suitable local alternative accommodation in future.
To boost supply, Croydon Council has purchased more than 250 street properties and increased the number of affordable homes for Croydon residents through our development company Brick by Brick, but the fact remains we have no choice but to use this type of accommodation.
“This thoughtless Home Office decision disrupts the families who face having to leave Stonebridge Lodge and the many more for whom we will find it harder to source financially viable and suitable local alternative accommodation in future”
Ironically, Croydon Council’s ability to find more temporary accommodation might have improved had the Home Office paid us the £17m it still owes for supporting asylum-seeking children.
For now, our urgent priority is to find suitable homes nearby for the families in Stonebridge Lodge while we press the Home Office to reconsider.
However, even after they have moved, important questions will remain, especially: will the Home Office do this again?
Emergency accommodation is already in desperately short supply as part of a wider housing crisis, especially in London, and the last thing councils need is for Stonebridge Lodge to become a sign of things to come.
We will continue to push for this bad decision to be reversed, and hopefully Ms Patel will start managing her responsibilities better.
Alison Butler, cabinet member for homes and gateway services, Croydon Council